Milestones and signposts in twentieth century planning

Abstract

My credentials for speaking to you on my chosen theme are that I describe myself as a planning historian. This might invite a certain derision; after all, in some quarters history has a low rep­utation (did not Henry Ford dismiss history as ‘bunk’, describing it as ‘just one damned thing after another’?) and as for planning, some would see it merely as a fickle and arbitrary disci­pline where the laws of chance are sub­stituted by those of error. Putting the two together - history and planning - may be tempting fate, the subject readi­ly dismissed as an indulgence.