How did we get here today?
This year’s Planning School sheds light on the city’s last fifty years of urban development. How did we get to where we are today, and what do we owe these various eras? Each week, we’ll explore a decade – its policies, its battles, its formative projects – from the mouths of those who know them best.
Prof. John Davies on the 1970s – Community planning was ascendant after a paternal state had built one too many tower blocks. The Westway was completed while Covent Garden was spared its own 4-lane ring road. While some were battling to save our streets others were rioting in them.
John Davis, who was born and grew up in Lewisham, has been Fellow in History at The Queen’s College, Oxford, since 1989. He is currently completing a book on aspects of London in the 1960s and 1970s, including chapters on the Greater London Development Plan, the battles over conservation in, for example, Whitehall and Covent Garden and the disputes around the redevelopment of the Docklands.
Join The London Society for this informative series of Saturday morning talks with some of London’s leading experts and discover how the system works and what planners try to achieve, from the level of ‘the site’ up to planning for the whole city.
*We are sorry, but there is no disability access to The Old Waiting Room.