A SLICE OF MODERNITY: PLANNING FOR THE COUNTRY AND THE CITY IN BRITAIN AND NATAL, 1900–1950

Abstract

ABSTRACT While critics of modernist planning generally focus on the history of urban planning, this paper points out that a modernizing planning discourse was also extended to the countryside. This is especially clear in the British case, where rural and urban planning were explicitly combined in the town and country planning movement. Although the roots of town and country planning lie in the nineteenth century, the movement really came into its own in the early 1940s when post-war reconstructionist fervour was at its height. In the South African province of Natal, new institutions for regulating urban and rural environments also emerged during this period. The paper considers the extent to which developments in Natal were influenced by planning discourse emanating from the old metropole, Britain. Similarities and key differences between the institutions of control that emerged in the two contexts, are identified and explained.