Influences on the Development of Town Planning in Britain

Abstract

Town planning was defined by Haverfield (I913) as 'the art of laying out towns with due care for the health and comfort of inhabitants, for industrial and commercial efficiency, and for reasonable beauty of buildings'.1 Although his subject was ancient town planning, the definition was not very dissimilar from a description of the purpose of the first British Town Planning Act of I909, when John Burns, President of the Local Government Board, declared that its aim was to secure 'the home healthy, the house beautiful, the town pleasant, the city dignified and the suburb salubrious'.2