Preservation, Conservation and Planning in Historic Towns

Abstract

half of the twentieth century in two historic Warwickshire towns in the light of our existing understanding of the art/science of townscape management and related geographical concepts. It forms part of the introductory work to a project initiated with J. W. R. Whitehand to provide some theoretical background for townscape management. The idea of 'managing' the townscape of historic urban centres as distinct from 'preserving' particular historic buildings which happen to be in towns is a comparatively recent phenomenon in English planning. Though techniques of conserving historic areas are now better understood, and the concept of 'conservation areas' is enshrined in legislation, there are few theoretical constructs upon which basic techniques can be built. At present, consetvation areas within historic towns are still very much at the mercy of local government planning departments and the often conflicting political pressure groups of town-centre developers and conservationists. The latter remain a minority of largely well-educated, prosperous and 'middle-class' inhabitants of particular towns, often with very local interests, and historic townscapes lacking such interest groups can be damaged with little thought or concern (Hobhouse, 1971; Burke, 1974). Such a situation would apply particularly to townscapes deriving from the Industrial Revolution and few planners, for example, have given any consideration to maintaining, even under museum conditions, any of the housing stock of the early nineteenth century. In those smaller towns generally characterized as 'historic', that is to say those in which a substantial proportion of the town-centre buildings originates from the pre-industrial era, the problems of accommodating modern commercial functions, retail outlets and motor cars are well known. There is now an extensive literature, largely of particular case studies, demonstrating both the destructive effects of bad planning on individual towns and the continuing search for satisfactory methods of positive planning by which historical townscapes can be maintained as functioning entities without losing their essential historicity (Esher, 1968; Buchanan, 1968).