#Planning4People – Recreating Social Town Planning
planning for the
society people
want
Barry Knight celebrates the legacies of Beatrice Webb and
Ebenezer Howard and considers how to renew planning’s
focus on developing the good society
Beatrice Webb and Ebenezer Howard – pioneers of a society committed to fairness and security for its members
This article brings together the legacy of two great
social reformers from the late 19th and early 20th
centuries: Sir Ebenezer Howard (1850-1928) and
Beatrice Webb (1858-1943). The implementation of
their ideas was responsible for some of the most
successful aspects of life in Britain after the Second
World War.
Sir Ebenezer Howard’s vision was to make cities
places in which people live harmoniously together
in a close relationship with nature. As the pioneer
of the Garden Cities movement and founder of the
Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA), he
wanted to see the end of overcrowding, bad
housing, environmental hazard and poverty.1 As an
anti-poverty campaigner, Beatrice Webb wanted a
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national minimum income and an end to the
humiliation of the workhouse and the desperation
of the soup kitchen.
From vision to reality
Although neither lived to see the fruits of their
labours, both had a powerful influence on the
post-war settlement that introduced a society
committed to security for all its members within
an orderly and well regulated environment. Beatrice
Webb provided much of the intellectual capital for
the design of the welfare state, while the work of
Ebenezer Howard found expression in the 1947
Town and Country Planning Act – the foundation for
land use planning.
#Planning4People – Recreating Social Town Planning
These developments led to much social advance
in the post-war period. By 1957, Conservative Prime
Minister Harold MacMillan gave a speech in which
he said:
‘You will see a state of prosperity such as we
have never had in my lifetime – nor indeed in
the history this country. Indeed let us be frank
about it. Most of our people have never had it so
good.’ 2
Durbin was therefore wrong that ‘we are all
planners now’. There was at least one well
organised minority that was adamantly opposed.
The key text was Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom.
Published in 1944, this warned of the danger of
tyranny resulting from government control of
economic decision-making through central
planning.7 The goals of planning, he said, are either
impossible because of the sheer complexity of
social phenomena, or undesirable because they
A year earlier, Labour politician and socialist
restrict the freedom of individuals.
intellectual Tony Crosland had reached similar
The 36 founding members of the Mont Pelerin
conclusions, noting:
Society mounted one of the greatest comebacks
‘The most characteristic features of capitalism
of all time. In Thinking the Unthinkable, Richard
have disappeared – the absolute rule of private
Cockett tells the story of how the ideas of freeproperty, the subjection of all life to market
market economics gained ground through the
influences, the domination of the profit motive,
efforts of organisations such as the Institute of
the neutrality of government, typical laissez-faire
Economic Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies and
division of income and the ideology of individual
the Adam Smith Institute.8 By the mid-1970s, the
3
Keynesian consensus had buckled under the weight
rights.’
of inflation, unemployment and industrial disorder.
The power of planning
The ideas of ‘monetarist’ economics became the
These gains in British society were largely due to driving force behind Conservative governments
social planning. The state regulated private capital
from 1979 onwards.
so that its fruits could be shared widely, and
Reviewing this period of history for the Webb
guaranteed social security as a right in a way that
Memorial Trust, the Smith Institute examined the
private philanthropy never could. Planning came to
principles on which the new policy was based. It
the fore because no-one wanted a return to the dark concluded:
‘According to the Conservative Party, incomes
days of the 1930s depression. Both Conservatives
policy had obviously failed, trade unions were
and Labour politicians embraced the idea, and
too powerful, markets were over-regulated;
Evan Durbin caught the mood in 1949 when he
taxes were too high, nationalised industries
said: ‘We are all planners now.’ 4
And it worked. Reviewing the history of planning,
were feather bedded and an over generous
a TCPA report commissioned by the Webb Memorial
social welfare system discouraged enterprise
Trust noted:
and created state dependency.’ 9
‘Planning has played a ‘transformational’ role in
The new approach envisaged a reduced role for
improving the quality of life in all our
government, sweeping away regulations and
communities.’ 5
freeing up the market so that it could create wealth.
Planning unravels
A critical event was ‘Big Bang’ in 1986, a policy
Just as planning was becoming accepted, there
that deregulated financial markets. Successive
arose a countervailing force. In the same year as
governments continued with policies to encourage
the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act passed
enterprise by removing restrictions of all kinds.
onto the statute book, Professor Friedrich von Hayek
In land use planning, the Localism Act 2011 can
invited 36 influential people to Switzerland to form
be seen as the culmination of 30 years of this
the Mont Pelerin Society. The group was diverse,
process. It focuses on:
‘cutting central targets on councils, easing the
but had a common bond:
‘They [saw] danger in the expansion of government,
burden of inspection, and reducing red tape...
not least in state welfare, in the power of trade
breaking down the barriers that stop councils,
unions and business monopoly, and in the
local charities, social enterprises and voluntary
continuing threat and reality of inflation.’ 6
groups getting things done for themselves.’ 10
The sole objective of the Mont Pelerin Society
was:
‘to facilitate an exchange of ideas between likeminded scholars in the hope of strengthening the
principles and practice of a free society and to
study the workings, virtues, and defects of
market-oriented economic systems.’
As a result, planning is in the doldrums. The TCPA
reported in 2013 that planning was marginal and had
little relevance to distributional outcomes for people
most in need:
‘The reason for this failure is partly because
planning is no longer recognised as a mainstream
part of public policy in poverty reduction, and
Town & Country Planning November 2015
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#Planning4People – Recreating Social Town Planning
because national planning policy has de-prioritised
social justice as an outcome.’ 5
Lewis Carroll’s warning: ‘If you don’t know where
you’re going, any road will get you there.’ 16
In a democracy, the goals of society should be
A changed world
based on what people want and need, rather than
The world that Howard and Webb built has
what those in power think that people want and
therefore changed beyond recognition. The market
need. That our leaders disregard this means,
is now the main arbiter of virtue – and so life gets
according to David Marquand:
‘We are sleepwalking towards a market society
better for some but not for all. As Paul Krugman has
that none of us has voted for. We are shocked by
pointed out, the era of state planning led to the ‘the
the level of inequality in our society but can’t
great compression’ (where society became markedly
summon up the political will to reduce it. The
more equal) but the era of market individualism has
narratives that structured the early post-war
led to the great divergence (where society has
period have lost their purchase, but no new
become markedly more unequal).11 Pickett and
Wilkinson have shown that the more unequal a
narratives have filled the resulting vacuum. Our
society is, the less likely it is to be a good society.12
ills are intangible, even more than tangible. They
are those of a disorientated people adrift in a
Rising to the challenge
bewildering moral and emotional sea.’ 17
Now, more than 150 years after they were born,
Our study found widespread unhappiness with
the institutions that celebrate the legacies of Webb
the current state of affairs. It found no empirical
and Howard – the Webb Memorial Trust and the
TCPA – are collaborating on a project to address the justification for the current political obsession with
economic growth. People did not think that this
challenges to planning. A key outcome is TCPA’s
should be the main – still less the sole – arbiter of
#Planning4People Manifesto,13 which is supported
by a coalition of more than 60 organisations and
value. The most important factor in people’s lives was
individuals who share a common belief in the value their relationships – described in a variety of ways –
of place-making in securing a just, achievable future. but unified under the umbrella of ‘community’.
The Manifesto fits well with the Webb Memorial
People stressed four aspects of community:
Trust’s publication The Society We Want, which is
tolerance, equality, fairness, and security. People
based on the views of more than 12,000 people in
were not seeking to be rich but wanted enough
Britain.14 The study engaged with the big normative money to get by and to have a few luxuries.
questions of life and addressed the need for a
better moral framework.
Going forward
The #Planning4People Manifesto is an excellent
framework for driving forward a people-driven
‘Our study found no empirical
agenda. Ideally, it will help to stimulate the energy
and commitment to develop a new narrative about
justification for the current
how to develop a good society and in the process
political obsession with
reinvigorate planning in a modern context. The
process of building towards this goal will take
economic growth. People did
patient development and should be planned as a
not think that this should be
long-term venture. There are five key principles here
that might be considered in going forward:
the main – still less the sole –
● Reinventing the methodology of planning: A
arbiter of value. The most
new methodology of planning will be required.
important factor in people’s
One of the reasons for the retreat of planning is
that the 1945 settlement contained the seeds of
lives was their relationships –
its own destruction in relying on a top-down
described in a variety of ways – public sector approach. There is now widespread
acceptance that such dirigiste methods don’t
but unified under the umbrella
work.18
of community’
● Multiple actors: The ‘who plans?’ question is
crucial. Planning needs to be reconceptualised as
In conducting the study, we were influenced by
a process in which everyone is involved. It is not
historian Tony Judt, who pointed out that the victory
the preserve of a single agency and needs to
of neo-liberalism means we don’t think about the
involve as many actors as possible. As Paul Mason
big questions of what constitutes a good society
has shown in his blockbuster Postcapitalism,
what succeeds in the world is generally the
any more.15 Without such a moral framework, he
argues, society drifts rudderless and we are at the
result of a network.19 This is why the coalition for
#Planning4People is so important.
mercy of what the market delivers. This chimes with
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Town & Country Planning November 2015
#Planning4People – Recreating Social Town Planning
●
Trust: A key part of any planning process should be
building solidarity between people so that outcomes
are ‘ours’, rather than ‘theirs’. This would entail
building the community from the inside out, rather
than from the outside in. There is a growing
movement across the world that sees community
philanthropy – building assets, agency and trust from
within communities – as an essential requirement
of good development.20 Such an approach entails
building democracy into the heart of planning.
‘There is a growing movement
across the world that sees
community philanthropy –
building assets, agency and
trust from within communities
– as an essential requirement
of good development. Such
an approach entails building
democracy into the heart of
planning’
●
●
The kind of approach taken by Kickstarter (a highly
successful funding platform for creative projects)
could be adapted to give communities a measure
of control over what planning decisions go
forward. A community philanthropy approach
refashions the nature of agency and funding,
enabling good and popular things to happen
without the need for an external authority.
Assets and contribution, rather than deficits
and needs: We need to start from our strengths
rather than our weaknesses. We are a rich
country, and we need to plan how to use our
wealth and assets to address the issue. We have
to recognise our agency – that we can do things;
and so can people who are classed as ‘poor’. We
need to promote the agency of people on low
incomes, both to improve their own situation and
to demand better conditions from those in power.
Without strong demand, politicians – and indeed
the rest of society – have little incentive to change
anything.
Planning as jazz: If we were to think of planning
as music, we should think about it as jazz.
Although we need to have a chord sequence, any
arrangement should be flexible and leave room for
improvisation and substitutions. There are many
ways to reach our goals, and processes should be
eclectic and flexible.
Notes
1 B. Clark: ‘Ebenezer Howard and the marriage of town
and country’. Archives of Organizational &
Environmental Literature, 2003, Vol. 16 (1), 87-97
2 See ‘1957: Britons ‘have never had it so good’’. On This
Day – 1950-2005 webpages, BBC.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/20/
newsid_3728000/3728225.stm
3 C.A.R. Crosland: The Future of Socialism. Cape, 1956
4 E.F.M. Durbin: Problems of Economic Planning.
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1949
5 Planning Out Poverty: The Reinvention of Social Town
Planning. TCPA and Webb Memorial Trust. TCPA, 2013.
www.tcpa.org.uk/data/files/Planning_out_Poverty.pdf
6 See the Mont Pelerin Society webpages, at
www.montpelerin.org/montpelerin/home.html
7 F.A. Hayek: The Road to Serfdom. Text and Documents:
The Definitive Edition. Routledge, 2014
8 R. Cockett: Thinking the Unthinkable: Think-Tanks and
the Economic Counter-Revolution, 1931-83. Harper
Collins, 1994
9 D. Coats, with N. Johnson and P. Hackett: From the Poor
Law to Welfare to Work: What Have We Learned from a
Century of Anti-Poverty Policies? Smith Institute and
Webb Memorial Trust. 2012.
https://smithinstitutethinktank.files.wordpress.com/2014/
11/from-the-poor-law-to-welfare-to-work.pdf
10 A Plain English Guide to the Localism Act. Department
for Communities and Local Government, Nov. 2011.
www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/
attachment_data/file/5959/1896534.pdf
11 P. Krugman: The Conscience of a Liberal. WW Norton &
Company, 2009
12 K. Pickett and R. Wilkinson: The Spirit Level: Why
Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger. Tantor
Media, 2011
13 #Planning4People: A Manifesto. TCPA, Oct. 2015.
www.tcpa.org.uk/pages/planning4people.html
14 B. Knight: The Society We Want. Alliance Publishing
Trust and Webb Memorial Trust, 2015
15 T. Judt: Ill Fares the Land: A Treatise on our Present
Discontents. Penguin UK, 2011
16 L. Carroll: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Macmillan
& Co., 1865
17 D. Marquand: Mammon’s Kingdom: An Essay on
Britain, Now. Penguin UK, 2014
18 The failure of well meaning, scientifically based
planning was clear in Lyndon B. Johnson’s search for
a great society in 1960s America. See P. Marris and
M. Rein: Dilemmas of Social Reform: Poverty and
Community Action in the United States. Transaction
Publishers, 1972
19 P. Mason: Postcapitalism: A Guide to our Future. Allen
Lane, 2015
20 J. Hodgson: ‘Community philanthropy and power’.
Alliance Magazine, 1 Sept. 2013
●
Barry Knight is Director of the Webb Memorial Trust. The
views expressed are personal.
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