Slums and Redevelopment

Based on intensive documentary research , this is the first full-scale study of the politics of the slum question in England between the world wars, and of associated policy and practice in the fields of housing and town planning. It is the second volume in a trilogy which began with "Slums and Slum Clearance" (Allen & Unwin 1986) and which is completed with a third volume covering the period since 1945. From the early Victorian period to the 1970s, the question of slums occupied an important place in British politics and in housing and town planning policies. The inter-war period has two major points of interest. It sees the restoration of slum clearance following a period of opposition and the onset of the first national slum clearance campaign. It reaches its climax in the plans for large-scale redevelopment made during World War II. Although slum clearance developed from nineteenth-century thought and practice, inner-city redevelopment of this kind had its intellectual origins in the 1930s. Activities such as slum clearance had a dramatic impact on those people and places affected, but political formulations of the slum question also had much wider repercussions for property and social policy. In particular, they had a major role in shaping distinctions that have marked modern British cities: between public and private housing, inner city and suburbs, house and flat. As a study of practice as well as policy, this is a major original work on a topic of widespread interest throughout the history, geography, urban studies and planning communities. It will be an indispensable source for those interested in slum conditions, redevelopment and housing practice, whether in an historical or contemporary context, and it discusses issues of international relevance. This book is intended for urban historians, historical geographers, historians of housing and planning, students and researchers in contemporary housing and planning studies.