ABSTRACT
Little would one imagine from this statement that women had had a primary role in the development of modern town planning (Greed, 1992c). After marking time in the inter-war period, town planning took on a power role within the context of post-war reconstruction under patronage of the Labour government of 1945. But, as Elizabeth Wilson put it, post-war reconstruction only brought women ‘half way to Paradise’ (1980). The Welfare State was culturally constructed by Beveridge around the traditional roles of the man as breadwinner and sportsman, and the woman as housewife and mother, not as worker or zone zapper. As after the First World War, planning was linked to public housing programmes (Hall, 1989:98), but a new development plan system introduced in 1947 gave planners increased powers to control all types of development, and to imprint their gendered beliefs on the built environment more comprehensively. Although the planning profession prioritized land-use issues, it took a greater interest in aspatial issues related to economic development and social policy as a part of the apparatus of the Welfare State (Lake, 1941). Planning prioritized policies related to production, which was socially constructed to emphasize industrial ‘male’ forms of work. This marginalized all types of work and property development that might be seen as coming under the umbrella of consumption, such as
shopping development, to the detriment of women. Jean Mann (1962:170), a Labour MP, warned the party in the inter-war period that it was ignoring consumption at its peril in formulating regional policy. She argued that the needs of house-wives as well as miners (consumers as well as producers) should be considered in debates over the price of coal.
