ABSTRACT
The whole of Chapter 2 has concentrated on the evolution of what can be called, broadly, the urban problem in Britain from the Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth century to the outbreak of the Second World War. We have looked at the facts of urban development and at the attempts – often faltering and not very effective ones – on the part of central and local administration to deal with some of the resulting problems. This was the world of practical men grappling with practical matters. But no less important, during this time, were the writings and the influence of thinkers about the urban problem. Often their writings and their lectures reached only a tiny minority of sympathetic people. To practical men of the time, much of what they asserted would seem utopian, even cranky. Yet in sum, and in retrospect, the influence of all of them has been literally incalculable; furthermore, it still continues.
