ABSTRACT
Regional planning occupies a strange niche in planning, particularly in the UK. It is often regarded as an intruder, the cuckoo in the nest, between more powerful local and national government domains. Indeed it is probably one of the most contested fields in the array of planning activities. Yet, in the UK it has managed to survive for almost a century, although often on a roller coaster ride — all this despite regions not being an especially powerful source of identity in Britain. Regional planning has enjoyed good times, especially immediately after the Second World War and in the 1960s and 1970s and latterly in the first decade of the 2000s. It has also had very bad times and has been reduced to hanging on with its finger nails, especially in the early Thatcher years and alas, even more so under the Coalition government of the second decade of the 2000s.
