ABSTRACT
Town planning in Britain has traditionally and legally been perceived as being concerned with the regulation of physical land use and development, which has been implemented through development control and development plan procedures. The scope of town planning as a form of state intervention has been primarily spatial and geographical in nature. But many of the issues which have been of concern both to planners and to urban citizens have not been directly, or exclusively, ‘spatial’ in nature, but rather ‘aspatial’, that is related to social, economic, environmental or cultural trends, issues and problems (Foley et al., 1964). The purpose of this book is to discuss some of the other types of ‘planning’ which have jostled for a place either within or alongside the realms of statutory town planning. Some of the more prominent among current contenders are environmental planning, economic planning, social planning for minority groups, and a resurgence of interest in architect-led urban design ‘planning’. Indeed there nowadays appear to be many ‘plannings’ rather than just one ‘town planning’, each with its own jargon, discourse, objectives and disciples, coexisting uneasily with each other and with the governmental town planning system.
