ABSTRACT
The planner is freed from the present by his commitment to the future, and his scientificality can all be poured into anchorless data the validity of which cannot be checked. It recognised that ‘circumstances that underlay the 1972 decision to look to Stevenage to provide 1,000 additional acres of housing for private development had wholly changed’, but the ‘need for public rented housing, so strongly urged in the Corporation’s report’ had greatly increased, and it was ‘hoped that on this ground alone a major expansion would have been recognised as essential and a Draft Designation Order would have been made’ by Secretary of State. The Corporation continued to state that the ‘housing problem’ had arisen from several causes, but particularly important was the fact that much undeveloped land was phased in the Master Plan for development after 1976 with the remainder of the land which could have been built on immediately being either ‘difficult or expensive or in private ownership’.
