ABSTRACT
Changes in dominant ideology seem to be closely connected with economic crises. With the crisis of the 1930s’ Depression and the Second World War came the ascendancy of ideas of economic planning and reconstruction in which the state played a central role (see Cole, 1935; Mannheim, 1940; Wootton, 1934, [1945] 1979; Ward, 1976). After the war, the capitalist world entered a period of unprecedented growth in which the programmes of the state greatly expanded and the idea of state intervention in the economy became widely accepted. The public came to hold governments responsible for national economies. Urban planning, which embodied intervention in the land market, benefited greatly from the ascendancy of these ideas.
