ABSTRACT
The regional concept is fairly old in Britain; regional planning is new and still in the process of establishing itself. The old concepts are at heart political with matters such as culture, dialect, and even self-determination, in the forefront. The new planning structure is basically economic, concerned with matters such as employment and unemployment, output and productivity, industrial growth and land use. In the first place it is the only highly urbanised region in Britain which has not undergone the experience of having a new town built in the post war years. In summary, this established approach has tended to break up into two streams of action, which have often run counter to one another. Conurbation, greatly underestimating post war population growth and land requirements, urged that the reshaping of the conurbation should have the aim of producing an archipelago of urban settlements in a green setting, based upon a system of open wedges.
