ABSTRACT
The first substantive plans for rebuilding London were drawn up by Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke and John Evelyn after the Great Fire of London in 1666 (Reddaway 1940, Whinney 1971, Baker 2000, Gilbert 2002, Cooper 2003, Jardine 2004). Other than more localized design and planning initiatives such as the work of John Nash in the area between Regents Park and Piccadilly Circus, there was a vacuum in London planning until the middle of the nineteenth century, with the interesting exception of John Claudius Loudon’s pamphlet of 1829, Breathing Places for the Metropolis, which promoted a system of concentric green rings around London as part of a comprehensive plan for the metropolis, a plan which could also be applied in new colonial cities (Olsen 1964, Bell and Bell 1972, Summerson 1949, Loudon 1829).
