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Urban Planning and the Motor Car, 1955-1977: Responses to the growth of private motoring in Leicester and Milton Keynes Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Leicester by Richard Simon Harrison BA MA Centre for Urban History University of Leicester March 2015 Richard Simon Harrison Urban Planning and the Motor Car, 1955-1977: Responses to the growth of private motoring in Leicester and Milton Keynes Abstract This thesis examines the response of British urban planners to the rise of private motoring in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The examination begins with an exploration of important planning documents and events of the 1950s and 1960s, relating to the issue of rising car ownership. It is followed by an exploration of the response of urban planners to rising car ownership in Leicester and Milton Keynes. This research covers an important stage in the rise of car culture in Britain and an important stage in the evolution of urban planning. From 1950 to 1960, the number of cars on Britain’s roads rose nearly two-and-a-half times to 5.5 million, which was seen as the beginning of mass car ownership. Although this prospect was often welcomed as a sign of affluence, it was also deemed to require a robust response from physical planners to prevent widespread traffic congestion and environmental nuisance. In this thesis I make four arguments. I argue, firstly, that it was in the 1950s and 1960s that a durable framework for approaching questions of urban transport in a motorised Britain was first worked out. Secondly, the prospect of motorisation posed fresh questions about the type of urban society that planning should be employed to support. The planners elected to encourage automobility and consumerism, but were also obliged to give more recognition to the importance of building conservation, urban environmental quality, and public transport. Thirdly, urban planners were directed by a powerful set of economic and social forces to plan in the car’s favour. Fourthly and finally, I argue that the decision to accommodate motorisation helped to provoke a backlash against sweeping redevelopment and top-down planning that altered planners’ relationship with the public, giving rise to a greater appreciation for the value of the existing urban fabric. i Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to thank my supervisors Professor Simon Gunn, Dr Rebecca Madgin, and Professor Sally Kyd Cunningham for all their help with my writing and research. Especial thanks are due to Simon whose encouragement and enthusiasm has been particularly important in the making of this thesis and the completion of my master’s degree. I am also very grateful to the Economic and Social Research Council for its generous financial support in the form of a 1+3 studentship. I would like to thank Stuart Bailey, Dr Mark Clapson, Dr James Greenhalgh, Dr Sally Horrocks, Colin Hyde, Bernard Marriott, Matthew Parker, and Professor Gordon Pirie for their help with my work in various forms. I am also grateful to the staff at the following institutions: The National Archives, the Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, Milton Keynes Discovery Centre, the library of the Institution of Civil Engineers, the British Library, Special Collections at the University of Leicester library, East Midlands Oral History Archive, and the Records Office for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland. Finally, I would like to dedicate this thesis to my parents, Clive and Marilyn Harrison, who have supported me in so many ways that this PhD could not have been completed without them. ii Contents Abstract i Acknowledgements ii List of illustrations v List of abbreviations vi Chapter One: Urban Planning and the Coming Motor Age 1 The rise of the car 3 The historiography of the car and urban planning 4 The place of my work in the wider historiography 19 The conduct of my research 20 The structure of the thesis 22 Chapter Two: Motorisation and Urban Transport Planning in Britain, 1955 - 1973 25 Trends in British traffic planning, 1955 - 1973 27 Urban redevelopment and highway engineering 40 Personal transport: improvements and alternatives 52 Public transport: improvements and alternatives 58 Getting the most out of the roads: road pricing and traffic management 64 Conclusion 71 Chapter Three: Land Use, Road Networks and Mobility 75 Konrad Smigielski and the Leicester Traffic Plan 76 Responses to the Leicester Traffic Plan 82 North Bucks New City and the designation of Milton Keynes 86 The planning of Milton Keynes 89 The Milton Keynes Interim Report 97 The Milton Keynes Master Plan 99 Conclusion 101 Chapter Four: Reconciling the Car with the Urban Environment 106 City centre planning: the proposals for Inner Leicester and Central Milton Keynes 108 iii The alignment and design of major urban roads 119 The planning of new development 126 The adaptation of existing built-up areas 131 Conclusion 136 Chapter Five: Urban Transport Planning and Conservation 143 A historiographical overview of conservation and urban planning in Britain, 1940-1978 144 Leicester and Milton Keynes: approaches to conservation and town planning 148 Milton Keynes town plans and the plans for Clarendon Park and Inner Leicester 154 Milton Keynes village plans 162 Conservation and public involvement in the planning process 164 Conclusion 168 Chapter Six: Alternative Modes of Transport 171 North Bucks New City and the Leicester Traffic Plan 172 Milton Keynes and Beaumont Leys 180 Later developments in Leicester and Milton Keynes 191 Conclusion 197 Chapter Seven: Conclusion 199 Responding to the prospect of mass car ownership 200 The objectives of urban planning in Motor Age Britain 202 Facilitating private motoring? The influence of wider economic and political forces 204 The evolution of urban planning in the Motor Age 207 Conclusions 209 Bibliography 211 Archival Material 211 Newspapers and Periodicals 214 Contemporary Published Material 215 Secondary Published Material 217 Unpublished Theses 221 Conference papers and websites 222 iv List of illustrations Figure 2.1: Horizontal and vertical segregation as depicted in the Buchanan Report 42 Figure 3.1: A new road system for Leicester, as proposed in the Traffic Plan of 1964 81 Figure 3.2: The position of Milton Keynes relative to London and Leicester 88 Figure 3.3: The proposed network of primary roads and land uses in Milton Keynes 96 Figure 4.1: A map of Inner Leicester, showing the proposed Inner Motorway 110 Figure 4.2: The Clock Tower area of Leicester in the 1960s 112 Figure 4.3: Major areas of slum clearance in Leicester 134 Figure 5.1: The towns and villages in the designated area of Milton Keynes 152 Figure 5.2: A model of the proposed redevelopment of Leicester’s Market Place 160 Figure 6.1: North Bucks New City 174 v List of abbreviations BRF British Road Federation CBS Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies CMK Central Milton Keynes DoE Department of the Environment EMOHA East Midlands Oral History Archive GLC Greater London Council ICE Institution of Civil Engineers JUPG Joint Urban Planning Group LCC London County Council LWFB Llewelyn-Davies, Weeks, Forestier-Walker and Bor MHLG Ministry of Housing and Local Government MKDC Milton Keynes Development Corporation MOT Ministry of Transport ROLLR Records Office for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland RRL Road Research Laboratory TNA The National Archives vi Chapter One Urban Planning and the Coming Motor Age The subject of this thesis is the response of British urban planners to the challenge of accommodating rising car use in the 1950s, the 1960s and the 1970s. In the late 1950s, urban planners correctly inferred that the rapid rise in car ownership in that decade was a sign that private motoring was switching from the preserve of a privileged few to an activity that the mass of ordinary people could afford to pursue. The number of cars on Britain’s roads rose nearly two-and-a-half times to 5.5 million in the ten years from the beginning of 1950. It more than doubled in the following decade.1 Although many observers thought that this development was welcome in itself, it was considered that a robust response was required from physical planners to prevent widespread traffic congestion and environmental nuisance that would otherwise be the result of mass motorisation. Amongst the first people to speak in favour of such a response was Colin Buchanan, a road engineer and civil servant who also had a background in town planning. He would later become a central figure in transport planning in the 1960s, following his authorship of Traffic in Towns, also known as the Buchanan Report, which was the outcome of a study commissioned by the Ministry of Transport (MOT). However, he first made an impression with an extensive discussion of the issue of urban traffic, entitled Mixed Blessing, which was published in 1958. He set out the scale and nature of Britain’s urban traffic problems, noting that there were six million motor vehicles using ‘the road system of the coaching days’, which led to traffic congestion and was ‘steadily grinding away all the amenity and pleasantness of our roads and … adjoining lands.’2 He explored the phenomenon of urban traffic and its associated problems in detail, but could offer no straight-forward solution to the latter, stating that the remedy did not lie solely with engineering or building. This assertion, together with Buchanan’s acknowledgement that urban motor traffic was a very complex phenomenon that involved every aspect of urban life, characterised the way that British urban planners would approach the issue in the following years. Buchanan concluded by stating that he 1 British Road Federation, Basic Road Statistics (London, 1971), p. 2. 2 C. Buchanan, Mixed Blessing: The Motor in Britain (London, 1958), p.

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