The ambiguity of town planning: innovation or re-interpretation?

The paper questions the nature of town planning as a coherent national strategy throughout Britain at the beginning of the 20th century, by analyzing the specific case study of Portsmouth. In 1912, the city unveiled an urban improvement scheme named Curzon Howe Road. This went to replace an industrial working-class residential area that had been classified as unhygienic and dangerous for the general wellbeing of the inhabitants. Having been conceived in 1910 as a direct response to the 1909 Housing and Town Planning Act, Curzon Howe Road can be regarded as being the first example of town planning in Portsmouth. In itself, the notion of town planning is often recognized as a new form of urban intervention aimed at tackling the problems inherited from the industrial revolution. This paper highlights the ambiguity of the term town planning which - to quote John W. Simpson, the president of the RIBA at the time of the prestigious Town Planning Conference of 1910 - “has different meanings in different mouths” (RIBA, 1911, iv). It also discusses how the notion of town planning in the early years of its practice in Portsmouth represents a transitional stage prior to the more design-oriented solutions of the following years. The paper argues that there was no ‘pre-town planning’ vs. ‘post-town planning’ clear-cut distinction in this case study, which can also be observed in diverse locations in Britain. Furthermore, the research shows how in Portsmouth, town planning was interpreted by its instigators as a fusion between the old (i.e. the 19th century Critical Planning practices and rigid ByeLaw standards) and new means of implementing change. Thus, Portsmouth’s Curzon Howe Road represents an example of hybridization, generated by the struggle between forces of permanence and rupture within the context of urban improvement of the early 1900s. In this lies its significance, as it reassesses the true nature of what town planning signified in its formative years for different towns around Britain.