Planning doctrine as an element in planning history: The case of Cardiff

Planning Perspectives

Volumn 22, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 167-193

  Coop, Simon ^a   Thomas, Huw ^b  

^a Nathaniel Lichfield and Partners   (United Kingdom)

^b CARDIFF UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

PLANNING HISTORY; URBAN AREA; URBAN DEVELOPMENT; URBAN PLANNING;

CARDIFF [WALES]; EURASIA; EUROPE; UNITED KINGDOM; WALES; WESTERN EUROPE;

EID: 33947525490     PISSN: 02665433     EISSN: 14664518     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/02665430701213564     Document Type: Article

References (119)

1. See, for example E. Alexander and A. Faludi, Planning doctrine: Its uses and importance. Planning Theory 16 (1996) 11-61;
2. A. Faludi and D. van der Valk, Rule and Order: Dutch Planning Doctrine in the 20th Century. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994.
3. D. Foley, Controlling London's Growth: Planning in the Great Wen 1940-1960. London: University of California Press, 1963, pp. 52-3.
4. A. Faludi and D. van der Valk, op. cit. [1].
5. H. Blanco, How to Think About Social Problems. American Pragmatism and the Idea of Planning. London: Greenwood Press, 1994, pp. 183-6. Cardiff's planning doctrine 189
6. On 'Green Belt', see M. Elson, Green Belts - conflict and mediation in the urban fringe. London: Heinemann, 1986
7. on 'Green Heart', see A. Faludi and D. van der Valk, op. cit. [1].
8. In addition to earlier references, see A. Faludi, A Planning Doctrine for Jerusalem. International Planning Studies 2 (1997) 83-100.
9. M. Hajer, City Politics: Hegemonic projects and discourse. Aldershot: Gower, 1989, pp. 46-8.
10. On growth coalitions, see J. Logan and H. Molotch, Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place. London: University of California Press, 1987
11. on urban regimes, C. Stone, Regime Politics: Governing Atlanta. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1989
12. G. Stoker, Regime Theory and Urban Politics, in D. Judge et al. (eds) Theories of Urban Politics. London: Sage, 1995, pp. 54-71.
13. See G. Stoker and K. Mossberger, Urban Regime Theory in Comparative Perspective. Environment and Planning C. Government and Policy 12 (1994) 195-212
14. and also G. Stoker, Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. M. Hajer, op. cit. [7], ch. 4.
17. Barry Needham has noted this important characteristic of malleability in planning doctrine in taking issue with aspects of Faludi and van der Valk's analysis of Dutch national planning; this paper considers its significance at an urban scale. See B. Needham, Planning Doctrine and Continuity and Change. Planning Theory 16 (1996) 68-70.
18. M. Boyle and R. Rogerson, Power, Discourse and City Trajectories, in R. Paddison (ed.) Handbook of Urban Studies. London: Sage, 2001, pp. 402-25
19. D. Harvey, From managerialism to entrepreneurialism: The transformation in governance in late capitalism. Geografiska Annaler 71B (1989) 3-17.
20. A. Faludi, op. cit. [6].
21. The latest contribution to the debate is J. Ryan-Collins, The Knowledge Economy in the Cardiff and South-East Wales City-Region. A report for Cardiff City Council. London: Local Futures, 2006.
22. J. Holliday (ed.) City Centre Redevelopment. London: Charles Knight & Co., 1973.
23. A. Briggs, Victorian Cities. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963
24. J. Beckett, City Status in the British Isles, 1830-2002. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005.
25. M. Daunton, Coal Metropolis: Cardiff 1870-1914. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1977.
26. N. Evans, The Welsh Victorian City: The middle class and civic and national consciousness in Cardiff, 1850-1914. Welsh History Review 12 (1984-85) 350-87.
27. V. Cunningham and J. Goodwin, Cardiff University. A Celebration. Cardiff: Cardiff University, 2001, p. 10.
28. Lawrence J. Vale, The Urban Design of Twentieth Century Capitals, in David L. A. Gordon (ed.) Planning Twentieth Century Capital Cities. London: Routledge, 2006, pp. 35-6.
29. A. Briggs, The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom. Vol. 1, The Birth of Broadcasting. London: Oxford University Press, 1961, p. 142.
30. Baber and Thomas point out that in 1930 the unemployment rate for Cardiff and the south-east of Wales was just over 25%. By 1932, Cardiff's rate was just over 20%, while that for Merthyr was over 45% and for Pontypool just over 40%. C. Baber and D. Thomas, The Glamorgan Economy, 1914-1945, in Arthur H. John and Glanmor Williams (eds) Glamorgan County History. Vol. V, Industrial Glamorgan from 1700 to 1970. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1980, pp. 519-79.
31. Interview (May 4, 1993) with Ewart Parkinson, City Planning Officer of Cardiff from 1964-1974. The paper draws on interviews conducted in two tranches with a number of politicians and planners associated with Cardiff's planning - the first tranche in 1992-3; the second in 2002.
32. For post-war regional policy see, for example, G. Day, Making sense of Wales. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2002.
33. Minute 2597, Housing and Town Planning Committee, Cardiff City Council, 13 April 1933. A review is provided by G. H. Whittaker, Cardiff City Town Planning Schemes. Journal of the Town Planning Institute XIX (1933) 271-7. The Public Record Office, local record offices, the National 190 Coop and Thomas Assembly for Wales and the National Library of Wales have all been searched unsuccessfully for copies of this and other early schemes.
34. Edgar Chappell, in discussion of paper by G. H. Whittaker presented at the Annual Conference of the Town Planning Institute in Cardiff, 6 October 1933, as reported in Journal of the Town Planning Institute, XIX (1933) 283
35. G. H. Whittaker,
36. Ibid.
37. Minute 779, Plans etc. Sub-Committee of the Public Works Committee, Cardiff City Council, 12 January 1911.
38. Minute 659, Health and Port Sanitary Committee, Cardiff City Council, 16 July 1912.
39. Minute 2390, Public Works Committee, 13 January 1910.
40. Minute 251, Housing (Town Planning) Committee, Cardiff City Council 22 November 1927.
41. See also G. H. Whittaker, op. cit. [24].
42. E. C. Roberts, Reminiscences of a City Engineer and Surveyor. Glamorgan Historian 3 (1966) 170-87.
43. J. Callaghan, Time and Chance. London: Collins, 1987, p. 63.
44. E. C. Roberts, Report on Development Plan. Presented to City Council's Public Works and Town Planning Committee, 7 November 1952.
45. J. Holliday (ed.), op. cit. [15].
46. Ibid.
47. C. Buchanan, Traffic in Towns. London: Her Majesty's Stationary Office, 1963.
48. See N. Evans, op. cit. [18].
49. C. Hague and H. Thomas, Capital City Planning: Edinburgh and Cardiff compared, in R. Macdonald and H. Thomas (eds) Nationality and Planning in Scotland and Wales. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1997, pp. 133-58
50. H. Thomas, Spatial restructuring in the capital: Struggles to shape Cardiff's built environment, in R. Fevre and A. Thompson (eds) National Identity and Social Theory: Perspectives from Wales. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1999, pp. 168-88.
51. City of Cardiff, Town and Country Planning Act 1947. Development Plan. Written Statement and Report of Survey, February 1953.
52. C. Buchanan and partners, Cardiff Development and Transportation Study: Probe Study Report. London: Colin Buchanan and Partners, 1966, p. 1.
53. J. Dryburgh, J. M. Sweet, G. Robinson and J. R. Bethell, Central Area Redevelopment in Cardiff. Official Architecture and Planning 25 (1962) 73-6. Compare these proposals with those produced by the partnership between Cardiff City Council and Ravenseft at the end of the 1960s: In Cardiff City Council, Centreplan 70. Cardiff: City Planning Department, no date.
54. P. Cooke, Capital relation and state dependency: An examination of urban development policy in Cardiff, in G. Rees and T. Rees (eds) Poverty and Social Inequality in Wales. London, Croom Helm, 1980, pp. 00-01.
55. J. Holliday (ed.), op. cit. [15].
56. P. Cooke, op. cit. [41].
57. South Wales Echo, 13 November 1965.
58. Foreword to C. Buchanan, op. cit. [35].
59. C. Buchanan and partners, op. cit. [39]
60. C. Buchanan and partners, Cardiff Development and Transportation Study: Main Study Report. London: Colin Buchanan and Partners, 1969.
61. Buchanan produced two reports: A 'Probe Study' (1966) which identified key issues and choices (a scoping study in contemporary jargon),
62. and a 'Main Study' (1969).
63. See S. Coop, Part of the process: The role of planning doctrine in the development of Cardiff city centre. MSc dissertation, 2002, Cardiff University.
64. Buchanan and partners, op. cit. [46].
65. C. Buchanan and Partners, op. cit. [39], Supplementary Technical Volume 3: Central Area Proposals, p. 18.
66. Cardiff's planning doctrine 191
67. Interview with David Holtam, Cardiff City Council. Interviews with David Holtam and Gary Sutton were held in 2002. Holtam had been employed by Cardiff City Council since the early 1970s, for most of that time in relation to city centre redevelopment; Sutton had been a City Council planner involved in city centre redevelopment from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s.
68. See S. Coop, op. cit. [47] for further details.
69. E. Parkinson, General Proof of Evidence to the Public Local Inquiry, 17 November 1970, City of Cardiff Development Plan, Comprehensive Development Area No 4, p. 28, unpublished. Copy available from authors. Emphasis added.
70. Ibid.
71. Welsh Office, Wales the Way Ahead. Cardiff: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1967.
72. C. Hague and H. Thomas, op. cit. [37].
73. Interview with Ewart Parkinson, op. cit. [23].
74. Cardiff City Council, Cardiff Central Area Redevelopment: Outline planning brief. Cardiff: Cardiff City Council, 1967.
75. Ministry of Housing and Local Government Planning Bulletin 1: Town Centres - Approach to Renewal. London; Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1962.
76. P. Cooke, op. cit. [41].
77. E. Parkinson, op. cit. [51], p. 23.
78. Cardiff City Council, op. cit. [40].
79. Ibid.
80. B. Dumbleton, The Second Blitz. Cardiff: Dumbleton, 1977.
81. Ibid.
82. J. Barr, Divided City. New Society (8 May 1969) 701-4.
83. Ibid.
84. P. Cooke op. cit. [41].
85. Cardiff City Council, Cardiff: Office Concentration Policy - a statement of the objectives of an office concentration policy and its relevance to the capital city of Cardiff. Cardiff: City Planning Department, 1970, p. 5.
86. For a summary and guide to the literature, H. Thomas, City Profile: Cardiff. Sheffield: Geographical Association, 2003.
87. Ibid.
88. M. C. Bourne, A Study of Council House Building Activity in Post-war Cardiff. MSc dissertation, Department of Town Planning, University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology, 1980. In interview with one of the authors on 7 June 1993, the City Planning Officer, 1974-87, Eurfyl Davies (who has since died), was adamant that city centre redevelopment and housing development both enjoyed bipartisan support (i.e. were, in our terms, part of a widely shared planning doctrine): Oh yes ... it was agreed Central Area's number one priority, which is unusual because you'd expect socialists to [unclear] housing - Then housing had to be seen as a close second; nevertheless it was there - I let it be known that I also saw myself leading so far as housing was concerned. Ewart Parkinson, in interview, stated that 'certainly since I've been involved which ... must be thirty years now - on the main development thrust of the city it has always been bi-partisan'. Moreover, this was something which was worked at: 'I took it upon myself to cultivate it'. We see, here, the most senior planners from the mid-1960s onwards working at creating a shared vision for the city's political groupings
89. E. Evans and H. Thomas (eds), Cardiff: Capital Development. Cardiff: Cardiff City Council, 1988.
90. Coop and Thomas
91. H. Thomas and R. Imrie, Urban policy, modernisation and the regeneration of Cardiff Bay, in R. Imrie and H. Thomas (eds) British Urban Policy and the Urban Development Corporations. London: Sage, 2nd edn, 1999
92. H. Thomas, Regenerating Cardiff Bay: The First Steps in their historical and policy contexts. Paper in Planning Research 170, Department of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University, 1999.
93. C. Buchanan and partners, op. cit. [46], p. 79.
94. South Glamorgan County Council, Structure Plan. Cardiff: SGCC, 1977.
95. The local plans that the City Council prepared for North Butetown (adopted 1981), South Butetown (1980) and East Moors (approved by the Council in 1980, but never formally adopted) made it clear that the key issues were improving the area's infrastructure and environment, but only so as to make it easier to sustain essentially the same kinds of uses as were there at present.
96. H. Thomas, Redevelopment in Cardiff Bay: State intervention and the securing of consent. Contemporary Wales 5 (1992) 81-98.
97. South Glamorgan County Council, South Glamorgan and its Future - first review of the Structure Plan: Technical Paper 3: Employment and Economy. Cardiff: South Glamorgan County Council.
98. Cardiff City Planning Officer, East Moors District Plan: Implementation 1978-1982. Report to Planning and Development Committee, Cardiff City Council, 12 November 1982.
99. H. Thomas, The local press and urban renewal: A south Wales case study. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 18 (1994) 315-33.
100. See E. Evans and H. Thomas (eds), op. cit. [70].
101. The inter-authority rivalry appears to have originated during local government reorganization in 1972-4, when Ewart Parkinson attempted (unsuccessfully) to lodge planning responsibilities for the city within the South Glamorgan County Environment Department, to which he moved as Director (interview with Ewart Parkinson, 4 May 1993
102. interview with Eurfyl Davies, City Planning Officer, 1974-87, 7 June 1993). It should be borne in mind, however, that even before 1974 some felt that the organizational politics relating to planning in the city were quite intense - interview with Arthur Thompson, who held senior managerial positions in the city planning departments from 1965-87, on 23 September 1992.
103. H. Thomas, op. cit. [78].
104. H. Thomas and R. Imrie, Redevelopment, compulsory purchase and the regeneration of local economies. Planning Practice and Research 4 (1989) 18-27.
105. Cardiff Bay Development Corporation, Sustaining Success. Cardiff: CBDC, 2000.
106. Thomas cites an interview with Ewart Parkinson in which he stated that in the early 1980s, when the Atlantic Wharf redevelopment was being promoted, he was called in to meet the Secretary of State for Wales, Nicholas Edwards, who 'wanted to know why we were fighting with the city ... we'd got ourselves into a battle between the City and the County and Nick was tearing strips off us as to why we were misbehaving'. H. Thomas, op. cit. [71], p. 35.
107. H. Thomas and R. Imrie, op. cit. [71], pp. 77-8.
108. See, for example, Cardiff City Council, City Centre Strategy. Cardiff: Cardiff City Council, 2002. The way that retaining a strong commercial city centre remains central to Cardiff's planning doctrine has been underlined by the efforts made to facilitate a mixed-use redevelopment of over 16 hectares, St David's 2, which will contain 90 000 m2 of retailing (see H. Thomas, op. cit. [67]).
109. City and County of Cardiff, Unitary Development Plan, 1996-2016: Proposals for Consultation. Cardiff: City and County of Cardiff, 2001.
110. H. Thomas, op. cit. [67].
111. Interview with Gary Sutton.
112. H. Thomas and R. Imrie, op. cit. [71].
113. Cardiff Bay Development Corporation, Renaissance. Cardiff: CBDC, p. 8.
114. City and County of Cardiff, op. cit. [87], p. 43. Cardiff's planning doctrine 193
115. In recent years, the focus has not just been on perpetuating the capital city role, but also enhancing its performance as a European centre. In the early 1990s South Glamorgan County Council's (SGCC) so-called European capital initiative was intended to 'lift Cardiff from clear capital of Wales to being one of Europe's major capital cities' (SGCC, Cardiff - towards a European Capital - shaping our future: A consultation document. Cardiff: SGCC, 1994, p. 2). Whilst the attractive, compact, accessible capital city centre has much to offer in this respect, Cardiff Bay has become 'essential' to these objectives, helping to provide an additional tier to the city's retail, commercial, leisure and tourism offer. In seeking to achieve such goals it was recognized that the Waterfront setting could play a prominent role, as it offered a link to Cardiff's successful maritime history; to successful waterfront redevelopment areas, such as London Docklands and Baltimore; and even to successful global maritime cities, such as Boston, Sydney and Buenos Aires.
116. See also C. Hague and H. Thomas, op. cit. [37]
117. and H. Thomas, op. cit. [37].
118. H. Thomas and R. Imrie, op. cit. [71]
119. H. Thomas, op. cit. [67].