Man-Made Future

This anthology of essays by a group of distinguished scholars investigates post-1945 city planning in Britain; not from a technical viewpoint, but as a polemical, visual and educational phenomenon, shifting the focus of scholarly interest towards the often-neglected emotional and aesthetic aspects of post-war planning.

Each essay is grounded in original archival research and sheds new light on this critical era in the development of modern town planning. This collection is a valuable resource for architectural, social and urban historians, as well as students and researchers offering new insights into the development of the mid-twentieth century city.

An anthology of essays by a group of distinguished scholars, The Man-Made Future investigates post-1945 city planning in Britain not from a technical viewpoint, but as a polemical, visual, and educational phenomenon. It is structured in four sections: the first addressing postwar scientific humanism and the faith invested in the boffin--a potent metaphor for the hope that science and technology would lead European society out of the ashes of World War II and towards a bright, new scientifically planned future. The second section reveals the way in which visual imagery was used to depict and market this rebuilt, postwar world. The topic of the third section is the creation and education of the planning profession, while the fourth and last section analyses exemplary models of totally-planned environments.
While the postwar period and the 1950s are increasingly the focus of scholarly interest and research, the emotional and aesthetic context of postwar planning has been accorded comparatively little attention. Although each essay is grounded on original archival research, the book will be aimed at the general audience of architectural, economic, social, and urban historians, and at students in these fields.

Iain Boyd Whyte is Professor of Architectural History at the University of Edinburgh. He has been a Research Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, a Getty Scholar and, more recently, a Senior Program Officer at the Getty Foundation, Los Angeles. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and has served as a Trustee of the National Galleries of Scotland.