Planning and New Labour: A View from Abroad

Abstract

It is an ambitious project to review the extent to which New Labour governments in the UK, first under Tony Blair and then more recently under Gordon Brown, have changed planning in a country where Thatcherite policies in the late 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s dominated public policies. Such a review of successes and failures of planning during these years, I believe, can only be done in the motherland of planning, and this venture documents the leading role that British academic writing has in the field of planning. The outcome is a very broad reflection of what has been going on in Britain under more then two terms of New Labour government, although some dimensions are missing in this assessment. While local government is covered quite extensively, and housing and environment are treated, the implications for local economic development and for transport have not been covered. This is unfortunate as any account of the impacts of Labour policies on local economic development and mobility would have added a valuable facet to the very competent contributions to this venture. This is especially so in the common argument that New Labour has more or less followed what the Conservative governments under Thatcher and Major had started: this is particularly true when viewing from an economic perspective. Nevertheless I have learnt much from reading the various accounts of New Labour policies in the field of planning, and wish a similar venture would be undertaken in my home country Germany.