James Heartfield

Director of audacity, based at the Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster, and author of Let's Build! - Why we need five million new homes in the next 10 years (2006)

Website: www.audacity.org and www.heartfield.org

e-mail: Heartfield@blueyonder.co.uk

9.30 to 11.00 on Saturday 19 May 2007

Beyond Town and Country

Summary

The future of the city is an idea that makes as much sense as steam power in the twenty-first century, or Tomorrow's Patriarchy - it is not that we will not be living in cities in the future, but that we are not living in cities now.

In the nineteenth century the urban population outstripped the rural, at the end of the twentieth century the suburban population outstripped the urban.

Planners have looked at sprawl as a problem. But for many visionaries, from William Morris to Leon Trotsky, the end of the antagonism between town and country was something to be looked forward to. It still is.

Beyond Town and Country

More to follow shortly...

What priorities do we want reflected in land use planning?

Has the notion of a distinct town and country become unsustainable?

Can planners reconcile government policies with where and how people actually want to live?

Is it justified to describe policies based on constraining building activity as "planning"?

Introduction

James Heartfield

With a foreword by Robert Bruegmann

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