Development of the English Town (1942-43)

[@peacockpaula4723]

What a lovely and thoughtful way of planning, building and living in harmony in a such a beautiful and well designed environment. A pleasure to look back at all those years. Very interesting.

[@colinayki2350]

Remarkable wartime film - promising a better tomorrow for the urban dweller. Many thanks for this informative and delightful film

[@mfk5533]

Very interesting film. One can't understand modern Britain - our towns and cities, our housing, our economy, our planning system, and our culture - without grappling with the way people felt about towns and planning in the 1930s and 40s. They created the legal framework and built much of the physical environment in which we live and work today. We live with the consequences of their successes and failures, and we live in the shadow of their opinions, aspirations, and biases.

[@iwasborn8470]

Like wanton boys are to flies, those whom ignore such delightful documentaries such as this shall lose out and join what is becoming an ever-growing penumbra.

[@robinsoncrusoejr7089]

Strictly speaking, it's "those who...", not whom, because in your sentence they are carrying the verb. Apologies for being pedantic!!

[@iwasborn8470]

@@robinsoncrusoejr7089 thank you nonetheless!!!

[@chinnu3388]

Thanks to British Council for providing videos about Britain.🍊🍎🇬🇧

[@kiwitrainguy]

The commentary for this film was spoken by Frank Phillips. I recognised his voice as he also narrated on the film Little and Often which was also made by GB Instructional Films.

[@realjohn4064]

Can't help watching this with a great sense of irony, knowing how wretchedly poor planning would be in the 1960s and 1970s when towns were sacrificed to concrete, king car and social theories borrowed from communism in the work of trendy architects.

[@MrDaiseymay]

In retrospect--planning by commities never works, we ended up with sterile soulless architecture , by those who think they are Frank LLoyd Wright. with concrete tower blocks that were hell on earth. And huge open windswept areas that nobody wants to use. Time is the factor, all those quaint towns EVOLVED and developed slowly, over centuries.

[@MrAlwaysBlue]

This place called England sounds lovely. Where is it?

[@michaylalovesgod9799]

MrAlwaysBlue Jamaica

[@bobjackson4720]

Several parts of the film look like the Welwyn Garden City I remember from the late sixties. A great place to live at that time.

[@iwasborn8470]

I thought the same!

[@thogameskanaal]

I wish we young'uns still knew the value of prosperity, integrity, dignity community, and grace. Helping each other when in need and not endlessly rebelling against each other for so called justice while doing nought for our own local community. Not that this is new and has never occurred before in history, it has. But we're not making it an effort to strengthen bonds and get off that goat daim internet for once.

[@colinayki2350]

Perhaps the key to harmony is to have one of a town's nodal points reserved for church and community centres.

[@trailerman2]

Interesting film.

[@dwho19951]

Imagine if housing on new estates should've been related to factories as in today?

[@Mark.Andrew.Pardoe]

Whato all, Nice to see the Council House in Nottingham and the Old Market Square before it was boggered in the 2000s.

[@peterhunt2723]

Totally agree with you!

[@asianrx8]

who was the city planner in this video??

[@suebradford890]

Alan Cao If you mean the new towns featured near the end, it was Ebenezer Howard. He designed Letchworth Gdn City first, then Welwyn Gdn City in Hertfordshire.

[@iainhughes6637]

Oh my god, how housing has changed now, now they build houses anywhere

[@PeterDad60]

See that hat, over there? The one with the top cut right off? That' hat is for the narrator to talk through as he's certainly talking through his hat! - Peter age 72

[@KulturKampf65]

Dear Aptitude, As far as one can draw conclusions and assess present-day real estate trends in most countries, it's the sort of Corbusian and Rationalist gospel that shook hands with 19th and early 20th century unrigged capitalism the real cause of dull gridiron (or supposedly loose-pattern) plans that have effectively ruined the urban landscape of many an Old-World town. The pursuit of maximum land-occupation led to blind cloning, to the utter oblivion of the benefits of diversity.

[@gloriaking5321]

dont like it, like things as they were, things went rotten when you put townies in country.

[@georgenelson8917]

Don’t blame “communists’ blame money grubbing capitalism

[@howardcarter8221]

communist or capitalist its just everyday need , greed and selfishness left unchecked .