'The city of our dreams'? The political and economic realities of rebuilding Britain's blitzed cities, 1945-54.

This essay examines the political and economic factors affecting the rebuilding of Britain's provincial blitzed cities following the Second World War. Historians of planning have been prolific in their research on this period, but only from the perspective of planning visions and their reality, not the detailed steps that had to be followed towards implementation. This essay argues that, beyond the exigencies of an austere economic situation, both the Investment Programmes Committee--a Cabinet-level committee--and the planning legislation in the 1940s deeply affected the progress of rebuilding. Cities had to deal with constraints both obvious and hidden. After the Second World War, Britons lived in a world built not only by the visions of architects and planners, but also by developers, builders, and the desires of local authorities all working within a national political and economic framework.