Architectures of survival: Air war and urbanism in Britain, 1935-52

Description

Architectures of survival investigates the relationship between air war and urbanism in modern Britain. It asks how the development of airpower and the targeting of cities influenced perceptions of urban spaces and visions of urban futures. An original and innovative work of history, this book brings together a diverse range of source material to highlight the connections between practices of warfare and urbanism in the twentieth century. Moving from the interwar period to the Cold War, this book demonstrates how airpower created a permanent threat to cities. It considers how architects, planners and government officials reframed bombing as an ongoing urban problem, rather than one contingent to a particular conflict, and details how the constant threat of air raids prompted planning for defence and planning for development to become increasingly entangled. It highlights the importance of war and the anticipation of war in modern urban history, and argues that the designation of the city as a target has had long-lasting consequences. Page draws on archival material from local and national government, architectural and town planning journals, and cultural texts, to demonstrate how air war became incorporated into civilian debates about the future of cities and infrastructure, and vulnerability to air raids was projected onto the mundane material culture of everyday urban life. This book will be of particular interest to urban historians, social, cultural and political historians of modern Britain, urban sociologists, architects and planners. It will also interest historians of the Second World War and the Cold War.