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The Purpose Of These Policies And Institutions Was To Prolong Life And ...

The purpose of these policies and institutions was to prolong life and promote good health throughout the whole population (Meller, 1997 p67).
The increased use of urban and rural planning was not intended to protect the environment in an ecological way, or indeed to promote sustainable architecture, rather it was greatly expanded in scope to make the most rational use of scarce development land. However, there would be measures adopted which would conserve large areas of countryside, and give protection despite the need to re-house millions of families in 1945 (Southall, 2000 p. 336).

There were groups that wished to conserve specific areas that supported rare forms of animal and plant life, and even groups that wished to preserve old historical buildings, as well as buildings distinguished by their architectural styles (Meller, 1997 p67).

When added together such groups did not equate to an ecological lobby that intended to change agricultural, architectural, or industrial practices to protect the environment. These groups however, were able to heavily influence the decision to restrict urbanisation taking over the countryside. Post-war reconstruction was the catalyst for the largest programmes of publicly funded construction in Britain. Public expenditure was needed due to the sheer scale of reconstruction required, with London and the South-East of England being a major beneficiary of those programmes. Architecture and planning were used for these large-scale programmes rather than just for individual buildings. The involvement of central government in the promoting and funding of large-scale public building programmes and the use of development land was high until the early part of the 1970s (Greed, 1996 p. 35).

Such wide-ranging building programmes were not only intended to replace the buildings destroyed during the Second World War. The post-war building programmes were also intended to replace the slums in the inner cities of London, Birmingham, Liverpool, as well as elsewhere. The construction programmes were intended to make the South-East of England a much more hospitable place to live in, just as the rest of Britain was also intended to be like (Sheail, 2002 p. 62). New construction and renovation of existing houses was an imperative, as ‘2 million of them condemned and another 3 million lacking in essentials' (Southall, 2000 p. 337). The South-East of England also benefited from the construction of new towns such as Milton Keynes and Stevenage that were planned as entire towns with purpose built domestic housing and business premises.

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