'...a fairer and nobler City' - Lutyens and Abercrombie's Plan for the City of Hull 1945

• Published in: Planning perspectives Vol. 13; no. 3; pp. 301 - 316
• Main Author: Jones, Philip N.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis 01-01-1998
• ISSN: 0266-5433; 1466-4518
• DOI: 10.1080/026654398364464

The plan produced by Lutyens and Abercrombie in 1944 for the city of Kingston upon Hull is perhaps the least known of a celebrated series of wartime plans for the reconstruction of provincial cities, such as Plymouth and Coventry, despite the contemporary fame of its authors. The paper seeks to remedy this deficiency. It outlines the Plan's key proposals, describes their formative influences and looks at their relationship to developments in planning during that period. The paper analyses the Plan from the perspectives of both general planning principles and those aspects which were very specific to Hull itself. It identifies a number of imaginative proposals, particularly in the fields of integrated traffic and neighbourhood planning, and the remodelling of the city centre. The paper concludes that the Hull Plan, whilst containing features which would not find acceptance now, deserves wider recognition.