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The paper transposes aspects of the histography of Fernand Braudel to the exploration of planning. It explores the extent to which different time scales, dominated by a longue durée perspective, reveal different facets of the history of planning and of how it operates. Lesser time scales focus on specific events while long perspectives bring to light durable aspects of planning, such as those relating to its embeddedness within fundamental relations between the state and the market economy. The paper contends that planning history and theory are largely shaped by a middle-scale histography, focussed on the succession of periods in the evolution of planning and on how they mark its progression. It proposes to counterbalance this historical perspective with a long-term historical lens highlighting persistent dimensions of planning, many referring to the fundamentals of its political economy. The paper argues that a full understanding of planning requires a consideration of different historical scales. The object of study is Downtown Toronto planning and development since 1945. A medium time scale identifies three distinct phases in Downtown Toronto history over this period, while a long-term perspective reveals how this district evolved with remarkable consistency into an expanded and diversified downtown during these years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From its inception, the European welfare state was a contract between the state, civic society, and the private sector. And yet, studies on the architecture and urbanism of the European welfare state frequently overlook the role played by the private sector, as the emphasis is commonly placed on governmental action. However, apart from governments also private actors played an important role in shaping the post-war welfare state. New towns in particular were sites of experiment. Here, public–private partnerships forged novel collective spaces, which challenged and redefined what constituted the civic realm. This paper focuses on one such novel type of collective space: the megastructural 'heart' of second-wave British New Towns. Combining mass consumption with administrative and civic functions, thereby blending the concepts of 'shopping centre' and 'city centre', these structures embodied the welfare state's belief that capitalism could neither live with nor without the existence of a pervasive welfare system (and vice versa). Through the analysis of three megastructures, this paper highlights the important role that private actors played in the formation of the post-war British welfare state; it explicates the lofty societal ambitions that these New Town schemes expressed; and it pinpoints the precariousness of public–private partnerships in the development of urban megastructures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Calcutta Improvement Trust was set up in 1911 well after the plague scare of 1896, which indicated that there were many overlapping concerns that could not be immediately resolved. The autonomous nature of the Trust indicated that the colonial government distrusted Indians in the elected municipality. But state intervention also brought into focus the question of funding improvements pitching imperial and local governments against each other. The theme of the unhygienic Indian body was prominent among the non-official Europeans in the city and built a consensus for authoritarian reform linking the regulation of spaces to the regulation of bodies in the discourse about Calcutta's planning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]