Non-Plan Revisited: or the Real Way Cities Grow.

Thirty years ago, 'Non-Plan: An Experiment in Freedom' was published as a special issue of New Society, the weekly magazine of social enquiry. It was a collaboration between the urban geographer Peter Hall, the design and architecture historian Reyner Banham, the architect Cedric Price, and Paul Barker, the magazine's Editor, It attacked the perverse and often futile effect of attempts to impose criteria of urban form and aesthetic design from above. Its own approach to popular choice was social-anthropological. Published three years before Learning from Las Vegas, Non-Plan was highly controversial, but it has had a continuing influence. The paper examines how the concept arose, and spells out some of its consequences, both ideological and practical. Two case-studies, of North London inter-war suburbia and of a shopping mall and its surroundings, are used to illustrate Non-Plan in the recent past and the present. It is acknowledged that Non-Plan is inextricably associated with a very popular but often criticized design form, suburbia. But the case is put for an essentially humble approach to design: people's own choices should be respected. Present-day planning and design dogmas may be no wiser than those of the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]