Post‐war redevelopment and conservation in Britain: Ideal and reality in the historic core of Worcester

This paper examines aspects of post‐war planning in an English ‘tourist‐historic’ city centre, Worcester, and in particular the changing attitudes towards conservation of the built fabric. This is shown changing from the first, idealistic, post‐war plan which proposed much comprehensive redevelopment, to the local planning authority's treatment of individual development proposals into the late 1980s, for which much evidence exists in planning application files. The rate and nature of urban landscape change are discussed, and implications for conservation planning are drawn.