Conflict between the town and county of Bristol and the liberty of St Augustine's Abbey was largely the consequence of the failure of the county's founding charter of 1373 to recognize the separate existence of the liberty. In 1496 a confrontation between the abbey and the town resulted in an appeal to Council, and the production of The Great White Book, to record the evidence collected for the hearing. This allows both a reconstruction of the 1496 conflict and its precursors, and an interpretation of the Bristol political elite's rhetorical exploitation both of the conflict itself and of its representation.

This paper analyses connections between culture and architecture, and between political ideology and capital planning in a region of China. It poses two crucial questions: first, what were the contrasting architectural expressions between imperial palaces in Shenyang? Second, what were the underlying planning concepts of Shenyang, and what urban design models were used to realize that concept? This study shows that the development of Manchurian architecture and planning had been a result of cultural confluence and political governance.

The paper explores the links between changing transport technology, individual mobility and urban form in the British cities of Manchester and Glasgow in the mid-twentieth century. The variability of individual commuting preferences is stressed, and it is argued that decisions about the provision of public transport rarely took into account the views of individual commuters. It is also suggested that factors governing modal choice have remained quite stable from the 1930s to the 1960s.

Over the past thirty years, one of the fastest growing fields of urban history has been the history of planning. In some respects, this is surprising, as urban planning had existed on an institutional basis only since the early twentieth century. In other ways, though, it was a very logical development. Planning reached its high point during the 1960s, and by the 1970s was being condemned in many quarters, being blamed, for example, for disasters like high-rise tower blocks and sacrificing old cities to crude commercial and transport developments. Historical research was necessary to understand how a movement which promised so much at the start of the century had degenerated so badly in sixty years. Criticism became so severe that, in the words of one historian, ‘many planners have certainly thought in more pessimistic moments . . . that the past may be the only thing they have to look forward to’. For whatever reason, the Planning History Group was set up in 1974 and a massive body of historical research on planning has been produced. This paper reviews four recent books on planning, two from North America and two European. They represent different aspects of planning and different time periods and will be treated in chronological order.