My paper contains no theoretical aspects of physical planning; it merely recounts the progress that is being made in Great Britain in the pursuit of adequate legal and administrative measures to make physical planning a purposeful reality. The principles upon which the statutory instruments of planning have been devised are startlingly different today from the vague and somewhat superficial considerations which underlay the first planning measures enacted in 1909. In that year the purpose of planning was understood to be the preservation of amenity by regulatory control; today, planning is recognized in Great Britain to be one of the main functions of the internal affairs of government whereby the integration of public and private enterprise is to be achieved so as to insure an ordered and balanced national development. Planning is accepted as the matrix of national endeavour; as an instrument whereby positive development in the national interest may be assured.

Of the 38 million acres of land in England and Wales, about 27 million acres were embraced by planning schemes at the outbreak of the war. The schemes ranged from proposals for the safeguarding of great stretches of moorland in the interests of the preservation of natural beauty, to plans for the redevelopment of small areas of urban decay; and varied, too, from proposals of a purely advisory nature to statutory schemes operating under the planning law of the country. The operative schemes covered an area of a little over a million acres.