The form and function of cities has long been the subject of intense academic, political and public debate. Set within a wider British and international context of post-war reconstruction, this book focuses on such debates and experiences in two major English cities as they recovered from Second World War bombing and post-war industrial collapse. Between the slum clearances of the early-mid twentieth century and the more recent debates about rebuilding post-industrial cities for a sustainable future, the ambitions to regenerate Birmingham and Coventry have intensified, and the potential impacts on urban form and function, and on the lives of residents and users, have changed substantially. This book explores the initial development of the city-centre post-Second World War reconstruction projects which so substantially changed the face of the cities and provided radical new identities. Some of these projects are now subject to professional and public critique; indeed, some have already been demolished. In spite of more recent purportedly collaborative partnership and communicative planning approaches, the book finds strong connections between the language used to describe elements of the city centres in the early to mid-twentieth century as dilapidated and dysfunctional, and the language more recently used to describe the replacement urban spaces as insalubrious, congested and over-crowded. Exploring these cities throughout the post-war period brings into sharp focus the duality of contemporary approaches to regeneration, which often criticise mid-twentieth century ’poorly-conceived’ planning and architectural projects for producing inhuman and unsympathetic schemes, while proposing exactly the type of large-scale regeneration that may potentially create similar issues in the future. By drawing on a wide and diverse range of source material - including archival and ’official’ documentation, newspaper, filmic representations and ’unofficial’ loca
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