[audiobook] John Wesley: A Plain Account of Christian Perfection by John Wesley at Arts-Photography

Description

Peter Hall and Colin Ward wrote Sociable Cities to celebrate the centenary of publication of Ebenezer Howardrsquo;s To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform in 1998 ndash; an event they then marked by co-editing (with Dennis Hardy) the magnificent annotated facsimile edition of Howardrsquo;s original; long lost and very scarce; in 2003. In this revised edition of Sociable Cities; sadly now without Colin Ward; Peter Hall writes: lsquo;the sixteen years separating the two editions of this book seem almost like geological time. Revisiting the 1998 edition is like going back deep into ancient historyrsquo;. The glad confident morning following Tony Blairrsquo;s election has been followed by political disillusionment; the fiscal crash; widespread austerity and a marked anti-planning stance on the part of the Coalition government.But ndash; closely following the argument of Good Cities; Better Lives: How Europe discovered the Lost Art of Urbanism (Routledge 2013); to which this book is designed as a companion ndash; Hall argues that the central message is now even stronger: we need more planning; not less. And this planning needs to be driven by broad; high-level strategic visions ndash; national; regional ndash; of the kind of country we want to see. Above all; Hall shows in the concluding chapters; Britainrsquo;s escalating housing crisis can be resolved only by a massive programme of planned decentralization from London; at least equal in scale to the great Abercrombie plan seventy years ago. He sets out a picture of great new city clusters at the periphery of South East England; sustainably self-sufficient in their daily patterns of living and working; but linked to the capital by new high-speed rail services.This is a book that every planner; and every serious student of policy-making; will want to read. Published at a time when the political parties are preparing their policy manifestos; it is designed to make a major contribution to a major national debate.