The 1970s seems like a different planet. This was the time of the three-day week, the oil crisis, 20% inflation, industrial unrest and mass unemployment. In London unemployment stood at 7.2% and the population had fallen to 7.5m by 1976. As for myself I spent the first half of the decade as a spotty youth in suburban Birmingham doing homework by candlelight during power cuts, and the second half as a snotty punk raging against something, I can’t quite remember what.

Last weekend the London Society kicked off its Saturday Morning Planning School. Each week they will focus on a decade of London’s planning history, starting with Professor John Davis in the 1970s. This was the decade when everything changed, when the optimism and idealism of the post-war planning consensus broke down and became the messy, compromised, endlessly argumentative system that we have today. Davis is a professor of modern history and tries to remain objective, but you can’t help thinking that this was probably not a change for the better.

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