'Bogged down in Housing': Politics and Planning in Residential Leeds, 1954-1979

This thesis addresses several themes relating to politics and planning processes and their effect on residential areas of post-war Leeds. As such, it examines the extent to which Leeds’ political leadership and council bureaucracy were pursuing a ‘modernisation project’ in the post-war period, asks if policy changed from an ambitious attempt to reshape Leeds’ residential environment to the aim of managing selected ‘problem’ areas, and questions whether popular organisations were concerned mainly with defending ‘traditional’ communities and ways of life, or if they had a more positive aim of achieving greater control over the built environment. In relation to this, it considers how much the council bureaucrats, local politicians and community groups were constrained by political, economic, organisational and technical issues. Ultimately, one of the central features of this thesis is how housing issues in Leeds went from a relatively consensual political approach with extensive technocratic guidance and little popular involvement, to a situation by the end of the 1970s where numerous grass-roots organisations were demanding a say in housing policy, party-political divisions were an increased feature and the council had become more exasperated at the resources, guidance and management it was receiving from central government. This is linked to concepts of ‘collective consumption’ and the relationships between citizens and the state, producing conclusions that suggest that an inability to achieve broader political influence over changes to the residential environment effectively encouraged a retreat to the pursuit of more individual solutions and the frustration of collective aims.