Anti-planning in the 1940s: the paradox of Florence Taylor

Abstract

In her lifetime Florence Taylor was celebrated as an advocate of town planning reform in Australia. Based in Sydney, she trained as an architect but spent most of her long professional life as a publisher and trade journalist, developing strong ties with the building industry. Unified by a strong environmental determinist position, early preoccupations with eradicating slums segued into numerous practical suggestions for improving city efficiency, focusing on urban renewal and traffic planning. Taylor was nonetheless often critical of planning in practice. As a businesswoman, she became antagonistic to planning as an activity of the modern state because of its apparent privileging of the public sector and over-regulation of private enterprise and everyday life. This ideological tension became acute in the 1940s as planning moved from its early foundation in propaganda and voluntary advocacy towards statutory oversight. While Taylor's life and career continued to be celebrated by her professional and social peers into the 1950s, her identification with mainstream town planning declined. This paper explores the contradictions in Florence Taylor's encounters with planning in shifting from advocate to antagonist.

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