Abercrombie, Sir (Leslie) Patrick (1879–1957). Influential British architect and town-planner. He worked at the University of Liverpool (1907–9) under ( Sir) C. H.
Reilly and S. D.
Adshead, edited the
Town Planning Review, and produced a series of reports on the growth and condition of several European cities. After Adshead was appointed to the Chair of Town Planning at University College London, Abercrombie became Professor of Civic Design at Liverpool in 1915, a post he held until 1935, when he succeeded Adshead in London. During those twenty years Abercrombie produced a multitude of studies and reports on many areas in England and Wales, and, during his Presidency of the Town Planning Institute, published
The Preservation of Rural England (1926) which led to the formation of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England (CPRE). He championed the idea of a Green Belt around London, and contributed to the Royal Commission on the Distribution of the Industrial Population, the report of which (
Barlow Report) appeared in 1940. Abercrombie, in association with John Henry Forshaw (1895–1973), was appointed to prepare a plan for post-war rebuilding in the County of London, and was also given the task of planning the whole area around the County. The results were the
County of London Plan (1943) and the
Greater London Plan (1944) which provided the basic skeleton of post-war development policies, including the
New Towns programme, from 1946. Abercrombie became an internationally acclaimed figure in town and regional planning: many of his former students rose to positions of authority.
Bibliography
Quarterly Abercrombie (1926, 1933, 1959);
G. Cherry (ed.) (1981);
Stephenson & and Pool (1944)
