An urban history of modern Britain, and how the built environment shaped the nation's politicsFoundations is a history of twentieth-century Britain told through the rise, fall, and reinvention of six different types of urban space: the industrial estate, shopping precinct, council estate, private flats, shopping mall, and suburban office park.

"This book is a history of the British built environment from the late nineteenth century to the present. Unlike other urban histories of Britain, the book shows how the city helped produce rather than merely reflect the major intellectual and ideological currents that transformed its recent history. Each chapter of the book tells the story of a different type of urban space in Britain. The first part of the book traces the emergence of the industrial trading estate, the shopping center and the council estate. The second part shows how these three forms mutated into the private block of flats, the out-of-town shopping mall and the suburban office park. The story of these six forms touches on histories of criminology, histories of energy and heating, histories of consumerism and the history of housework and takes the reader to almost every major British city as well as to the United States, Singapore and the Britain's Empire in West Africa. Urban history in Britain has been dormant for too long and its hoped that this book will reignite the field. As the author explains, Foundations will be the first, comprehensive and academic history of Britain's modern built environment and thus will have a large and enduring readership both within and outside the academy"--

"An excellent book. It is deeply researched, thoughtfully argued, and beautifully written."---Erika Hanna, American Historical Review