Royal Commission on the Distribution of the Industrial Population Report
London HMSO Cmd 6153 1938
320pp Ownership name of George Whipp on upper wrapper. In 1938 Chamberlain, as the new Prime Minister, assigned a Royal Commission chaired by Sir Anderson Barlow into the urban concentration of population and industry. The resulting report raised the problem of large towns as a public issue for the first time and concluded that 'planned decentralisation' was favourable. However, owing to the outbreak of war in 1939 the Barlow Report, published in 1940. Within the document it reported on the potential of New Towns and Garden Cities as sites for decentralisation and was indeed a turning point in considering post war New Town developments as part of a National Plan for post war reconstruction.