The Arndale Property Company and the Transformation of Urban Britain, 1950–2000

Abstract

This article tracks the remarkable role played by a commercial property developer, the Arndale Property Company, in the transformation of urban Britain across the second half of the twentieth century. This was an era of great change in cities, as urban environments were remodeled and urban centers had to adapt to deindustrialization and the rise of a consumer-driven and service-dominated economy. Arndale was at the forefront of these changes, installing dozens of shopping centers in British towns and cities from the 1950s to the 1990s. The company imported American-inspired commercial architectures, furnishing cities with new landscapes of consumption and mass leisure through which the affluent society was encountered and made concrete. Arndale was also a driving force in the growing financialization of urban property development that began in Britain as early as the 1950s and gathered pace as the century wore on. The company's history thus illuminates important shifts in economic activity and cultural life that had far-reaching impacts on British cities and society. It also highlights Arndale's role at the heart of the postwar urban renewal order, showing how far the company's success depended on its status as a favored partner to public planning authorities pursuing town center redevelopment. The centrality of such public-private developmental partnerships, often overlooked, particularly within adjacent urban disciplines, reveals much about the precise contours and political economy of the British postwar settlement.

Review of periodical literature for 2022: (vi) post‐1945

“…On the built environment, Kefford shows how the success of the Arndale Property Company, which developed American‐inspired shopping centres from 1950 to 1990, depended on a privileged relationship with the public sector. Barnes et al., explore the opposition to the destruction of the National Provincial headquarters in the City of London in the mid‐1960s, attributing it in part to a rising conservationist ethos shaped by the devastation of World War II.…”