Property Companies and the Construction Industry in Britain

Notes:

Scholarly work based on doctoral thesis for which see H Smyth, 'Historical Growth of Property Companies and the Construction Industry in Britain between 1939 and 1979', 1985. - 'an edited version of the thesis'. Focuses on property developers and construction companies as agents in the creation of the built environment, an area hitherto neglected by planners, geographers, urban economists. In a combined theoretical and empirical account seeks answers to two main questions - 1] how production and control of the built environment relate to the performance of the economy as a whole and 2] how the construction and property sectors, both with distinctive characteristics, relate to the economy. Chapters are: 'Theories of crisis'; 'Rents and property development'; 'Construction and contracting'; 'Construction and the state during the Second World War'; 'The reconstruction period' - ie post 1945; 'Development and construction during prosperity' - c1960s; 'First phase of crisis' - 1970s. Includes much analysis of businesses such as Costain; John Laing; Sir Robert McAlpine; Taylor Woodrow; Wimpey; Hammerson; Land Securities;and others