What we're seeing: JR James Archive images of C20 Britain

Cumbernauld Housing, March 1967
Streets in the Sky, Park Hill, Sheffield
Thamesmead
Housing at Fullers Slade, Milton Keynes

An archive of images by influential post-war planner JR James has been made available on Flickr by the Department of Town and Regional Planning at the University of Sheffield. The collection, of over 4,000 images, documents new towns like Harlow, Stevenage and Cumbernauld, and radical housing developments such as Park Hill in Sheffield and Thamesmead, London. James worked on the new towns of Newton Aycliffe and Peterleewas and was chief planner at the Ministry of Housing and Local Government between 1961 and 1967. He went on to become a professor at the University of Sheffield, where the images were used as slides in his lectures. The project to make them public was funded by the University of Sheffield Alumni Fund. To view the collection visit the JR James Archive.

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