The words “town and country planning” conjure images of garden cities and mock Tudor semi-detached houses. Yet planning — and land use specifically — moulds our modern economies. What limits the growth of our most productive cities? Planning. What shapes the environmental footprint of our communities? Planning. What keeps poor children out of middle-income neighbourhoods? Planning.

Despite this, as a new Policy Exchange report makes clear, the English planning system has evolved in a largely haphazard fashion, with little attention to any broader consequences. In 1947, the government first assumed total control over land use in England and then devolved the power to deny new construction to tiny boroughs and towns. Large national policies, like England’s 15 green belts, made vast tracts of land off