Lichfield leaves a legacy of economics in plan methods

Planning, 13 March 2009

With the death of former RTPI president Professor Nathaniel Lichfield two weeks ago, the planning profession has lost one of its visionary thinkers and practitioners.

Lichfield was the first recipient of the RTPI's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004, acknowledging an exceptional professional recognised as a pioneer in the field of planning and development economics. He was elected an RTPI member in 1943 and a fellow in 1956, and became president in 1966.

His concept of community impact evaluation has become part of the culture. He integrated practice and academia, earning the title of a reflective practitioner, and gained international recognition through acting as a consultant on all continents. In all his work he sought to bring a sense of social responsibility.

After initially working at consultancy Davidge's, Lichfield moved to local then central government. At the Ministry of Housing and Local Government in the 1950s, planning was the domain of chartered RTPI members alongside engineers, architects and surveyors. He was one of a small group that argued for broadening the outlook to cover all aspects of urban change, bringing the economic and social professions into the planning realm and creating dialogue with the private sector.

Leaving the ministry, he then pursued a career that combined academic work with consultancy practice. He founded Nathaniel Lichfield and Partners in 1962 and 30 years later he and his wife Dalia set up Lichfield Planning, which combines consultancy with the development of planning methods.

His PhD thesis, published in 1956 as Economics of Planned Development, aroused much interest in the UK and the USA. In 1966, he was offered a specially created chair at University College London (UCL) on the economics of environmental planning.

Subsequent books revisited his thesis subject and emphasised his concern with the distribution of benefits and costs among different groups. Community impact evaluation, with its focus on the effects of proposed changes on the people involved, has left its mark on acknowledged methods of transport planning and environmental assessment. He recognised the resource value embedded in land and how it can repay society for the costs incurred by development.

Many generations of town planners worldwide have been trained and influenced by Lichfield's books, his teaching at UCL and in universities in Israel, Italy and the USA and his consultancy.

Robert Upton is RTPI secretary-general.