Revisiting Abercrombie’s ‘The Preservation of Rural England’ one hundred years on

Exactly 100 years ago, Town Planning Review published Abercrombie’s seminal paper on planning for rural places – ‘The Preservation of Rural England’. To mark the centenary of its publication, in this commentary we revisit Abercrombie’s work on rural planning. In doing so, we hope to reflect on the significance of Abercrombie’s ideas while contributing to contemporary rural planning debates. This commentary focuses on three dimensions: 1) Abercrombie’s analysis of the rural condition at the start of the twentieth century; 2) Abercrombie’s thoughts on rural planning practice, skills and knowledge; and 3) the limitations of geography and policy transfer.