The TCPA is a London charity, founded in 1899, that campaigns for fair, healthy and sustainable places and for the Garden City principles.
The Town and Country Planning Association, or TCPA, is a UK charity that campaigns for better planning, housing and places. Its areas of work include climate change, community participation and social justice, new towns and garden cities, healthy place-making, and parks and green infrastructure. Its current campaigns include the Campaign for Healthy Homes, Planning Reform, Children and Young People, New Towns and the Sheffield Declaration. It does research, policy work and political campaigning, arranges conferences and study tours, and publishes a monthly journal called Town & Country Planning.
The TCPA was founded in 1899 by Sir Ebenezer Howard, and its own history page calls it the world's longest-surviving charity promoting progressive planning and place-making. Its founding ideas combined social justice, beautiful design, health and wellbeing and economic efficiency. It began as the Garden City Association, then became the Garden Cities and Town Planning Association. It helped found the first Garden Cities at Letchworth and Welwyn and helped secure the first planning legislation in 1909. It says it values beauty in design and the natural environment for people's health, and sees planning as both creative and technical.
The TCPA's own page gives its London office as County Hall, 5th Floor, Belvedere Road, London SE1 7PB. Wikipedia gives a different address, 17 Carlton House Terrace, which is probably older, so we rely on the TCPA's own page. Its work covers the whole UK, and through the Planning Aid for London partnership it supports community involvement in planning. It also took over the Green Infrastructure Partnership in 2014, according to Wikipedia. It marked its 125th anniversary in 2024.
The page names many past thinkers, including Raymond Unwin, Colin Ward, who championed public involvement in planning from the 1960s, and Sir Peter Hall, who defended strategic planning from the 1980s. Fiona Howie and Hugh Ellis are named on Wikipedia as key people, but we could not confirm their current roles. Staff in a campaigning charity do research and policy work, write for the public and government, run events, edit the journal, and manage fundraising and membership. We did not find a description of the internal culture.
For a student, the TCPA is a good example of how planning can be about people's health, homes and fairness, not just maps and rules. If you care about housing, climate or public health, its campaigns show how those topics connect to the places we build. Its website lists its publications and any current vacancies, which we did not check.
Website: www.tcpa.org.uk
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