A tale of two cities: Sheffield and Nottingham architecture and the provincial city in inter-war Britain

A massive house-building programme in the inter-war years, and associated buildings for the community, transformed the physical face of British provincial cities. At the same time, a national programme of civic architecture did much to change our city centres. The outcome was an impressive range of buildings which reflected exactly the surprisingly eclectic tastes of their now largely-forgotten provincial architects, but which collectively presented an urban vision based upon well-established models. This study of Sheffield and Nottingham assesses the effectiveness of that vision in sustaining these provincial cities into the next millennium.