This book grew in part from articles that Sharp had undertaken on the evolution of the English town for the Architectural Review. Published by J.M. Dent; it was subsequently republished by them in 1938 as part of the 'Aldine Library', 'a careful selection of books that have some claim to permanence'. A second edition was published by the Architectural Press in 1950 (see separate entry).
In part this book was an elaboration on themes from Town and Countryside. The starting point was that a crowning English achievement (and to a lesser extent Scottish and Welsh) was the unparalleled and deliberately planned, though threatened, beauty of much of the countryside. This was contrasted with the often squalid nature of the town. The book presented itself as an investigation of how this state of affairs came to be. A lucid and entertaining text, many of its assertions would now be challenged by historians. It is often a propaganda text for the English Renaissance and Enlightenment; as well as contributing the planned and beautiful countryside this period was seen to be responsible for most of the civilised urbanity and easy formality existing in towns. Sharp stressed the idea of the street; with the Renaissance 'They discovered the Street. With wonder and surprise they saw that the street was not merely a necessary hole in the town. It was the town itself' (p.33). In turn he discussed the achievements of the London square, the modest urbanity introduced into countless small towns, resorts such as Bath, Buxton, Cheltenham and Brighton and the seemingly unique case of Edinburgh New Town; as a town extension scheme sponsored and undertaken by civic authority. All this was achieved through collective values; subordinating individual whims and sometimes profits to collective rules of conduct. Furthermore, these were not the autocratic grand plans characterised by some European countries but essentially democratic; 'a genuine tradition arising naturally out of the lives and customs of the people, not being thrust upon them' (p.40).
Sharp did acknowledge the social consequences of such Enlightenment improvements. The greatest of all achievements, in the countryside, was enabled by the enclosure of land; 'The inclosures... were carried through at the expense of a crying injustice to the poor, and they were carried through not only for the aesthetic satisfaction but for the enormous financial benefit of the richer classes' (p.54). Though the injustices in the town were perhaps less vivid, the civilising influences of the period were only available to the upper strata of society.
Ultimately this was 'the golden age of landscape and civic design in England' (p.54). The contribution of other historical periods was judged much more harshly. Sharp acknowledged that planning went into the formation of medieval towns, especially in the Thirteenth Century, but he saw this as confined to street patterns; 'the buildings that were applied to it showed no more recognition of the street than it was a necessary passage way between houses' (p.29). Though he acknowledged that the crowding of the medieval city had often been exaggerated, for Sharp, at this time, the overall impression of the medieval town was one of chaos and squalor.
What came after the Enlightenment period was worse still. Some positive contributions were noted; the model settlements of Robert Owen and Titus Salt were accorded faint praise as was the theoretical creation of James Silk Buckingham. Sharp also acknowledged the sanitation improvements of the late-Nineteenth Century, but this was at the cost of 'all-pervading dullness' (p.68); the bye-law street being the degradation of the street, 'a row of mean featureless cells that were closely associated for no other reason than that economy demanded it' (p.69). More vicious, though, was Sharp's assault on romanticism and, again, the Garden City movement. This led to the death of the street in another way, through individualism and building separation. He noted, not approvingly, Ruskin's hyperbole on destroying Edinburgh New Town. Howard was assaulted perhaps to an even greater degree than in Town and Countryside; in describing the Three Magnets he stated 'It was on pseudophilosophical foundations like this that the New Jerusalems were builded. The acceptance of such romanticism may perhaps be regarded as an indication of the desperate condition to which sociologists had been reduced...' (pp.78-79). Even the credit previously afforded for limiting settlement size was now traced back to Buckingham.
The incorporation of garden city ideas in planning orthodoxies led to 'universal suburbia', as development wasn't restricted to new contained settlements but sprawled across the countryside, 'vague, wasteful, formless, incoherent, it slobbers over the counties' (p.86). Meanwhile, the remaining countryside was held to live on, albeit neglected, and the centre of the town was often 'a hideous Babel of individualism' which 'invades and destroys unities which even the Victorians left unharmed' (p.92), instancing Regent Street, the Adelphi and Carlton House Terrace. Whilst it is often easy to sympathise with Sharp's outrage it should also be noted that in amongst this discussion was some chauvinist nonsense ascribing 'a good deal of the responsibility for the sham antique and meretriciously decorative in modern building' (p.83) to 'the New Woman', and ''Woman is by nature far more individualistic than man: she has a sense of property and a desire to display it.... that is far more highly developed than his: she is at once more conservative and more open to the appeal of small novelty: aesthetically she has few or none of the makings of a citizen' (pp.83-84) and so on.
In looking to the future Sharp stated that the first need was to re-learn to like the town. Towns should, however, allow access to the country and therefore satellite towns that are 'reasonably-sized sheerly-urban compact town[s]' (p.103) should be built. Towns should be organised on the basis of units necessary for social structure (in Chronicles of Failure Sharp claims here to effectively invent the concept of 'neighbourhood unit'). It was a distinctly modernist vision, an expression of modern society and architectural forms. Yet this was not a city of towers but one organised around a re-formulation of the Street. Real comprehensive planning would be vital.
The countryside would also change. As well as inevitable changes in agricultural practice it would need to be utilised more for recreation by town dwellers. New villages would be needed but again these should be formulated along modern planned lines; 'Except in certain special districts there will be little consideration given to that modern panacea of country-preservationists - the use of 'local materials'. Nor will there, we may hope, be any attempt made to develop a 'country style' (p.115). There was also discussion of replacing redundant country houses with blocks of flats and sustaining the parkland around.