The focus of this book is on the Scottish Borders and how the process and practice of town and country planning emerged from being a fringe activity of local government in the 1950s to become the driving force for change in the 1980s and 1990s. During the period 1946–1996, the subject of this book, this peripheral rural region was transformed from a quiet planning backwater, largely overlooked by central government, to become a beacon for rural regeneration, at the forefront of the development of rural development policy in Scotland.

The book provides a comprehensive appraisal of the changing role of town and country planning within a unique area of Scotland over a period of fifty years, examining continuity and change in policies and proposals for land use and development. It explores the relationship between planning and economic development in stimulating growth within a rural region of Scotland. It illustrates how town and country planning in the Scottish Borders developed from a simple land use control mechanism to a proactive, multi-disciplinary activity. The book is based on primary sources, including agenda, papers and minutes of the four original county planning authorities and the Borders Regional Council, official publications and the personal accounts of staff. It draws on the author's expert knowledge of town and country planning in Scotland at both central and local government level.

The book combines scholarly analysis with a practitioner's perspective on the journey that town and country planning has taken in the Scottish Borders over a period of fifty years from its origins in the 1940s. The book has been written not by an academic researcher but by someone who has fifty years’ experience working in both central and local government in Scotland. With an honours degree in geography, a postgraduate diploma in town planning and five years town planning experience at Doncaster CBC, I joined the Scottish Development Department in 1969 to assist in the preparation of government guidance on the new structure and local plan system introduced by the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1969.