Obituary: Nathaniel Lichfield - The Jewish Chronicle

A huge influence on urban development both in Britain and Israel, Professor Nathaniel Lichfield created a broad culture incorporating previously neglected social aspects of planning.

His concern was deeply rooted in his East End childhood — he grew up among people striving for social justice and environmental improvement.

The son of Hyman and Fanny Lichman, market-trader immigrants from Poland, he attended Raines Foundation School. His eyesight was so poor that at seven he had to sit on the front bench and write with chalk on board, avoiding books and strenuous sport.

Despite the handicap, he won the school’s top academic and sporting prizes at 13. But at 16 he contracted TB , which required three years’ treatment.

At 20 he took part in the “battle of Cable Street”, blocking Mosley’s fascist parade, but poor health disqualified him from Second World War service.

His parents had found him a “non-stressful” job with an estate agent. But he got bored and took on full-time work with town planning consultants Davidge and Partners, and evening classes in estate management.

He moved to local government engineering and planning, then worked at the Ministry of Town and Country Planning and the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. These departments were dominated by engineers, architects and surveyors with a focus on physical construction.

Nat — as he was known — saw things differently. He mixed with progressive civil servants, academics and developers to discuss ideas for rebuilding blitzed Britain. His intellectual curiosity about the costs and benefits of major building projects to different sections of society led to his doctoral thesis at University College London.

It was published in 1956 as Economics of Planned Development, before he got his PhD. It was the first of eight books outlining his thinking on inter-related facets of development planning. His last book, Community Impact Evaluation, came out in 1996. His early radical ideas are now part of planning culture.

As one of the rare holders of a PhD in town planning, he was invited on an exchange visit by the US government. A second visit led to the offer of a chair at Berkeley University of California.

But with his wife, Rachel née Goulden, practising as a London GP, he declined and took UCL’s offer in 1966 to make him the first ever professor of the economics of environmental planning. He was also involved in planning Milton Keynes new town and the regeneration of Peterborough.

In 1968 he was invited to Tel Aviv, as an external authority, to advise the Israel Ministry of Housing on improving the development towns for new immigrants. He proposed making them viable through shared services and economic opportunities.

Although he had visited Netanya in 1950 on an offer to be its city planner — but was deterred after nearly drowning in a dangerous coastal current -— no one realised he was Jewish until an official escorting him to the newly reunified Jerusalem reported that he wept in front of the Western Wall.

While in Israel, he was contacted by Jerusalem’s mayor, Teddy Kollek, who was caught between radical schemes to cut through the city with new highways and the international outcry against destroying a historic heritage.

Professor Lichfield proposed integrating investment and improvement, especially in transport, to encourage growth and modernisation while maintaining the city’s neighbourhood basis and discouraging high-rise building.

Returning to his academic and professional workload in Britain, in 1970 he married Dalia Kadury following the death of his first wife two years earlier.

He met Dalia, a trained architect and planning adviser to the Israel Ministry of Housing, when she arranged his meetings in Tel Aviv. She joined his consultancy and they commuted between London and Jerusalem.

In 1980 they returned to Israel professionally to head “Project Renewal” for Ashkelon, the town adopted by the Joint Israel Appeal as part of Israel-diaspora engagement.

JIA leaders felt that physical regeneration alone was not enough and asked the Lichfields to prepare a fully integrated plan. Its success lifted the town over two decades from deprivation and despair to a thriving centre.

In the 1990s the couple was asked by Israel’s Ministry of the Interior to help update planning legislation, which was still based on the rigid British mandate system introduced in 1936.

Nat Lichfield continued to combine practical commissions with his academic work as emeritus professor, starting up a new consultancy with his wife and other partners in 1991.

He was a visiting professor in Israel and the US. In 2002 he was awarded a DSc by UCL and in 2004 received a lifetime achievement award from the Royal Town Planning Institute, of which he was president in 1966.

He is survived by his wife and their son and daughter, two daughters from his first marriage, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.