Elizabeth Buchanan Mitchell

Elizabeth Mitchell was a pioneering planner who advocated for green spaces, children’s play, quality mass-housing and the importance of creating places where communities could flourish.

Her belief in the the positive impact of open, green spaces on quality of life was founded at the University of Oxford where she joined the Garden Cities Association (later to become the Town and Country Planning Association).

On leaving university she settled in Biggar and when World War One broke out soon after, she became involved with the Lanarkshire Women’s Agricultural Committee. Mitchell’s interest in the vital work that women carried out to ensure food production was maintained during the war carried on afterwards through her involvement with the Women’s Rural Institutes.

She immersed herself in local causes, sat on many committees for women’s issues and adult education and was a Biggar Town Councillor for almost 20 years. In 1924, she became the first woman in Lanarkshire to to stand as a candidate in a general election.

Mitchell was strongly committed to the concept of New Towns as a means of improving the lives of those trapped in urban poverty through creating new communities equipped with housing, industry and social facilities. As a member of the East Kilbride Development Corporation she was able to influence the planning of Scotland’s first New Town.

Her energy, vision and ability to work effectively within committees enabled Mitchell to have a significant impact on the lives of many people as part of Scotland’s massive postwar reconstruction drive.