Nathaniel Lichfield (29 February 1916 – 27 February 2009) was a British urban and environmental planner who played a key role in the development of the 1960s new towns. In 1962 he founded the planning consultancy, Nathaniel Lichfield Associates (now Lichfields). His contributions extended over more than 60 years, continuing long after his retirement from University College London (UCL) in 1978. He was recognised by the Royal Town Planning Institute with a lifetime achievement award in 2004. Biography Nathaniel Lichfield was born to Jewish immigrants from Poland, Hyman Lichman and Fanny (née Grecht), in the East End of London. The family home was shared with relatives where no English was spoken. He suffered from poor eyesight forcing him to sit at the front bench at school and he was advised to avoid reading books. Despite this he ignored medical advice and at the age of 13 he won the top academic prize and the Victor Ludorum cup at the Raine's Foundation School, in Bethnal Green, East London. Lichfield suffered from tuberculosis and this forced him to leave school. Two years of recuperation were required before he took a job in a local estate agency where strenuous work that would aggravate his condition was unnecessary. He found the work intellectually unchallenging and left for a full-time job with Davidge and Partners, a town-planning consultancy. During this period he also took evening classes in estate management. He later studied for a BSc degree in the subject and subsequently received a fellowship at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. In the 1930s he became deeply involved with the socialist and anti-fascist movement in the East End. He participated in the Battle of Cable Street against Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts in October 1936. Poor health however prevented him from joining the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War and from undertaking military service in the WWII. His pioneerings PhD thesis and subsequently the book based on it, The Economics of Planned Development (1956), was a study of the economic evaluation of planning projects. This formed the foundation for his subsequent work on social cost-benefit analysis. This breakthrough work came before the first applications of cost-benefit to transport planning in the late 1950s and early 1960s and therefore made him a leading presence in this field. Lichfield was also involved in local government, working in municipal engineering and planning. From there he moved to central government