The Lower Precinct and Market at Coventry were built as part of the redevelopment of the city after extensive wartime bombing. Together with the other parts of the shopping precinct they form one of the most famous pedestrianised shopping schemes of their period. When newly built they were cited, along with Basil Spence's Coventry Cathedral, as symbols of the heroic spirit of post-war Britain.

Coventry had been a boom town in the inter-war period, and well before the outbreak of war it had been realised that major improvements were needed in the city centre. The devastating effects of bombing in 1940-41 provided the pretext to accelerate the replanning of the centre, and the pioneering scheme drawn up by the City Architect, Donald Gibson, was accepted by the City Council in 1941. In that scheme were the essential elements of the development as seen today, especially the Upper and Lower Shopping Precincts, and a new Retail Market (though not yet circular in shape); but at first it was assumed that Market Way would remain a normal street with traffic.

The realisation of the Gibson plan was greatly helped by the powers of compulsory purchase granted to the City Council under the 1944 Planning Act, but even with those powers it took almost twenty years to complete. In particular, it was decided in 1955 to make Market Way a pedestrian street, thus creating a precinct with two main axes. At about the same time the design of the Retail Market took on its circular form, an ideal shape for public access and for ensuring that all of the 160 stallholders had an equal pitch. During the early 1950's there also seems to have been an increased awareness of the need to provide city centre car parking - hence the 200 parking spaces on the roof of the market, and the car parks in the adjacent areas.

The overall sequence of redevelopment was as follows:

All of these elements survive today, although the Upper Precinct has been considerably affected by the construction of the West Orchards Shopping Centre, and the glazed escalator connection to it, and the view from the two precincts to the burnt-out medieval cathedral has been obscured by the new Cathedral Lanes Shopping Centre.

The inspiration for the Upper and Lower Precincts seems to have had two sources - on the one hand the growing interest between the wars in the segregation of people and vehicles, and on the other hand a much older pedigree, the two-level shopping rows in Chester. It was the unification of those two ideas that so excited commentators such as Lewis Mumford and Nikolaus Pevsner. As for the circular shape of the Retail Market, apart from its practical advantages, this may have been inspired by the famous Dome of Discovery at the Festival of Britain. Even if that was not so, it certainly reflects the 1950's enthusiasm for strong primary shapes.