New Towns revisited: Opportunities for the new communities of tomorrow

The history of new towns echoes from the Garden City movement of the 19th-century to a new generation of settlements promised by today’s Labour government. What can this history tell us about how to go about building such complex and ambitious town planning projects today?

As one of the many young people struggling to afford a place of my own to call home, the prospect of new towns is exciting. Will they be ambitious and seek to provide the next generation with the opportunity to live in a thriving new community, with people and the planet at their heart?

The 20th Century New Towns programme was the most ambitious act of town planning the UK has ever undertaken. The roots of the post-war new towns can be traced back further to the Garden City movement and the British utopian tradition, which dealt with complex political issues, such as land reform and democracy, through the illustration of ideal places. It was in this tradition that the idea of the garden city came about.

The garden city concept was first set out by Ebenezer Howard in his seminal book Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform. In his book, Howard outlined his vision for a social city that drew together the benefits of town and country life, financed through the capture of land value uplift which would then be reinvested back into the community.

The New Towns programme emerged from these traditions in the post-war period, when Britain faced a complex socioeconomic situation, including large expanses of poor-quality and bomb-damaged housing.

The new towns were part of Clement Attlee’s vision for the reconstruction of post-war Britain. Development corporations were the cornerstone for the delivery of new towns, with their plan-making, development management and ownership powers making them an effective delivery mechanism.

Due to changes in political consensus and the growing prominence of the neoliberal agenda in the 1980s, the new town development corporations were prematurely wound up and their assets sold off to the private sector or transferred to local authorities. For many local authorities, the assets they were given (including green infrastructure) became liabilities as they did not have adequate funding to maintain them.

Reflections from new town residents, such as Kathleen Baker from Stevenage, show the fondness with which those living in the new towns held their experience: “Despite mistakes, I feel that new town life presents a way of living that, with a little effort, can be friendly, pleasant, and beneficial, and I like to think that my own years in a new town are some of the happiest I have known.”

21st-century new towns

Much like the post-war new towns, the next generation of new towns is taking shape in a complex and challenging environment marred by a plethora of crises, from the rising cost of living to the ecological emergency. The planning and delivery of new towns is arguably the most explicit form of town planning any government can undertake.

Despite this, the current Labour government has positioned planning as a barrier to housing delivery and, subsequently, to its aim of delivering GDP growth. Yet, as the Town and Country Planning Association’s (TCPA)

White Paper articulated, the planning sector is not the source of the slow delivery of housing. This problem has arisen due to decades of under-provision of socially rented homes, combined with the economic model of volume housebuilders, which means housebuilding is not keeping pace with planning consents.

The proposed next generation of new towns sits within a broader picture of planning reform being undertaken by the Labour government, from the revised National Planning Policy Framework to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. The bill offers the exciting prospect of the resurrection of regional planning in England, which could signal a more joined-up and strategic approach to large-scale housing and infrastructure delivery. Yet more could still be done to tackle climate change and further embed community participation and democracy into the English planning system.

The new town opportunity

The delivery of a future generation of new towns offers a unique opportunity to create housing that exemplifies best practices in the 21st century. Britain has over 125 years of learning around the delivery of new communities from which this next generation of new towns must draw.

The new towns offer a chance to be ambitious and world-leading in considering what a new community should look and feel like in the present day. New towns and housing delivery are much more than a mechanism for GDP growth. They are about enabling people to live thriving lives in a healthy and prosperous neighbourhood. They are about making people’s lives easier, healthier, and more joyful.

As argued by feminist geographer Jane Darke: ”Any settlement is an inscription in space of the social relations in the society that built it.”¹⁰ What do we want the next generations of new town residents to say about us?

What should a new town include, and how should we build them?

Labour’s proposed new towns are anticipated to be a mixture of standalone communities and extensions to existing settlements. In either case, existing residents will need to be consulted and proactively engaged with. New developments can be an opportunity to provide existing communities with new or improved services and infrastructure, as exemplified by the development at Whitehill and Bordon, which provided new greenspace for all residents.

The government’s policy statement also indicates that any proposed new towns will comprise a minimum of 10,000 homes. The use of development corporations is essential to effectively deliver this size of community. The TCPA has long argued for the modernisation of development corporations, and there are provisions in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill that support this.

However, modernised development corporations must do more to engage with both the existing and new residents of new towns. While not a new town development corporation, there is much that can be learned from Ebbsfleet Development Corporation’s approach to civic engagement.

Both the Labour government and the New Towns Taskforce (NTT) have said that the new towns will be “exemplary developments”.

The (NTT) sets out ten high-level principles for what a new town should include: incorporating healthy and safe communities, long-term stewardship, well-connectedness and environmental sustainability, to name a few. Many of these reflect ideas incorporated in the TCPA’s Health, Hope, and Prosperity: A Vision for Healthy New Towns, as well as lessons from previous generations of new large-scale development.

However, the devil is in the detail. For these principles to play out in practice, the government needs to ensure that future generations of new towns are required to meet high standards and best practices and that these aren’t treated as ‘nice-to-haves’ in a rush to build houses. Additionally, TCPA research has demonstrated the necessity of strong and accountable statutory bodies with the authority, capacity and skills to hold developers and volume housebuilders to account, especially relating to flood risk.

Challenges: from planning to delivery to management

The planning and delivery of new towns is incredibly complex and political. Learnings from the post-war new towns and the new largescale developments currently being delivered showcase some of the challenges on the road ahead.

– Political consensus: New towns take decades to plan and build out, requiring long-term political commitment at both a local and a national level. We must learn the lessons from the premature winding-up of new town development corporations in the 1980s, which left many post-war new towns with complex land ownership arrangements and a lack of revenue to reinvest in their renewal.

– Skills and capacity: The planning and delivery of new towns is incredibly complex. Evidence from the TCPA’s New Communities Group has highlighted the lack of skills and capacity among local authority officers and elected members to adequately support the delivery of a new community.

– Delivery of infrastructure: There are countless examples of new developments being left without key community infrastructure; this significantly impacts the local community and further erodes public trust in the planning system. At present, Section 106 agreements are primarily used to fund infrastructure. However, as they are often paid after the commencement of development, this approach limits the extent to which infrastructure can be delivered upfront.

– Long-term stewardship: At present, many new developments use management companies as their long-term stewardship bodies. However, there are increasing concerns regarding inconsistent service standards and a lack of transparency and engagement with the communities they serve. Consideration must be given to the long-term stewardship arrangements of new towns as soon as possible.

In conclusion, new towns offer a real opportunity to create new communities where everyone can thrive – economically, socially and environmentally. The planning and delivery of new towns requires everyone, from planners and landscape architects to builders and community workers, to work together.