Context 162 - November 2019

22 C O N T E X T 1 6 2 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 9 towns appears to be judged rather differently. Part of the reason for the prevailing negative view of the built environments of new towns is that they came under fire from the new urban- ism movement, which criticised the design of post-war new towns as a product of top-down planning, producing low-density development and dreary town centres. In the 2000s, when ‘sustainable communities’ became the dominant aim of town planning in the UK, new town designs and master plans were judged again to have failed.  1 Yet this critique ignored the significant, and in many cases successful, innovations in urban design and neighbourhood planning that char- acterised the post-war new towns, not only in the UK but across Europe. New towns were extraordinarily ambitious. What made them dif- ferent was that they were comprehensive town developments providing complete living, work- ing and recreational places along with public services from cradle to grave, within a setting of extensive green space and public parks. The master-planned layouts, often designed by external architects or in-house design teams, cre- ated a remarkable built environment comprising planned residential neighbourhoods, iconic civic buildings, exceptional landscaping and public art. These built forms, initially very popular and well received, were recognised as the product not just of good planning but of a singular moment in the politics and social and economic values of these countries.  2 Decades later, the popularity of the post-war new towns as models of urban design has declined. Some of them, or parts of them, have arguably not weathered well or, are considered out-dated. For example, the grid road system at Milton Keynes does not fit well with contempo- rary ideas of modern urban planning in Europe, while the 1950s shopping centres at Harlow and Stevenage, for example, have struggled to adapt to contemporary shopping habits and commercial requirements. Arguably, the most important reason for the decline of the new towns was not a failure of town planning but the severe reduction in fund- ing for maintaining new town infrastructure and public services from the 1980s onwards. The planners took the blame, although in reality it was not bad planning but cuts in public funding and loss of local control of new town assets that did it for the UK new towns. Many new towns have recently celebrated significant anniversaries, which have provided an opportunity to look closely at their built heritage. This was one of the factors that prompted the formation of the New Towns Heritage Research Network. The first generation new towns of Stevenage and Harlow are 70 years old. Later generations of new towns such as Milton Keynes, Peterborough and Northampton are 50 years old. Similar birthdays are being celebrated in new towns in the Netherlands and Germany.The UK anniversaries have attracted national and international attention to the new town story.  3 Local histories have been written about most of the post war new towns, often commissioned by local authorities or undertaken by civic societies. For example, Milton Keynes has been the subject of a number of architectural books and monographs. There is a recent book on Sir Frederick Gibberd, the master planner of Harlow,4 there is digital archive of Telford new town and a municipal history of Peterlee. There are also oral histories, photographic archives and videos of other new towns both in the UK and in mainland Europe, for example, in the French new towns around Paris. New town museums, art galleries and archival teams are taking a renewed interest in new town archives and sto- ries. Films, plays and documentaries are being made. There is, for example, an excellent recent documentary evaluating the story of Basildon, which is an outstanding critical appreciation of the town.5 From our network events in the UK and Europe it has become apparent that appreciation of new town architecture is mov- ing from interest in individual iconic buildings (some of which have been protected already) to serious heritage analysis of the towns and their foundational planning ideas. Housing in Peterlee new town with Victor Pasmore’s Apollo Pavilion (Photo: Andrew Curtis, Wikimedia) References 1 Alexander, A (2009) Britain’s NewTowns: Garden Cities to Sustainable Communities , London: Routledge 2 Ward, SV (2016) The Peaceful Path: Building Garden Cities and New Towns , University of Hertfordshire Press 3 Hetherington, P (2016) ‘People think of new towns as concrete jungles, but I love the place of my birth’, The Guardian, 15 January 4 Manley, C (2018) Frederick Gibberd , London: RIBA and the Twentieth Century Society 5 Christopher Ian Smith (2017) NewTown Utopia (film)