Context 162 - November 2019

C O N T E X T 1 6 2 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 9 23 New towns Nevertheless, it is evident that there is great variation in the value that communities and built environment professionals give to their own new town heritage. New town planning and architectural history are valued by many first-generation residents and civic leaders. While architectural specialists, archivists, community leaders and arts and cultural organisations have strong feelings about new town histories, more recent residents and younger people in the new towns have less attachment to, or knowledge of, the history or architecture of their new town. In response to this, new town museums and community arts groups in the UK and mainland Europe try to provide knowledge of their towns for school students and visitors. But as in all heritage debates, the valuation of new town environ- ments is not a settled issue; much is contested and needs further local discussion. It is difficult to generalise about new town her- itage from our network activities alone.We have focused on a limited number of new towns in the UK and mainland Europe. Even within this small group of towns there is wide variation in the designs of new towns around London, Paris or Rotterdam. They demonstrate the different views of state intervention in planning, funding and governance of new towns. Nevertheless, there are common themes of comprehensive planning, public services, and innovative urban design and architecture. One theme that has emerged is the contested question of new town identity. There is public discussion among planners and civic leaders about whether to move on from the original identities of the new towns as places shaped by master plans and post-war planning, perhaps shaking off the new town label altogether. Some new towns regard this re-branding as necessary to expand the town and re-think the physical environment. The change in identity itself has an impact on whether there is local impetus to protect new town architecture and design. Inevitably, each new town has a different level of heritage protection for individual iconic buildings, neighbourhood housing clusters, pub- lic art or landscaping.The incidence of valuation and protection by the local planning system is generally based not on a systematic valuation of new town heritage but on piecemeal selection of key buildings or sculpture, for example, to be protected. An exception to this piecemeal approach is the recent pioneering work of Milton Keynes Council undertaken for its local plan consultation.The council has asked the public to identify parts of the new city’s built heritage that they most value, with a view to including these features in the local plan as buildings and spaces of special interest and importance. It is important that heritage valuation takes into account the significance of the founding ideology of the new towns. The planning and design of housing, public parks, public art and civic buildings in the new towns are manifesta- tions of the welfare state spirit across Europe in the post-war period. These gave a distinctive character to the built heritage, which can not be given its full value without considering this social context. There is increasing awareness of the need to give greater recognition and protection to new town heritage. New towns in the UK and Europe share an iconic status as models of posi- tive comprehensive plan making and of modern- ist design. They were the product of a period of idealist social planning which largely came to a halt in the 1980s. Protecting what we have of this extraordinary heritage is now of some importance. More research and documentation needs to be done. None of this will bring back the spirit of town planning and architectural idealism of that time, but it will remind us of what is possible. Dollan Aqua Centre in East Kilbride, Scotland, designed by Alexander Buchanan Campbell (Photo: Alex Liivet, Wikimedia) Bob Colenutt teaches and researches town planning and housing development at Oxford Brookes University. Sabine Coady Schaebitz teaches at Coventry University in the department of architecture.