New towns in the United Kingdom

The concept of the "garden city" was first envisaged by Ebenezer Howard in his 1898 book To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, as an alternative to the pollution and overcrowding in Britain's growing urban areas.[1] Taking inspiration from the model villages of Port Sunlight and Bournville, he saw garden cities as the "joyous union" of town and country, providing a much better quality of life for those who lived there.[2]

Two garden cities were built – Letchworth, Hertfordshire in 1903, and Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire in 1920.[3]

The underlying principles of garden cities (including community engagement, well designed housing, easily accessible recreational and shopping facilities, and an integrated transport network) were influential in the development of the post-war new towns movement.[2]

An "overspill estate" is a housing estate planned and built for the housing of excess population in urban areas, both from the natural increase of population and often in order to rehouse people from decaying inner city areas, usually as part of the process of slum clearance.[4][5] They were created on the outskirts of most large British towns and during most of the 20th century, with new towns being an alternative approach outside London after World War II.[5] The objective of this was to bring more economic activity to these smaller communities, whilst relieving pressure on overpopulated areas of major cities.[4]

• London County Council built housing developments affixed to towns outside London, of which Becontree, Dagenham, was the largest. It was built in the 1920s and 1930s.
• Seacroft in Leeds was built from 1934 when Leeds City Council bought 1,000 acres (4.0 km²) for municipal housing, and after World War II the majority of houses and blocks of flats were built. The council had planned for Seacroft to be a "satellite town within the city boundary" [6]
• Wythenshawe was built on former rural land in the north of Cheshire between the 1920s and early 1970s to rehouse families from the inner city slums of Manchester as an overspill estate. Other Manchester overspill estates include Hattersley (mostly built during the 1960s), Gamesley, and Haughton Green.
• Castlemilk, Drumchapel, Easterhouse and Pollok in Glasgow.
• Castle Vale in Birmingham, which was built in the 1960s in the extreme north-east of the city.

The first wave of independent new towns was intended to help alleviate the housing shortages following the Second World War, beyond the green belt around London. A couple of sites in County Durham were also designated. These designations were made under the New Towns Act 1946.

• Stevenage, Hertfordshire (designated 11 November 1946)[7]
• Crawley, Sussex (designated 9 January 1947)[8]
• Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire (designated 4 February 1947)[9]
• Harlow, Essex (designated 25 March 1947)[10]
• Newton Aycliffe, County Durham (designated 19 April 1947 as Aycliffe New Town)[11]
• Peterlee, County Durham (designated 10 March 1948, as Easington New Town)[12]
• Welwyn Garden City and Hatfield, Hertfordshire (both designated 20 May 1948)[13]
• Basildon, Essex (designated 4 January 1949)[14]
• Bracknell, Berkshire (designated 17 June 1949)[15]
• Corby, Northamptonshire (designated 1 April 1950)[16]

The town of Telford (formerly Dawley New Town) was created from a number of towns which were joined around a central service area.

The second wave (1961–64) was likewise initiated to alleviate housing shortfalls. Two of the locations below (Redditch and Dawley New Town – later renamed Telford) are situated near the West Midlands conurbation and were designed for Birmingham and Wolverhampton overspill; another two (Runcorn and Skelmersdale) are near Merseyside and were intended as overspill for the city of Liverpool.

Telford Centre

• Skelmersdale, Lancashire (designated 9 October 1961)[17]
• Dawley New Town, Shropshire (designated 16 January 1963)[18]
• Redditch, Worcestershire (designated 10 April 1964)[19]
• Runcorn, Cheshire (designated 10 April 1964)[20]
• Washington, Tyne and Wear (designated 24 July 1964)[21]

New Town architecture in Peterborough

The third and last wave of new towns (1967–70) allowed for additional growth chiefly further north from the previous London new towns, with a few developments between Liverpool and Manchester, namely "Central Lancashire New Town" and Warrington. Dawley New Town was redesignated as Telford New Town, with a much larger area, as overspill for Birmingham and nearby towns including Wolverhampton. With a target population of 250,000 and a planning brief to become the first "new city", the largest of these was Milton Keynes at the northern edge of the South East, about halfway between Birmingham and London. In the East Midlands, the existing town of Northampton was expanded. In East Anglia, the city of Peterborough was designated as a new town to accommodate overspill from London.

• Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire (designated 23 January 1967)[22]
• Peterborough, Cambridgeshire (designated 21 July 1967)[23]
• Northampton, Northamptonshire (designated 14 February 1968)[24]
• Warrington, Cheshire (designated 26 April 1968)[25]
• Telford, Shropshire (designated 29 November 1968)[26]
• Central Lancashire New Town, Lancashire (designated 26 March 1970)[27]

• Ravenscraig (in progress)
• Chapelton of Elsick (in progress)
• Tornagrain, a small private-sector new town near Inverness (in progress)
• Tweedbank, new village built in the 1970s on a greenfield site in the central Scottish Borders, initially by a government body, the Scottish Special Housing Association (SSHA) (population 2,073)
• Erskine and Inchinnan, small new town developed in the 1970s and 1980s in Renfrewshire, initially by the Scottish Special Housing Association (SSHA). (population 16,601)
• Dalgety Bay, small new town developed in the 1970s and 1980s in Fife. (population 10,777)

• Blindwells: new settlement proposed adjacent to Tranent in East Lothian
• Forestmill: new settlement proposed in Clackmannanshire in close proximity to the Fife Council administrative boundary
• Owenstown: new settlement proposed in the South Lanarkshire area to the south of Lanark
• Shawfair: new settlement proposed in SE Edinburgh spanning the City of Edinburgh Council and Midlothian Council administrative boundaries

On 13 May 2007, chancellor Gordon Brown, who became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom the following month, announced he would designate 10 new "eco-towns" to ease demand for low-cost housing. The towns, around 20,000 population each—at least 5,000 homes—are planned to be "carbon neutral" and will use locally generated sustainable-energy sources. Only one site was identified in the announcement: the former Oakington Barracks in Cambridgeshire—the already planned Northstowe development. Local councils will be invited to provide sites for the remaining four towns.[41]

The Town and Country Planning Association is advising the government on the criteria and best practice in developing the eco-towns by producing a series of "worksheets" for developers.

In September 2014 the CBI called for all political parties to commit to building 10 new towns and garden cities to get to grips with the country's housing shortage.[42]

South East Faversham is a new settlement proposed by the Duchy of Cornwall adjacent to the M2 in Kent expected to undergo the planning process in 2023.[43]

• "Select Committee on Transport, Local Government and the Regions Nineteenth Report". Select Committee on Transport, Local Government and the Regions. Archived from the original on 2016-03-03. Retrieved 31 January 2016. licensed under Open Government Licence
• A commentary by the Government of Northern Ireland to accompany the Cameron Report incorporating an account of progress and a programme of action, CAIN web service, 1969