Futureproof New Towns

In England and around the world, a new generation of new towns represent a unique opportunity to imagine, and plan for, better ways of living. Indeed, the utopian, ambitious, spirit of the UK’s post-war new towns is something the UK Government has sought to invoke for its programme in England.

But the post-war new towns are not without their critics or flaws. There is a public perception that their plans embedded dated assumptions about how people would live, work, move around and play. As a result, they have failed to keep up with their populations’ changing needs.

A new generation of new towns clearly brings both huge opportunities and risks. If they are sustainable, flexible and meet their communities’ needs, they could be transformative. If they fail to learn lessons from the past, or from around the world, their social, environment and economic costs could be huge.

The RTPI’s Futureproof New Towns project responds to this challenge. Delivered by researchers from the Universities of Hertfordshire, Liverpool, and Glasgow, it set out to answer the question:

How can planners and policy makers ensure that the next generation of new towns are adaptable, flexible, and evolve over time to meet communities’ changing needs?

This research is part of the RTPI’s Planning is Global series. As such, it is built on extensive case study research into new towns - both freestanding new settlements, and major urban extensions - in six counties: the Netherlands, Germany, and France, India, the USA and Brazil.

The research provides detailed ‘lessons’ from each case study. Across them, it finds that path shaping rather than path dependent master planning, community-led development, public sector land assembly, and diversity of tenure were crucial to success.

There are three reports in the series