New towns – a big threat to the countryside

New towns have always been a bit of a dangerously addictive drug in planning. Like narcotics, they initially promise a sweet, heavenly paradise, only to turn into destructive addictions that prove almost impossible to escape from.

Any day now (it’s already late), the Government’s New Towns Taskforce will deliver its report on a fresh generation of mega-sprawl blobs. Its recommendations are expected to approve sites for 12 new towns, much bigger than developers’ current “red box ‘burbs”, but sprinkled with the glitter of post-war optimism.

And once again, just as with the post-war new towns, key elements within the planning profession are getting on board, while Whitehall is planning to keep firm control and keep those ruffianly local government types out. Meanwhile, private developers are wondering just what’s in it for them, given they’re already getting loads of greenfield sites without the tiresome necessity of paying for at least a little bit of the big infrastructure that 10,000-home+ settlements require.

Our recently published report New Towns – Slow, Costly and Destructive lays out some of their dismal history, from their birth in the starry-eyed idealism of Ebenezer Howard’s garden cities, through the increasingly chaotic world of the post-war new towns, via private sprawl blobs and their successors in “eco towns”, “garden communities” to today’s endless “cowpat estates”.

Central Milton Keynes under construction – on farmland

But unfortunately, it appears that some of those who believe in curbing urban sprawl have become seduced by bogus arguments that allowing major greenfield developments in new towns could reduce the Treasury/Tufton St/developers’ appetite for blobs of greenfield sprawl everywhere.

It won’t. For a start, as our report points out, new towns are about the slowest way to build new homes. If the current Parliament runs its course, it has at most 46 months to run. By the time Whitehall approves any sites for new towns, even with minimalistic planning (hey, planners, this isn’t a gravy train!) virtually no new homes would be built before the next election. So why would this Government, or its successor, regard new towns as an alternative for meeting the Treasury’s obsession with sprawl housing?

Neither the development industry, nor its supporters in the neoliberal think-tanks, nor in the social media influencers and lobbyists they support, would accept any diminution of current sprawl demands. Nor would the Treasury.

New towns are just the latest thrust in the push for greenfield housing. As ever, there are loads of bogus claims about making good use of brownfield and excellent public transport. But don’t be fooled. A handful of the post-war new towns did utilise big brownfield sites, including redundant World War II munitions factory sites. But today, large brownfield sites sustainably located near other settlements are vanishingly few. The sites likely to be threatened will mostly be on agricultural land in the south of England.

Countryside protectors please note.

Jon Reeds