CHELMSFORD DIOCESE

THAMES GATEWAY – OCCASIONAL PAPER: 9

New Town Developments

THE BACKGROUND:

In November 2008 the Government published its Delivery Plan for the Thames Gateway. In it they committed to build 160,000 new homes by 2016. These would be just part of the 2M new homes that they aim to build nationally in that period rising to 3M by 2021. The 3M target which was announced by Gordon Brown on becoming Prime Minister is a 66% increase on previous targets and includes 3 new ‘eco towns’, whose location has yet to be identified.

To achieve this target will mean building some significant new communities and three are identified in the Thames Gateway Plan – Stratford, Barking Reach and Ebbsfleet. But how do we build new communities? Currently the government is using a number of models, including three Urban Development Corporations (UDCs) - London, Thurrock and Northampton. The UDCs have many of the powers of the old New Town Development Corporations (NTDCs) that built places such as Harlow and Basildon, but nothing like their resources.

What can we learn from the NTDCs? Were they successes or failures? As with most things, they got some things right and some wrong. The real question is can we build on the good and eliminate the bad?

The New Town Development Corporation

Like the UDCs they had considerable powers which are not locally democratic. By definition the people who are likely to benefit from new development are not already in the area to vote in favour of the development so do we need, nationally, to say to local democracy - “We are prepared to bully you into doing what we think is good for someone else”?

UDCs, like NTDCs, have planning powers and resources to acquire land to facilitate development. Is this an essential need for successful major development? But the NTDCs had powers not available now – buying land at existing values so that the planning gain could be used to provide infrastructure. They were also able to borrow from the Treasury to fund infrastructure. They had resources such as staff to introduce people, to encourage community building (Milton Keynes employed 1,200 people at its peak. With UDCs we are talking 10s! In many ways the UDCs are poor relations of the NTDCs)

In addition they were all starting from scratch unlike, for example, Thurrock which has to build its new communities within existing developments and primarily on brown field sites which may be far from ideal both in size and location. (If you are building, say, 1,000 houses but over two sites then neither site may be large enough to justify community facilities and the new school has to be on one or the other site meaning that the children from the other site will not be able to walk or cycle to school!)

The NTDCs were undoubtedly set up in a much simpler era. The 1946 New Towns Act was simple enough to almost fit on two sheets of foolscap paper and gave enormous power to the Corporations – power to buy green field land at existing value, control every stage of development, hold on to the land until build was complete, and provide all infrastructure from land value uplift. It is doubtful if any Act could be as concise today or whether the scope of the NTDCs’ powers would be acceptable and pressure to use brown field land means that the same uplifts are not available, especially if the land requires decontaminating.

So the question still remains – WERE NTDCs A SUCCESS? WILL UDCs LEARN FROM THEM AND BE AN IMPROVEMENT? THE JURY IS OUT!

What about the New Towns themselves?

The new towns could not be called an unqualified success but neither should they be considered as failures. Today most of the original New Towns are deprived. (Milton Keynes and Bracknell being the exceptions) Why is this? What can we learn? One reason is employment – employers were given incentives to move to these towns but when the incentives stopped they often moved on. Another reason is that the towns were often dependent on industries (such as steelmaking in Corby and Washington) that can no longer be sustained in Britain. This raises the question as to whether employment engineering (e.g. trying to make industry go where we want it for social reasons) is any longer possible. The conclusion may be that we can only go where the jobs are which may lead to the majority of building being in commuting distance of London. But this may not be the complete story. It might be worth studying Milton Keynes which, despite being only 40 min. from London by train, is not a commuter town as more people commute in to work than go to London. However it is within reach of London when necessary which may mean that similar developments would be possible further from the capital if we were willing to build high speed rail links to give rapid access to London.

There are certainly design features of the original New Towns that we would not repeat. For instance, separating traffic and pedestrians which led to unsafe areas. (Nowadays we look for all areas to be overlooked to increase safety) Also public transport was not always provided (e.g. Milton Keynes which is still a car based town)

One of the problems of the original new towns was the innovative nature of the building and its quality. They were often built with new, untested building techniques, some of which failed. Today we face similar pressures to build quickly and to high ecological standards which require new and as yet unproven techniques. What has been built initially in the Thames Gateway has not yet taken on board future ecological requirements but many commentators are already questioning the quality of the build. With the current shortage of housing leading to a market in which almost anything will sell, there is not the incentive for builders to go for quality or ecological sustainability when it increases the cost and may extend the build time.

There are additional tensions as we seek to satisfy all needs. For instance, how do we reconcile the British preference for low density development which leads to the car being the main means of transport with the issue of climate change? The original new towns consisted mainly of social housing with little inspirational and executive housing. This has led to the problems in places like Basildon where most managers commute in rather than live there. Our social needs now require an increase in affordable housing and the aim is to develop mixed tenure areas. But does this work? (See Occasional Paper 5)

Food for thought

“Some of the (original) new towns demonstrated that there is nothing more dangerous than architects playing at social engineering” It has been said that we need co-operation between all the disciplines involved in regeneration, but people with the multidisciplinary expertise to work across a number of areas are in short supply. A Thames Gateway South Essex commissioned report from Essex University on regeneration skills highlighted this problem and proposed cross discipline training but the recommendations of the report do not seem to have been taken up.

Postscript

In July Gordon Brown announced the building of 3 new eco towns but we still have no details although the government is said to have expressions of interest from many areas. But there are more questions than answers such as - Will they be green field thus allowing the land value uplift to fund infrastructure? Are the technologies proven enough to risk using on a whole town? Will the building be carbon neutral or only the ongoing running (60% of the energy used in a life of a building is used in initial construction!)? What sort of administrative structures will be used to build them – NTDCs or UDCs or……..?

There are a lot of interesting questions. It may be a case of- “Watch this space”. The problem is that someone has to live in what is built. In general it is not those who make the decisions who have to live with the consequences!