Speakers
Description
This paper will present emerging findings from new research, commissioned by the Royal Town Planning Institute (UK), on flexibility and indeterminacy in new town planning around the world. The research has been timed so that its publication coincides with the UK Government’s announcement of locations for a new generation of new towns in England.
New towns are characterised as large, multi-functional developments, situated on previously undeveloped land, at some distance from existing settlements. Locations and scales are usually determined as part of larger regional or national development plans. New town planning is therefore an inherently multi-scalar governance activity, responding to challenges and needs facing existing communities. Increasingly, new town planning involves international networks of policy, practice, finance and diplomacy. It also operates as a device for alignment between interests, and serves as a media and communications tool for the production of political communities and constituencies. This in turn is a means to attracting interest, investment and commitment from politicians, businesses, workers and residents.
The mid-20th century international high watermark of new town and new city planning (Peiser & Forsyth 2021). As well as greater internationalisation, much has changed since that point, including concerns around community participation, regeneration, heritage, context, and flexibility. By the 1970s, many of the first generation of new towns in Britain were felt to have aged poorly – the ethos of their planning was seen as having been proscriptive and deterministic – locking a particular moment of time into the spatial form of a community. At the same time, interest in systems theory and cybernetics was on the rise; such approaches were pioneered by theorists such as Melvin Webber (Hall 1996). This resulted in the philosophy behind the UK’s last, largest and arguably most successful new town, Milton Keynes.
Unlike previous new towns, Milton Keynes was planned explicitly planned with flexibility in mind amidst awareness of the pluralisation of the concept of the public interest. The architect-planning firm which drew up the original Plan for Milton Keynes, Llewelyn-Davies and Partners, was acclaimed for bringing modernism to hospital design. Milton Keynes was therefore planned like a modern hospital expanded to the scale of a city – around a wide, decentralised, extensible grid layout. (Llewelyn-Davies 1972). This grid became a kind of public commitment to the future, or a ‘platform’, or set of rules, within which development would take place. This represented a shift in the form and relationships of urban governance, foreshadowing planning under neoliberalism.
Today’s major policy concerns include widespread political change, climate resilience and geopolitical fragmentation; the question of planning for an indeterminate and uncertain future is as relevant as ever. This paper will convey findings from a variety of international cases – present-day and recent new town endeavours – which explore varied attempts to incorporate uncertainty. The paper will conclude by reflecting on continuity and change in the ethos of planning between the 1960s moment of the pluralisation of planning, and the present-day moment characterised by a media age of ‘visioning’ and policy appetite for discrete urban neighbourhood creation.
Hall, Peter (1996) “Revisiting the Nonplace Urban Realm: Have We Come Full Circle?” International Planning Studies 1, no. 1: 7–15.
Llewelyn-Davies, Richard (1972) “Changing Goals in Design: The Milton Keynes Example.” In New Towns: The British Experience, 102–16. London: Charles Knight & Co.
Peiser, R., & Forsyth, A. (Eds.). (2021). “New towns for the twenty-first century: a guide to planned communities worldwide.” University of Pennsylvania Press.
References
Hall, Peter (1996) “Revisiting the Nonplace Urban Realm: Have We Come Full Circle?” International Planning Studies 1, no. 1: 7–15.
Llewelyn-Davies, Richard (1972) “Changing Goals in Design: The Milton Keynes Example.” In New Towns: The British Experience, 102–16. London: Charles Knight & Co.
Peiser, R., & Forsyth, A. (Eds.). (2021). “New towns for the twenty-first century: a guide to planned communities worldwide.” University of Pennsylvania Press.
| Keywords | new towns, new settlements, indeterminacy, flexibility |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
