Prelims

Half Title

Lessons from the British and French New Towns

Title Page

Lessons from the British and French New Towns: Paradise Lost?

EDITED BY

David Fée

University of Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3, France

Bob Colenutt

Oxford Brookes University, UK

Sabine Coady Schäbitz

Coventry University, UK

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2021

Copyright © 2021 Emerald Publishing Limited

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ISBN: 978-1-83909-431-6 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-83909-430-9 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-83909-432-3 (Epub)

Contents

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1. Arial masterplan of Ebbsfleet Garden City showing regional links to London and via the Thames Crossing, with local connections between the six village neighbourhoods. 28

Fig. 3.1. Five Myths of the British New Towns. 46

Fig. 7.1. Bird’s Eye View of the Centre of Saint Quentin en Yvelines. 102

Fig. 7.2. Sept-Mares. 104

Fig. 7.3. Le Pas Du Lac, Erasmus Park. 108

Fig. 8.1. Annual Average Population Change, 1951–2018, for London New Towns, Arranged by Date of Designation. 120

Fig. 8.2. Occupational Structure of London New Towns Compared with the Wider Region, 2018. 124

Fig. 9.1. International Promotion of British Planning Consultants by UK Government. 134

Fig. 9.2. Cover of the GIEVNF Brochure. 137

Fig. 10.1. Comparative Analysis of Harlow and Thamesmead, as Planned. 149

Fig. 10.2. Comparative Analysis of Harlow and Thamesmead, as Planned and as Built. 154

Fig. 11.1. Milton Keynes Rose in Campbell Park. 161

Fig. 11.2. Women with Doves from Stevenage Town Centre Gardens. 164

Fig. 11.3. Harlow Water Gardens by Bill Mitchell. 165

Fig. 13.1. Evry Pyramides. 191

List of Tables

Table 8.1. London New Towns’ Contribution to Regional Population Growth, 1951–2018. 122

Table 8.2. Job Ratio and Index of Commuting Independence, 1971 and 2011, for London New Towns. 125

Table 10.1. Comparison between Harlow and Thamesmead. 145

About the Contributors

Catherine Blain, Architect and PhD in Urbanism, is a Research Fellow and a Lecturer at Ensap in Lille (LACTH). Her research, mainly focussed on the French Post-War period, develops different lines of investigation such as the CIAM and Team 10 debates or the history of New Towns. Author of several books and articles, she was the curator of the exhibition L’Atelier de Montrouge, la modernité à l’œuvre (1958–1981) (CAPA, 2008). She is an active member of DoCoMoMo-France (scientific committee), Vice-president of the French Association d’Histoire de l’Architecture (AHA) and member of European Architectural History Network (EAHN).

Tony Champion is Emeritus Professor of Population Geography at Newcastle University. His research interests include change in population distribution and composition, with particular reference to counterurbanisation in developed countries and the policy implications of changes in local population profiles. He led the IUSSP’s Working Group on Urbanisation in 1999–2002 and is author or co-author of several books, most recently Internal Migration in the Developed World (2018), Population Change in the United Kingdom (2016), New Forms of Urbanization: Beyond the Urban-Rural Dichotomy (2004) and The Containment of Urban Britain: Retrospect and Prospect (2002).

Sabine Coady Schäbitz is an Associate Professor in Architecture and Associate Head of School of Art and Design at Coventry University. She is trained as an architect at the Bauhaus-University in Weimar and studied architectural conservation at ICCROM in Rome. She was the Co-Investigator for the New Towns Heritage Research Network project funded through the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in 2016–2018. Her publications focus on cultural heritage, architectural and urban history, and design education.

Bob Colenutt is an Associate Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University. He has a career in urban planning in local government and the community sector. He was the Principal Investigator for the New Towns Heritage Research Network project funded through the AHRC in 2016–2018. He is the author of several books and articles on housing development, community development and urban policy.

Alina Congreve has worked as a Lecturer and Principal Lecturer specialising in Planning and Housing at a number of universities including London School of Economics (LSE), University College London (UCL), Reading and Hertfordshire. At Reading and Hertfordshire, her postgraduate teaching had a strong focus on new towns. She has supervised a number of postgraduate dissertations and group projects on different aspects of New Towns including Bracknell, Hemel Hempstead, Hatfield, Stevenage and Milton Keynes. She holds a PhD in Geography and Planning from King’s College London and an MSc in Conservation from UCL. She is a trustee of the Harlow Art Trust, and was invited to join the trustees after organising a conference to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Harlow New Town.

Julia Deltoro-Soto is a Lecturer in Urban Planning and Construction at the Universitat Politècnica de València, with a background as an architect and urban designer. She obtained her PhD in Architecture in 2015 with the theme: Urban experience of British New Towns through compared examples; Harlow, Thamesmead and Milton Keynes. She has researched and published on topics related to urban design and planning, urban history and morphology, New Towns and economic and industrial land planning and strategies.

David Fée is a Professor of British Studies at the University of Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris and Head of CREC, the Sorbonne Nouvelle Research Centre on contemporary Britain. He specialises in the study of housing and urban policies in the UK as well as the British welfare state. He is the author of many articles on housing and planning in the UK as well as a book on the housing crisis in the UK (La crise du logement en Angleterre: 40 ans de politiques du logement et de la ville, Paris: Michel Houdiard, 2013). His current topics of research include inequalities in the UK, and British and French New Towns from a comparative and international perspective.

Susan Fitzpatrick is a Lecturer in Human Geography at York St John University, UK. She has been researching placemaking and the British New Town since 2015. She has previously published work on residents’ responses to cultural and regeneration policy in the context of both Liverpool’s European Capital of Culture of 2008 and Glasgow’s Commonwealth Games in 2014.

Danielle Gardrat is the Head of Planning and Development for the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines combined authority. She leads a 12-member team in charge of the new local plan, the climate plan, as well as urban studies at various levels and planning documents. She holds a Master’s degree in Planning and Urban Projects Management from Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées, Paris, and a degree in Sociology. Previously, she worked in the New Town development corporation of Cergy-Pontoise (EPA) for 13 years.

Stephen Marshall is a Professor of Urban Morphology and Urban Design at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. His principal research interests are in the relationships between urban morphology and urban design and planning. He is the Joint Editor of Built Environment journal and has published on topics including street networks, land use and transport, urban coding and planning, urban morphology and evolution, and urban design in relation to art and science.

Ivan Nio is a Senior Researcher at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (Faculty of Applied Social Sciences and Law). He also works as an independent urban sociologist. He obtained his PhD in Social Sciences at the University of Amsterdam. In his research and publications, he has explored diverse themes on the interface of planning/urban design and urban sociology. He is (co-)author of several books and articles on the everyday life in suburbs and post-war neighbourhoods in the Netherlands.

Clément Orillard is an Associate Professor at the École d’Urbanisme de Paris – UPEC and researcher at the Lab’Urba. His current research focusses on the actors and geographies of the exportation of French planning expertise since the 1950s and on the planning history of the Paris region since WWII. He also worked on the emergence of the field of urban design in the Anglophone world. He is a member of the editorial board of Planning Perspectives.

Helena Rivera is a Visiting Lecturer in Landscape Architecture and Urbanism at the University of Greenwich. She was awarded her PhD in Regional Planning in 2015 at the Bartlett School of Planning, UCL, where her research focussed on applying transferable lessons from British New Towns into contemporary housing policy. She is a professionally qualified architect, chartered by the Architects Registration Board (ARB) and Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), and is the Founder and Director of A Small Studio Ltd. Her most recent project, ‘Neighbourhood based landslide risk mitigation using WhatsApp and community-state dialogue’ was shortlisted by The Times Higher Education Awards as International Collaboration of the Year in 2019. She has recently been a Visiting Guest at the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on New Towns, 2018–2019.

Frédéric Theulé is in charge of prospective studies in the planning department of the communauté d’agglomération de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (SQY combined authority). He holds a PhD in Urban History and is an Associate Researcher at the Institute for Political Studies in Rennes for the research programme on territories and public policy changes. He also teaches at the universities of Evry and Versailles – SQY. His work revolves around the study of the history of New Towns, the governance of territories, the history of combined governance and place branding.

Loic Vadelorge is a Professor of Modern History at the Gustave Eiffel University. He is the Director of the Urban Futures Labex for Paris Est University. His research focusses on urban history. He published Retour sur les villes nouvelles. Une histoire urbaine du second XXe siècle, Créaphis in 2014 and edited L’art dans les villes nouvelles. De l’expérimentation à la patrimonialisation, Paris, Artlys in 2010 (with Valérie Perlès and Julie Guiyot-Corteville).

Stephen V. Ward is a Professor of Planning History at Oxford Brookes University, UK. His books include Planning the Twentieth-Century City (Wiley, 2002), Planning and Urban Change (SAGE, 2004) and The Peaceful Path (University of Hertfordshire Press, 2016), with many other book chapters and articles. He is a former President of the International Planning History Society and former editor of the Planning Perspectives journal.

Elanor Warwick was an Architect before focussing on built environment research within the social housing sector. Initially a Research Fellow at the University College London (UCL), she studied city design at LSE (London School of Economics), with a PhD on the Regeneration of Post-war Housing Estates from King’s College London. She was the Head of Research at CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment), managing a diverse programme providing evidence to shape national policy and embed good design practices about housing, placemaking and urban reviewal. She is currently the Head of Strategic Policy and Research at Clarion Housing Group, England’s largest housing association. She teaches at the Bartlett, UCL and Cambridge University, with research interests spanning the value of good design, implementation of lifetime neighbourhoods, planning mechanisms for sustainable new settlements and methods for measuring social value and wellbeing.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the Sorbonne Nouvelle Research Centre for British Studies (EA4399 CREC/CREW) and the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

The Sorbonne Nouvelle Research Centre for British Studies made the initial symposium possible on which this book is based and supported further research trips. The AHRC funded a series of events and activities to establish the New Town Heritage Research Network which brought the authors together.

We would like to thank all the contributors to this book for their insightful enthusiasm in exploring this topic. Many thanks also go to Emerald publishing to enable this publication and for their encouragement and patience in the completion of the book.

Finally, the authors would like to thank all the people living and working in New Towns who enthusiastically embraced our inquiries and activities and continue to strive for the creative and sustainable development of their places.