The government’s renewed enthusiasm for building new towns may make for bold headlines, but it risks missing the people who need housing the most. Even senior planners involved in the post-war new towns programme have warned that the current proposals lack ambition on social housing and may not reach those in greatest need.
Instead of pouring resources into speculative new settlements, we should focus on the towns and cities we already have – places with infrastructure, identity and communities that are being steadily hollowed out. Across the UK, redundant land, vacant upper floors, derelict retail units and brownfield sites offer enormous potential for affordable, well-located homes. This approach would deliver housing faster and more sustainably, and in ways that strengthen existing communities rather than displacing them.
At the same time, our high streets are being drained by the gravitational pull of out-of-town shopping malls. Every time a retailer relocates, it accelerates decline, reduces footfall and undermines the economic and social fabric of our town centres. If we are serious about revitalising local economies, we must stop incentivising retail flight and instead reinvest in the places where people already live, work and shop.
New towns may suit developers, but they will not solve the housing crisis for those who need help the most. Strengthening and repurposing our existing urban areas while protecting and revitalising our high streets would deliver more homes, more quickly, and with far greater social value.
As Michael Edwards, an honorary professor at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London, points out, the former planners of Milton Keynes are right to criticise the government’s new towns plan for failing to meet the priority need for social housing at council rents. They are also right to stress how well the earlier new towns met this need.
Gordon Davie, who spent his career working on the UK’s new towns programme, argues that what is needed now is “dynamic developments providing new jobs in emerging industries, supported by good-quality public housing and community facilities to engender community development, efficient public transport and all that goes with the requirements to provide sustainable communities.” But above all, he says, it requires “sustained central government support, politically and financially, and the establishment of a new tranche of development corporations with the power to acquire land at existing use value, and planning powers equivalent to those of their predecessors.”
The time has come to shift the focus from building new towns to reviving and strengthening our existing towns and cities. This approach would not only deliver more homes more quickly, but also help to rebuild the social and economic fabric of our communities.