Six concrete cows stand in a park in the British city of Milton Keynes. For decades, these bovine monuments have been used to mock the largest and most famous of the ‘new towns’ built in Britain after the second world war. Only a place sorely lacking in culture and history, critics of Milton Keynes sneer, would turn to concrete cows as public art. The sculptures themselves have been repeatedly stolen and vandalised; one was even beheaded.

Although Milton Keynes has had to put up with condescension throughout its short history, a closer look reveals that the city, 80km north-west of London, has become one of the most successful urban areas in Britain. Since its establishment in 1967, Milton Keynes has emerged as a major manufacturing centre and as a regional logistics hub. And, far from being a concrete jungle, Milton Keynes is among the country’s greenest cities. It boasts around 270km of paths known as ‘redways’ (for their mostly red tarmac), which segregate cyclists and pedestrians from car traffic.

With Britain facing a shortage of 4.3 million homes, according to the Centre for Cities think tank, the idea of building large-scale planned communities is back in fashion. The Labour government has put new towns at the heart of its agenda for a housebuilding revolution. Within days of taking office in July, deputy prime minister Angela Rayner had announced a New Towns Taskforce. Its mission is to identify suitable sites for new developments within a year.

Other governments in recent decades have had limited success with various plans to create planned communities. But Sir Michael Lyons, chair of the taskforce, tells fDi Intelligence that ministers are determined to deliver on their promises. “The government is very clearly focused on new towns as part of its push for economic growth and to beat the housing crisis”, he says.

Urban extensions

While a drive for new towns might conjure images of several Milton Keynes-sized developments springing up around the country, Mr Lyons signals that the policy is likely to move in a somewhat different direction. 

“I think the scope for genuinely new towns that are just built around a little cluster of villages, like Milton Keynes, will probably be more limited,” he says. While Mr Lyons does not rule out proposing such developments, he says that urban extensions are “more likely”. This can involve the “reshaping of urban areas”, he says, rather than simply attaching housing to the edge of an existing town. Future urban extensions could, for example, fill the spaces between towns and take advantage of some existing infrastructure.

Milton Keynes is somewhat unique among the post-war new towns, which are now home to around 2.5 million people in total. While 32 places were designated as ‘new towns’ between 1946 and 1970, most of these could be defined as urban extensions. Several historic settlements, such as Peterborough and Northampton, were greatly expanded under the new towns programme. 

Maurice Lange, an analyst at the Centre for Cities, believes that previous experience shows that urban extensions are generally the right approach. “Those new towns that did best were those that were best located, in terms of an existing economic geography that they could piggyback off,” he says. “In a lot of cases, an urban extension is going to be more cost-effective.”

Mr Lange argues that new towns or urban extensions also require “proactive planning” to ensure they are built with the necessary infrastructure and amenities, rather than ending up as giant car-dependent suburbs. He notes that, unlike in other European countries, Britain has little recent experience in establishing public bodies to take on this long-term master-planning function. As an alternative, some kind of private–public partnership could provide a “piece of the puzzle”, he suggests.

Delivery dilemmas

Kane Emerson, head of housing research at the YIMBY Alliance, a pro-housebuilding pressure group, hit the headlines over the summer when he co-authored a report suggesting a new town of up to 350,000 people could be built around the small village of Tempsford. The site, 75km north of London, is a “perfect” location for a new town, Mr Emerson says, due to its position at the intersection of the East Coast mainline and another planned rail link. This makes Tempsford “quite unique” as one of the few places in commuting distance of London that could realistically accommodate a large-scale new town.

Within days of the report being published, however, there was a backlash from right-wing tabloids. “Furious families face new build hell” screamed the Daily Mail, warning that the “village of the damned” would be transformed into a “megacity”. 

Opposition to any new town is inevitable; naturally, the 600 current residents of Tempsford may have severe misgivings over plans that would drastically transform the character of their area. While Mr Emerson argues that the government has a “huge mandate” to push forward with large-scale housebuilding, he adds that it will need to be “very considered and careful” in selecting sites for new towns and urban extensions. “The payoff has to be worth it, and that’s where the economic question comes into play.” 

Besides nimbyism, there are other practical problems to consider. Jen Siebrits, head of UK research at commercial real estate services and investment company CBRE, is an enthusiastic supporter of the new towns vision. “We need to do something fundamentally different to actually get the level of housebuilding that we need,” she says. But Ms Siebrits warns that comprehensive reform of the planning system is required if new towns are to be built at scale. 

“We need to relax the planning,” she says, noting that a slow drip of increased planning requirements over the course of recent decades has made it progressively more difficult and expensive for developers to deliver new homes.

Ms Siebrits adds that “joined-up thinking”, with developers working in partnership with local authorities, will be needed to make new towns a success. “It’s all about placemaking,” she says, so that a mix of different types of housing is served by the right infrastructure.

The earlier generation of new towns was a mixed success when it comes to placemaking. Many of the earlier developments were built hastily, with the cheapest possible materials. Some attempts at innovative architecture backfired — the centre of Cumbernauld in Scotland, for example, is often used as a case study in how not to do urban design. Milton Keynes, by contrast, was one of the last of the new towns and could apply lessons learned elsewhere.

Mr Lyons recognises that designing new towns to stand the test of time is “a really big challenge”. His taskforce has already paid a visit to Milton Keynes — “what’s been achieved there is really impressive”, he says. The city’s concrete cows, now reclaimed by local people as symbols of the area, can expect to see more VIP visitors in the coming months as the government seeks to replicate its success. 

Ben Payton is a freelance journalist based in London

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This article first appeared in the October/November 2024 print edition of fDi Intelligence