New town

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A New town or planned community or planned city is a city, town, or community that was designed from scratch, and grew up more or less following the plan. Many of the world's capital cities are planned cities, notably Washington, DC in the United States, Brasília in Brazil, Canberra in Australia, and New Delhi in India and Islamabad in Pakistan. It was also common in European colonization of the Americas to build according to a plan either on fresh ground or on the ruins of earlier Amerindian cities.

Contents

1 Brazil

6.1 Nobleman's Republic
6.2 Interwar period
6.3 Socialist realism

Brazil

The country's capital, Brasília was a planned city built in the middle of the vast empty center of Brazil, at that time (1960) thousand of kilometers from any big city. It was built in four years, and to fulfill that task there were times when concrete was transported by airplane.

The former capital of Brazil was Rio de Janeiro, and the resources tended to center around the southeast region of Brazil. While in part the city was built because there was the need for a neutral federal capital, the main reason was to promote the development of Brazil's hinterland and better integrate the entire territory of Brazil (although some say the real reason was to move the government to a place far from the masses). Brasília is approximately at the geographical center of Brazilian territory.

The city is designed in the shape of an airplane, despite the fact that Lúcio Costa insists he shaped it like a butterfly. Housing and offices are situated on giant superblocks, everything following the original plan. The plan specifies which zones are residential, which zones are commercial, where industries can settle, where official buildings can be built, the maximum height of buildings, etc.

France

A program of new towns (French villes nouvelles) was developed in the mid-1960s in France. Nine villes nouvelles were created.

Hong Kong

The area of Hong Kong is very mountainous and many places of the New Territories are remote to acess by road transport. Hong Kong starts developing new towns in 1950s, to accomodate booming populations. In the early days the term "satellite cities" was used. The very first new towns include Tsuen Wan and Kwun Tong. Wah Fu Estate was built in a remote part in Hong Kong Island.

In the late 1960s and the 1970s, another stage of new town developments was launched. Nine new towns are developed so far. Land use is carefully planned. New towns also provide plenty room for public housing projects. Roads and later rail transport are usually available. The first towns are Sha Tin, Tsuen Wan and Tuen Mun. Tuen Mun was intended to be self-subsistence, but was not successful. Recent ones are Tin Shui Wai and North Lantau (Tung Chung - Tai Ho).

Ireland

In Ireland, as in the UK, the term "new town" is often used to refer to planned towns built after World War II. Such towns are not common, with only two major examples; Shannon Town in County Clare, Republic of Ireland and Craigavon in County Armagh, Northern Ireland.

Neither town was entirely successful. Shannon Town continues to be of importance today as an economic centre (with the Shannon Free Zone and Shannon International Airport), but until recently, failed to expand in population as anticipated. New retail and entertainment facilities may be providing an upturn, as of 2004. Craigavon was even less successful than Shannon, with entire blocks of apartments and shops lying empty, and later derelict, before eventually being bulldozed. The area is now mostly a dormitary town for Belfast.

The term "new town" in Ireland was used for some earlier developments, notably during the Georgian era. Part of Limerick city was built in a planned fashion as "Newtown Pery".

Japan

Borrowed from New Town movement in the UK, Japan has built some 30 new towns all over the country. Most of them are located near Tokyo and Kansai regions. These towns, unlike those in the UK, do not provide employments. Much of the residents commute to the nearby city. These towns fostered the infamous congestion of commuter trains.

Japan has also developed the concept of new towns to what Manuel Castells and Sir Peter Hall call technopole.

In the past, the Japanese government had proposed relocating the capital to a planned city, but this plan was scratched.

Poland

The very diverse layouts in Poland's planned cities is the result of the different aesthetics that were held as ideal during the development of these planned communities. Planned cities in Poland have a long history and fall primarily into three time periods during which planned towns developed in Poland. These are the Nobleman's Republic (16th-18th c.), the interwar period (1918-1939) and Socialist Realism (1944-1956).

Nobleman's Republic

The extreme opulence that Poland's nobility enjoyed during the Renaissance left Poland's elites with not only obscene amounts of money to spend, but also motivated them to find new ways to invest their hefty fortunes away from the grasp of the Royal Treasury. Jan Zamoyski, Great Crown Chancellor and Hetman whose financial empire within the Polish Republic was known as the "Zamoyski Ordinate" spanned 6400 km² with 11 cities and over 200 villages, in addition to the royal lands he controlled of over 17 500 km² with 112 cities and 612 villages. The "Zamoyski Ordinate" functioned as a country with in a country, and Zamoyski founded the city of Zamość in order to circumvent royal tariffs and duties while also serving as the capital for his mini-state. Zamość as he named his city was planned by the renowned Paduan architect Bernardo Morando and modelled on Renaissance theories of the 'ideal city'. Realizing the importance of trade, Zamoyski issued special location charters for representatives of peoples traditionally engaged in trade, i.e. to Greeks, Armenians and Sefardic Jews and secured exemptions on taxes, customs duties and tolls, which contributed to its fast development. Zamość was so successful that 11 years after its construction began it had only 26 empty lots left. During the following years Zamość Academy and numerous churches were built as well as fortifications were completed. Zamość Zamoyski's success spawned numerous other Polish nobles to found their own "private" cities such as Bialystok and many of these towns survive today, while Zamość was added to the UN World Heritage list in 1992 and is today considered one of the most precious urban complexes in Europe and in the world.

Interwar period

The preeminent example of a planned community in interwar Poland is Gdynia. After World War I when Poland regained its independence it lacked a commercial seaport, making it necessary to build one from scratch. The extensive and modern seaport facilities in Gdynia, the most modern and extensive port facilities in Europe at the time, became Poland's central port on the Baltic. In the shadow of the port, the city took shape mirroring in its scope only the rapid development of 19th century Chicago, going from a small fishing village of 1,300 in 1921 into a full blown city with a population over 126,000 less than 20 years later. The City's Central Business District that developed in Gdynia is a showcase of Art Deco and Modernist architectural styles and predominate much of the cityscape. There are also villas, particularly in the city's villa districts such as Kamienna Góra where Historicism inspired Neo-Renaissance and Neo-Baroque architecture

Socialist realism

After the destruction of most Polish cities in World War II, the Communist regime that took power in Poland sought to bring about architecture that was in line with its vision of society. Thus urban complexes arose that reflected the ideals of socialist realism. This can be seen in districts of Polish cities such as Warsaw's MDM. The City of Nowa Huta was built as the epitome of the proletarian future of Poland.

United Kingdom

The term is used in the UK, in the main, to refer to the towns developed after World War II under the New Towns Act 1946. Following the war, a number of towns (eventually numbering 28) were designated as New Towns and were developed partly to house the large numbers of people who had lost homes during the War.

However, New Towns policy was also informed by a series wartime commissions, including:

the Barlow Commission (1940) into the distribution of industrial population,
the Scott Committee into rural land use (1941)
the Uthwatt Committee into compensation and betterment (1942)
(later) the Reith Report into New Towns (1947).

Also crucial to thinking was the Abercrombie Plan for London (1944), which envisaged moving 1.5 million people from London to new and expanded towns. Together these committees reflected a strong consensus to halt the uncontrolled sprawl of London and other large cities, under the axiom if we can build better, we can live better. This consensus should probably be viewed in conjunction with emerging concern for social welfare reform (typified by the Beveridge Report).

The first New Town (1946) was Stevenage,Hertfordshire, but the seeds of the idea can be found in earlier attempts at a Garden City in Letchworth and Welwyn in Hertfordshire, England following on the ideas of Ebenezer Howard and Patrick Geddes. In the 1960s a number of New towns were built in the Southeast of England including Milton Keynes, famous (or perhaps infamous) for its car oriented layout featuring many roundabouts and grid based road system (unusual in the UK). Washington was another, contrasting with the planned city of Washington, DC. In the 1990s an experimental "new town" developed by The Prince of Wales was started at Poundbury in Dorset.

Until the 1980s responsibility for developing the New Towns lay with New Town Development Corporations, under the umbrella of The Commission for the New Towns. From then, control was progressively repatriated to the local authorities, a process complete by 1992. Individual assets took longer to transfer.

However the building of new towns in the UK is not purely a modern occurrence. The town of Winchelsea is said to be the first new town in Britain, constructed to a grid system under the instructions of King Edward I in 1280, and largely completed by 1292.

New towns in Wales: Cwmbran, Newtown

There are five post-war new towns in Scotland: Cumbernauld, East Kilbride, Glenrothes, Irvine and Livingston.

See new towns in the United Kingdom for the full list of post-war new towns.

United States

Aerial view of Levittown, Pennsylvania circa 1959

In the early history of America, planned communities were quite common: Jamestown, Philadelphia, Williamsburg, and Annapolis are examples of this trend. Washington, DC and Austin, Texas are unique, having been carved out of the wilderness to serve as capital cities. (Other cities with this distinction are Brasília in Brazil, Yamoussoukro in Côte d'Ivoire and Canberra in Australia.)

Pullman, now incorporated into Chicago's Southwest side, was a world renowned company town founded by the industrialist George M. Pullman in the 1880's. Greenbelt, Maryland, which was built in the 1930s, was one of a series of planned communities built during that era. The Levittowns - in Long Island, Pennsylvania and New Jersey - typified the planned communities of the 1950s and early 1960s. The era of the modern New Town began in 1963 with the creation of Reston, Virginia, which was begun just a year before Columbia, Maryland. In more recent years, New Urbanism has set the stage for new cities, with places like the idealic Seaside, Florida and Disney's new town Celebration, Florida.

External links

French new towns (in French)
Renaissance town of Zamość
Hong Kong new towns
Town and Country Planning Association (formerly the Garden Cities Association)

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