One thing town planners in England never seem to do is plan towns. Instead, their main task is to make recommendations to local councils to either approve, modify or reject proposals from private developers. But developers do not plan towns either. In most cases, developers wish to build estates of large ‘luxury executive’ homes on greenfield sites (preferably in the green belt) because this is where the profits are greatest. Their proposals (and therefore the proposals of town planners as well) are for suburbs: detached houses arranged in curving roads lined with fast-growing trees (usually silver birch). The exceptions are the so-called ‘affordable homes’ required by planning regulations, which are usually arranged in small terraces. Each private development of this kind is named after what it has destroyed: ‘Cherry Orchard’, ‘Hop Fields’ and the like.
There have of course been some new towns built in the UK from the 1950s onwards. But these too resemble large suburbs with no centre that can be recognised as such. Instead, what passes for a town centre is usually a suburban shopping mall. These are essentially large sheds, packed with the kind of chain stores that make every town centre look the same. Indeed, an idea for a new television series would be to blindfold someone and drop them in a suburban shopping mall and see how long it takes them to discover which town they are in purely on the basis of what they can see in front of them. Most of these sheds are utterly without character, although a few are spectactularly ugly: there has rarely been any building so vile as that built as the shopping centre in Cumbernauld ‘new town’.
We can compare shopping in a shed with a traditional high street in a town like Ludlow, Marlborough or Ledbury. These have a row of shops and restaurants, most of which are still owned by local people rather than chains. They therefore are more likely to sell the unexpected. Local butchers prepare and hang meat instead of serving it on plastic trays covered in cellophane. There are second-hand bookshops and shops selling art-works. The shops themselves are interesting and usually attractive buildings, sometimes reached through small lanes off the main high street. There is usually a market hall, in which local traders and farmers can sell their produce. It is possible to get a good cup of tea or coffee in a café not called ‘Costa’, ‘Nero’ or ‘Starbucks’. The traditional high street is also the centre of local life: it is near the parish church and there is a town hall, usually a rather grand building to express the pride townspeople in the past had in their community.
How could you build a new town that would be as pleasant? The first step would be to recognise that few English towns began as villages: most were designated as towns by the Crown or a local landowner, with aim of raising income from a market or for defending the frontier. The latter were walled and were usually planned on a grid of streets. An alternative was a town based on an important trade route, which became the high street. This would usually be widened about half-way along, to provide space for a market. In some cases, market traders would move to a covered market and an island of new buildings would appear in the space they had previously occupied in the high street. Along the high street, land would be sold or leased as ‘burgage plots’, often about ten metres wide, stretching back as much as 60 metres from the high street. Each plot would have been fronted by a building that would have been both a workshop for making and selling goods, and a residence. The rear of each plot would initially have been used to grow food or keep animals, but it was common for buildings to gradually extend backwards. There would often be access lanes between plots, and over time these developed into narrow shopping streets. This is not just a feature of a medieval town: Melbourne has delightful ‘laneways’ that make it one of the most attractive of the many towns and cities that were planned in the 19th Century.
In a future post, I will look at how we can follow the best practice of the past to create a new town that looks like a town.
There have of course been some new towns built in the UK from the 1950s onwards. But these too resemble large suburbs with no centre that can be recognised as such. Instead, what passes for a town centre is usually a suburban shopping mall. These are essentially large sheds, packed with the kind of chain stores that make every town centre look the same. Indeed, an idea for a new television series would be to blindfold someone and drop them in a suburban shopping mall and see how long it takes them to discover which town they are in purely on the basis of what they can see in front of them. Most of these sheds are utterly without character, although a few are spectactularly ugly: there has rarely been any building so vile as that built as the shopping centre in Cumbernauld ‘new town’.
We can compare shopping in a shed with a traditional high street in a town like Ludlow, Marlborough or Ledbury. These have a row of shops and restaurants, most of which are still owned by local people rather than chains. They therefore are more likely to sell the unexpected. Local butchers prepare and hang meat instead of serving it on plastic trays covered in cellophane. There are second-hand bookshops and shops selling art-works. The shops themselves are interesting and usually attractive buildings, sometimes reached through small lanes off the main high street. There is usually a market hall, in which local traders and farmers can sell their produce. It is possible to get a good cup of tea or coffee in a café not called ‘Costa’, ‘Nero’ or ‘Starbucks’. The traditional high street is also the centre of local life: it is near the parish church and there is a town hall, usually a rather grand building to express the pride townspeople in the past had in their community.
How could you build a new town that would be as pleasant? The first step would be to recognise that few English towns began as villages: most were designated as towns by the Crown or a local landowner, with aim of raising income from a market or for defending the frontier. The latter were walled and were usually planned on a grid of streets. An alternative was a town based on an important trade route, which became the high street. This would usually be widened about half-way along, to provide space for a market. In some cases, market traders would move to a covered market and an island of new buildings would appear in the space they had previously occupied in the high street. Along the high street, land would be sold or leased as ‘burgage plots’, often about ten metres wide, stretching back as much as 60 metres from the high street. Each plot would have been fronted by a building that would have been both a workshop for making and selling goods, and a residence. The rear of each plot would initially have been used to grow food or keep animals, but it was common for buildings to gradually extend backwards. There would often be access lanes between plots, and over time these developed into narrow shopping streets. This is not just a feature of a medieval town: Melbourne has delightful ‘laneways’ that make it one of the most attractive of the many towns and cities that were planned in the 19th Century.
In a future post, I will look at how we can follow the best practice of the past to create a new town that looks like a town.
