My kind of town

Think Milton Keynes, think Shanghai. With British planning at risk of becoming the dumping ground for any politically irreconcilable development challenge of the day (new nuclear power stations could well be the next small issue for planning to resolve, for example), it is heartening to take a moment to recollect how planning started. Was it with an ever-increasing urge to regulate how and where we will live? Or just build houses and other much-needed developments? Not quite. With the 60th anniversary of the New Towns Act next month we can now reflect on the development of planning and where it might be heading next.

On the face of it Milton Keynes, with its population of about 210,000 people and its own multi-faith church, has little to do with a major Chinese city growing at a rate of knots. Shanghai reflects the staggering growth of cities worldwide. Globally, in 2007 the number of people living in cities will outstrip those in rural areas for the first time in history. While in the UK we have been deliberating whether it is enough to plan to build an extra 150,000 homes per year, around 150 million people worldwide have been urbanising the world’s cities. The age of the mega-city is upon us.

All this shares one common factor: the UK’s leading planners and engineers not only built the British new towns, but are also today leading the development of the world’s first eco-city at Dongtan on the outskirts of Shanghai. How we learn to live with climate change will rest on how we choose to urbanise in cities from Dongtan to Milton Keynes.

It is little short of amazing for a modest charity like the Town and Country Planning Association that its leading members not only pioneered the garden cities and the new towns of the famous 1946 act but are today active in inspiring and planning the creation of the world’s first carbon-neutral city in China. Aiming to house 80,000 people by 2020, its buildings are to be powered by renewable energy and it will be self-sufficient in terms of its food and water supply. Acting in the global context could not be more important. The UK contribution to carbon emissions, around 3% of the world’s total, is dwarfed by that emitted by China and the US (the two largest polluters).

But can British new towns serve as a model for today’s objectives in China and elsewhere? It’s true there are plenty of ways in which new towns failed to take on board aspects of development, which today we knowingly deprecate. Too often town centres were modernist monoliths with too little room for personalisation, variety and the mix of uses we love to enjoy in our best town centres. Some of today’s most honoured architects were responsible for some of the ropiest housing and construction designs, which were tried out in the new towns for the first time. But as my copy of Crap Towns: The 50 Worst Places To Live In The UK demonstrates, there are just as many failings in our “old” towns.

Milton Keynes has some of these let-downs when it comes to town centre characterisation and the demands made on public transport by the decentralised layout (rapid transit was the original plan). But in case anyone has missed it, the town has also captured that magic juxtaposition of desirable homes and local jobs in one place. The myth of new towns as dormitories is laid to rest at Milton Keynes where one of the fastest growing local economies in the UK draws in more commuters daily than it exports. It is one of the greenest cities ever built with 15 million trees and a wealth of green space and biodiversity serviced by endowments that draw down nothing from local authority budgets for their upkeep.

Elsewhere in the country the dormitory effect can be a real problem, and to be successful any new town must complement its city and region rather than detract from it. In short, urban regeneration, town extensions and new towns all need to be on the menu so the right solution is addressed to the right place.

In terms of enabling economic growth, no one can deny the massive returns made to the British economy from the planning milestone known as Milton Keynes. Whether or not this is popular knowledge in the UK, it is a well-known fact to the hundreds of Chinese, American and other experts and practitioners who come to revere the achievements of the new towns here in Britain every year.

So will Dongtan be covered in concrete cows? Probably not, but leading planners such as the TCPA’s own Sir Peter Hall and firms such as Arup are heavily involved in making it a world leader in energy efficiency, green technology, water re-use and minimal private transport. Linked to the main city by a single bridge the objective is to minimise commuting by car. Also, since US studies have shown massively reduced electricity bills for air-conditioning where there is more than 30% tree cover, Dongtan will be green in both the technical and the literal senses. The new town will also be medium not high density. The heat island effects of hyper-density Hong Kong and Manila are not models for a sustainable future, however high the signature architects may want their buildings to go.

Dongtan is still on the drawing board but it may set a pattern for how global urbanisation unfolds in the future. If so it will be a fitting tribute to the pioneering visionaries, politicians and planners behind one of the most impressive achievements of post-war Britain.