ANNALS, AAPSS, 451, September 1980

The New Town Movement in Europe

By PIERRE MERLIN

ABSTRACT: The new town originated in Britain

movement,
in the ideas of Howard, was successfully implement-
active in
ing two new towns on a cooperative basis, Letchworth and

Welwyn. These ideas became important on the Continent

when the new town movement continued on a wider scale,
mostly with government initiative. A remarkable exception
to this is Tapiola, Finland, built by a nonprofit organization.

Pierre Merlin is professor and former president, Universite de Paris-Vincennes,

and is a former director, Institut d’Urbanisme et d’Architecture de la Rggion
Parisienne (IUARP). He has authored several books about town planning and
new towns.

76
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 77

THERE
-L
world,
are, throughout the
a considerable number
According to Howard, the site of
the town and the greenbelt would
of planned schemes called &dquo;new be under single ownership and the
towns,&dquo; or in some cases, new cities sites leased so that a proper plan
or communities. In fact, new towns could be made and maintained and
have existed throughout various the ground values secured for the
historical periods. Naples, for in- community. Subject to the plan,
stance, has as its etymological private enterprise would operate
origins nea polis, the name given freely. Many of the physical details
by her Ancient Greek founders. proposed by Howard were unrealis-
Versailles and Washington, D.C., tic. He was not a city planner, but
were created as new capital cities. a clerk, the son of a small shop-
But it is probably in Europe that keeper, who was shocked by the
new towns have appeared as an ex- conditions of life in the big cities
pression of city planning theories,’ and by the contrast between the
and it is interesting to note that homes and working conditions in
opposing currents of urbanistic these cities and the beauty and
thought, &dquo;culturalist&dquo; and &dquo;func- health of the countryside.
tionalist,&dquo; both had as their major Howard not only published a
expression, in the face of large-scale book, but also created two experi-
metropolitan expansion, the con- mental garden cities along the lines
struction of new towns. of his own ideas. The first was
Letchworth, decided on as early as
FROM HOWARD TO THE 1902, 40 miles north of London.
BRITISH NEW TOWNS Most of the 4,500 acres were ac-
quired by the First Garden
in 1903
As early as 1898, Ebenezer How- City Company Limited, created by
ard wrote his now famous book Howard.
Tomorrow -A Peaceful Path to Real The plans were designed by Ray-
Reform2 as a utopian vision. He mond Unwin and Barry Parker, who
suggested, in order to avoid the have since become well-known plan-
problems generated by big cities, ners. The first neighborhoods of
building small, new garden cities of Letchworth are worthy of careful
30,000 people with rural surround- scrutiny. If the architecture is not
ings containing a population of 2,000 very attractive, the planning con-
peasants producing food and provid- cepts are most interesting. The city
ing a leisure landscape for the in- center has several large streets con-
habitants of the garden city. The verging near the station, a monu-
garden cities were to provide for the mental mall, three story red brick
technical needs of modern industry buildings, and window-covered pas-
with pleasant homes for all classes, sages. Its style is demonstrative of
within reach of their work, the town the ambitions of a city which had
center, and open countryside. only 7,000 inhabitants in 1914. By
1939, it had grown to 17,000.
1
Françoise Choay, L’urbanisme-Utopies Howard’s second experiment was
et réalités. Une anhtologie (Pans: Seuil, Welwyn, 25 miles north of London.
1965),
2
p. 446. It was founded in 1922, according
The book was reprinted in 1902 under the
to a master plan prepared by the
title Garden-cities of To-morrow. Edited in
English by N. Pressman (Toronto, Canada: planner Louis de Soissons. Its simi-
University of Waterloo). larity to Letchworth is important.
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78

Both are based on individual houses, tion, coupled with planned overspill
with a low-density neighborhood within the region itself: some in-
concept, but with a stronger, more dustries and their workers would
concentrated and majestic city cen- move from central London or from
ter near the railway station. Letch- the suburbs and resettle beyond a
worth and Welwyn’s malls appear as greenbelt stretching from 13 to 20
large as those of London. The south miles from the center. These new
neighborhoods, built between the settlements would constitute an outer
two world wars, now possess a ring where new towns would be
marvelous landscape of mature trees created and where selected small
and are a delight to behold. Welwyn towns would be expanded to receive
was completed after World War II the overspill.
and was incorporated in the 1946 The concept of the ring of new
New Towns Act. towns 20 to 30 miles from central
But Howard did not only leave the London appeared to be one of
master plans for garden cities. He the key proposals of Abercrombie’s
created, at the turn of the century, Greater London plan. It was, how-
the Garden City Association, which ever, not the only one: the concept
had an exceptional impact on British of overspill, directly related to the
and overseas planners. All important previous idea, was as important.
planners were its members, and Expanding towns were to receive
through this association grew a strong as much population and industry as
movement in favor of garden cities. the new towns. In any case, the new
Experiments in the United States in towns’ policy was rapidly adopted
the thirties, such as Greenbelt, Rad- by the government. A royal com-
burn, Sunnyvale and others, are mission, with Lord Reith as its
directly related to this influence. chairman, was created to outline the
When, in 1937, World War II precise physical characteristics of
appeared unavoidable, the British the new towns and to prepare a law
government appointed a national giving them official status. The New
commission, headed by Sir Montague Towns Act was adopted on 1 August
Barlow, to present proposals con- 1946. New towns were to be state
cerning the distribution of industry directed. The government appointed,
and of population. The Barlow re- for each town, a committee, a de-
port, presented in January 1940, velopment corporation, and an of-
indicated a policy of decentraliza- ficial in charge of implementation,
tion and deconcentration of industry,the general manager, who was to
a better balance between regions recruit his own staff of planners,
with respect to industrial activity engineers, and administrators. The
and a reorganization of congested development corporation was to be
urban areas. The last point was in charge of planning, buying, and
mainly concerned with the London preparing the land and of building
conurbation. The planner, Patrick most of the buildings, that is, the
Abercrombie, was asked to prepare majority of housing units and shops,
a regional plan for greater London some of the factories, and many of
and a master plan for the country of the public buildings. It also was to
London’s 3 million inhabitants. Both manage properties, mostly houses
plans were presented in 1944, before and shops. It was to be a very power-
the end of the war. They suggested a ful organization with some 300 per-
policy of industrial decentraliza- manent staff members. Financing
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was provided by long-term loans
(60 years) at the public loan rate.
Treasury was to be reimbursed only
when the corporation made a profit.
This administrative and financing
system proved to be very efficient,
even if at times it appeared rigid.
Concerning the planning, the rec-
ommendations presented by the Reith
commission were surprisingly close
to Howard’s initial utopian views.
New towns were to be sited around
large cities-some have been near
Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester,
Cardiff, Newcastle, Glasgow, Edin-
burgh-and would help to decrease
their populations. They were to be
at least 25 miles from London (or 12
from other cities), as far as possible politan growth, of Howard and his
on a virgin site, and have a popula-
tion of 20,000 to 60,000. For a new predominant in Britain and impor-
town of 60,000, the area would be
5,000 acres, surrounded by a 6,000-
acre greenbelt. Thus the density
was to be low: 12 people per acre
in the towns. Fourteen new towns,
among which eight fell in London’s
ring, were designed very
and were built according to plans
directly in accordance with the prin-
ciples of the Garden City Associa-
tion, later called the Town and
Country Planning Association, and
of the Reith commission. A second
generation of new towns was created
around 1956. This group included
Cumbernould in Scotland, an ex-
periment in higher densities, traffic
separation, negation of neighbor-
hood units, and a mega-building
town center, and Runcorn near Liver-
pool, an experiment in separate
rights-of-way transit system. A third
generation of new towns, more re-
lated to regional development policy
than to large city overspill and
generally not on a completely virgin
site, was decided upon after 1965,
for example, Milton Keynes, midway
between London and Birmingham.
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79
Currently, the 33 British new
towns have a total population of
2,400,000 and more than 1,100,000
jobs. Even if they received only a
part of the urban growth of the three
last decades, they are a reference for
planners of new towns throughout
the world. They indicate a direct
continuity of planning thought from
the utopian visions of the clerk
Howard to the onsite implementation.
THE ATHENS CHARTER AND
NEW SUBURBS: STOCKHOLM
AND AMSTERDAM
If the influence of the culturalist
school and, in the field of metro-
Garden City Association have been
tant in many other countries, a
progressive school, gathering plan-
ners from the Soviet Union (after
the emergence of the &dquo;anti-urban-
ists&dquo; in the twenties), from the
Bauhaus Group (Gropius, Mies van
rapidly der Rohe, and so forth), from Hol-
land (Van Eesteren), and from France
(Le Corbusier, Beaudouin, and Lods),
has been very influential on the
Continent. Its ideas were propa-
gated through the Athens Charter.
But in a few cases, planners who
were originally (Van Eesteren in
Amsterdam) or indirectly (Stock-
holm) inspired by the Athens Char-
ter were in positions of responsi-
bility for planning the expansion
of cities with a million or more
people. Stockholm and Amsterdam,
as well as other big Dutch cities,
have had from the very beginning
of the century very active land
policies. These cities decided to be
masters of their own development
and bought well in advance (two or
three decades before needing it) the
land in their peripheries. These
cities have a large staff in their city
80

planning offices which prepares both Lutheran, the Calvinist and the
master plans for the city and local Catholic churches are in great rivalry
plans for each project for a new -and the balance between indi-
neighborhood, an activity area, or vidual row housing (25 percent),
an open space system. three- or four-storied apartment build-
In the Netherlands, there has been ings (60 percent), and high-rise blocks
a long tradition of planning. The (15 percent) are the major character-
scarcity of land, centuries of struggle istics of this planning.
against the sea, the necessity of The quality of the details and the
preventing the &dquo;Randstad&dquo; (the Dutch abundance of public amenities made
conurbation shaped by Amsterdam, it a genuine success, and it was
The Hague, Rotterdam, Utrecht, and repeated in Buitenveldert, south of
so forth) from developing on its Amsterdam, and Nieuwendam, to
&dquo;greenheart,&dquo;3 and the development the north, and in other large cities
of Amsterdam with severe regula- of the Netherlands, such as Rotter-
tions between its canals and inside dam and Utrecht. In the early seven-
its walls all explain why it has been ties, after Van Eesteren retired, the
considered normal that most sub- municipality decided to develop a
urban growth be planned by the systematic plan for 10 story, concrete
municipality’s city planning office. buildings in Bijlmermeer, southeast
Amsterdam’s planning team was of Amsterdam; it was not accepted
headed by C. Van Eesteren, the by the population and appeared to
general secretary of the Athens Char- be an immense failure. The 1935
ter group. He was asked in 1928 to city plan, completed and revised
prepare a master development plan many times, has been replaced by a
for the city. This plan was published 1962 plan of the Amsterdam’s con-
in 1935, approved in 1939, just urbation and a plan of North Hol-
before the war, but was implemented land. Amsterdam is now developing
only after the war. It transformed through new urban developments,
an overcrowded city-7 square feet which are extensions of existing
of public open space per person in small cities, such as Alkmaar, Pur-
1850, 20 in 1930-into a spacious merend, and Hoorn, of North Hol-
town of 250 square feet of parks per land, but also through entirely new
person in 1965. Amsterdam-West towns in the Ysselmeer’ss polder
(135,000 people), was built in the area of Lelystad and Almere. Each
fifties and is the best example of of these schemes is to reach a final
Van Eesteren’s planning. It is one population of about 100,000 inhabi-
of the very few examples of a large, tants, of the same order that each of
planned scheme developed by one the four suburban areas received
of the authors of the Athens Charter. after the war.
The hierarchy of roads, separation Lelystad itself is both an expan-
of pedestrian and automobile traffic, sion scheme of the Randstad, less
the division into small neighbor- than 30 miles northeast of Amster-
hoods with their own open spaces, dam, and of the capital city of the
primary schools, corner shops, and Ysselmeer’ss polder area. It was
churches-in the Netherlands, the planned by Van Eesteren for 100,000
3Gerald Lewis Burke, Greenheart Metrop-
people. The first neighborhood, built
olis: Planning the Western Netherlands (Lon-
around an open space, as in Amster-
don : Macmillan, 1966) (simultaneously pub- dam-West, was inhabited in 1967.
lished in New York by St. Martins Press). Now the city contains about 35,000
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 81

persons. Smaller cities, such as Em- bility of building beautifully and

meloord and Dronten, head of the economically. He created the non-
northeastern of East Flevoland’s profit Housing Foundation, which
polder, of around 10,000, are other bought 650 acres of forest land, six
excellent examples of postwar Dutch miles from the center of Helsinki,
planning. near the sea. Most of Finland’s
Swedish new suburban areas are better-known architects and plan-
quite similar to those in Holland. ners-Ervi, Aalto, Siren, and so
But the 1952 plan for Greater Stock- forth-produced plans of an area
holm has been prepared in conjunc- or of social housing blocks (85 per-
tion with the new subway-Tunnel- cent of the dwellings) or individual
ban-plan (1954). The Stockholm houses. The majority of apartment
municipality has not only the controlbuildings provides an impression
of most of its developable land, but of low density. With the variety of
also has control of the transit com- building types and the exceptional
pany and of major cooperative build- quality of the landscaping, the result
ing companies. Thus the city can is most satisfactory.
implement its planning policy in At the same time as the planning
real coordination with the develop- in Amsterdam, as Stockholm’s new
ment of the new subway. The princi- sections of cities, and as Tapiola,
ple is based on units of 10,000 to many poorly planned areas of collec-
20,000 people grouped within a tive blocks built from just one model
radius of 500 meters around each have been developed throughout
station with housing mainly (85 Western Europe (France, Italy, Spain,
percent) in flats. There is an outer and Germany) and Eastern Europe
ring between 500 meters and 900 during the last three decades.
meters for individual houses. Shop-
ping centers, schools, and other FRENCH POLICY OF LARGE
services are close to the station,
NEW TOWNS
whereas on each subway line, one
of these centers is designed to serve Up until the sixties, the French
the whole sector comprising about experience was of limited interest.

100,000 people in four or five units After World War II, the housing
plus the neighborhood housing older crisis forced the government to in-
or unplanned areas. The quality and public
housing con-
vest money in
diversity of public amenities, the grands ensembles
struction. The
efficiency of this scheme concerning were large-scale building operations

transportation-everybody living in of several thousand rented dwellings.

these suburbs has less than 30 Monotony and banality of architec-
minutes of door-to-door travel by ture, lack of amenities, shops, or
subway to a central business district employment, and lack of community
job-and the quality of most of the spirit were their major character-
architecture and its integration with istics, but they had the merit of
forested landscape have generated helping to fill the immediate needs
the form of Stockholm’s suburbs. of homeless families.
But the most attractive small new The landmark of the new planning
town in northern Europe is Tapiola. policy, under de Gaulle, was the
This project was conceived, built master plan for the Paris region
and managed by Heikki von Hertzen, (1965) (Figs. 1 and 2). It proposed
a man who believed in the possi- giving the Paris region a pattern,
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82

FIGURE 1. Urban Structure in France.

breaking the monopoly of the single Among the eight new towns pro-
center by creating new urban cen- posed for the Paris region, five
ters in existing suburbs as well as were finally approved and desig-
in newly developed areas, that is, the nated around 1970: Cergy-Pontoise
new towns. The expansion of the city in the northwest, Saint-Quentin-en-
was to take place along main axes of Yvelines in the southwest, Evry and
development, safeguarding ameni- Melun-Senart in the southeast, and
ties and especially recreational areas. Marne-la-Vallee in the east. Etablis-
Paris was to be transformed from a sements publics (development cor-
built-up conurbation into an urban porations) were created in order to
region. plan the developments and to ac-
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 83

FIGURE 2. Paris Region Regional Scheme and New Towns.

quire and prepare land and to sell it latter, in actual practice, has often
back to housing or manufacturing been forgotten. It is very frequently
developers. The etablissement pub- on a site close to existing suburbs,
lic seldom builds. A law on new sometimes already under the pres-
towns (1970) proposed a type of sure of urbanization. The new town
&dquo;association of the municipalities&dquo; has no fixed limits. It consists of all
involved with the new towns. In the residential areas, manufacturing
France, the municipalities are very zones, leisure places, and open spaces
small and a new town could belong that are within the influence of the
to 10 to 30 of them. new urban center.4 This center is to
The key concept of the nine be as complete as possible, although
French new towns-four other ones this has not been the case in British
were decided respectively near Lille, new towns where the commercial
Rouen, Lyons, and Marseilles-is function is predominant. This is
the new urban center. The new town related to the problem of scale.
is not supposed to be built on a British new towns were initially
nearly virgin site as in the case of
the British new towns surrounded 4
Pierre Merlin, Les villes Nouvelles fran-
by a rural greenbelt, although the çaises (Paris: Documentation Francaise, 1976).

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84
planned for about 50,000 people
with targets extended later to 80,000
or even 100,000. But even with such
populations, the range of services
and amenities provided by the urban
center is limited. Having to face
more considerable urban growth,
French new towns were initially
planned for populations up to 500,000.
Their urban centers were to be large
and diversified. With the birth rate
in decline, targets were reduced.
But the first centers had been de-
signed on a large scale. Evry and
Cergy-Pontoise, five years after the
beginning of construction, offered
a regional shopping center, a &dquo;pre-
fecture,&dquo;5 offices, and many recrea-
tional, sport, and cultural facilities.
In Evry, the &dquo;Agora&dquo; is probably the
most important multipurpose cul-
tural and leisure center in France.
Housing presents q balance between
apartment building, according to the
French suburban tradition, and in-
dividual houses, corresponding to
the new demand of the upper mid-
dle classes. Employment has been
planned as diversified as possible, but
up to now, only Cergy-Pontoise and
Berre, near Marseilles, have suc-
ceeded in providing one job per
family. If the French new towns,
10 years after the start, have partially
succeeded in restructuring the major
metropolises, in offering balanced
suburbs, and for that reason, in
reducing commuting and traffic prob-
lems and if their environment is
much better than that of traditional
suburbs, they are far from appearing
innovative to visitors since their
architecture is very traditional. In-
novation programs, where they exist,
have not been attractive to the
public even if they were to specialists
and professionals!
5Local government for a population of
about one million.
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The originality of French new
towns is now in their conception:
they are integrated in an urban
region and are not &dquo;cities in the
country&dquo; according to the garden
city tradition. They are part of a
regional development pattern. If
French new towns have learned
much from the British experience
in this matter, the third generation
of British new towns seems to have
been inspired by the new French
new town policies.
The three schools-the British
one, attached to the Howard’s gar-
den city tradition; the Scandinavian-
Dutch one, related to the Athens
Charter tradition; and the French
one, more dependent on national
and regional planning policies-
have coexisted and influenced each
other. One should add the Soviet
new towns-more than 1,100 of
them, housing some 30 million peo-
ple-but they are mostly industrial
towns and are not related to existing
metropolitan development.
MECHANISMS OF NEW
TOWN POLICY
In European countries, new town
policy has always been the result of
voluntary policy. In some cases, for
instance, in Britain and France, it
was national policy, even if it was
first proposed to solve the problems
of growth of the capitols. In other
countries, such as Sweden and the
Netherlands, municipal authorities
possess very strong powers, and they
can themselves initiate such a policy.
In the latter case, the municipality
will, by itself, take charge of the
planning and implementation of the
projects. It will be easier if they
already own the land, sometimes
for several decades. They will use
cooperative or public housing com-
panies, which they control more or

less, for the construction. In this
case, there will be no specific financ-
ing system, and dwellings will be
built mostly on a rental basis.
In the former case, the govern-
ment will create a special public
body to carry out the projects. If it
is not too large, the attributions of
this public &dquo;ad hoc&dquo; organization
can be very extended as it is for the
British development corporation. It
will plan, buy land, build and man-
age most of the buildings and dwel-
lings. When the project scale is as
large as in French new towns, it
appears unrealistic and undesirable
that the public body would itself
build. The French system allows
more flexibility but the 6stablis-
sement public is dependent on the
good will of private or semipublic
investors. Concerning the financing,
these types of projects need special
measures. This can vary from limited
and partial incentives, as in the
French case in which some of the
land has been bought with state
money, grants for amenities are
slightly higher and given with pri-
ority to new towns, and so forth, to a
special and very advantageous sys-
tem of public involvement, as in the
British experience.
TRENDS IN NEW TOWN POLICY
Even if the policies of new towns
are very diversified in various Euro-
pean countries, it seems that com-
mon trends appear. One trend con-
cerns the size of the projects. After
the war, projects of new towns were
of limited scale, the Howard tradi-
tion being predominant. It was still
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85
believed possible to offer a wide
variety of services and amenities
in towns of less than 50,000. The
failure of this hope has been, to-
gether with an unanticipated large
urban growth, one of the reasons for
planning much larger new towns,
from 100,000 (Netherlands), to
250,000 (third generation of British
new towns), and even to 500,000
(Paris region). With the declining
birthrate, the target figures again
resort to intermediate levels (100,000
to 250,000).
The role of employment has been
another cause of diversity. While
British new towns were to have an
automatic balance between jobs and
active population-one could not be
eligible for a dwelling without a job
in the new town and the corporation
provided as many dwellings to the
firms as jobs created-this was not
a principle elsewhere. In medium-
sized cities-like Amsterdam and
the other Dutch towns and in Scan-
dinavian countries or in Germany
-the commuting times have not
reached a level that priority is given
to limiting them drastically. Jobs
will be created in the newly de-
veloped areas, but a balance with
the population is not a goal. In
French new towns, without any
rigid restrictions as there were in
British new towns, the objective is
to provide 8 jobs for 10 active people,
that is, an average of one job per
dwelling. Such a policy is now very
common in European new towns.
New towns considered less as
are
projects per se as were the first
generation of British new towns, in
accordance with Howard’s traditions.