During the post-war years, the devestation that many had endured seemed to re-envigorate the

national psyche with an optimism, and to many there was a sense that here seemed to be a growing
idea that this was a chance, not only to re-build Britain structurally, but also to take the nation in a new
direction [Gibbered 2008]. Of course, the urban areas of our cities and towns had taken most of the
fallout, and this opportunity was seized by modernist architects who believed that, by changing the
design of how we lived in our cities and towns, they could provide ambitious solutions to solve extensive
social problems. This opportunity, and apparent political will to develop and implement modernist was
seen in many of the post-war constructions in Europe, and later through slum clearance programmes
and subsequent road-building schemes [Carmona 2003]. In Britain, an extensive re-building project
began (by the mid-1950s, 2,500 schools had been built and ten entirely new towns were either under
construction or in the early stages of development), and there was a growing need for a town planning
policy that could accommodate the needs of these people. This requirement for rapid functionality
opened the door for Modernists to begin reshaping the appearance of British towns and cities [Gibbered
2008].

One of the key ideas that developed at this time, and has shaped many of Britain’s urban landscapes,
was the idea that new towns would be designed and built from scratch. Modernist urban space
generally appears in its purest forms when built on Greenfield sites [Carmona 2003], and as such this
design seemed to be perfect to implement when strategising the development of these new towns – a
sort of blank canvass for many modernist architects of the time. The idea was to be able to create an
urban modern utopia, which would deliver British city dwellers from the dark failures of Victorian
housing to a bright new world of clean, functional towns [Gibbered 2008], with there dispersed site
planning, brick housing, and homey ‘people’s detailing’ [Hvattum and Hermansen 2004].

These New Towns…examples….

Depicted the modernist urban landscapes, presenting idealised sanitised visions of streets, public
spaces, and buildings in which the users are little represented [Larkham 1997].

The pattern of modernist development in our towns and cities continued to dominate for the next
couple of decades and, by the 1960’s modernism had become the lingua franca of British architecture,
whether it be schools, office complexes, homes, or even the new towns as above [Gibbered 2008].
Although perceived as successful demonstrations of ‘urban utopia’, the modernist ideal in urban
development will be forever synonymous with the disastrous implementation of public housing
schemes. Modernist urban space had moved away from buildings as consituent elements in urban
blocks (i.e. concrete terraced masses) defining streets and squares, to buildings as separate free
standing pavillions standing in amorphous space [Carmona 2003]. These planned estates could cope
with high densities of population, and would provide the amminities that a community required within
segregated blocks. What has since prevailed, and was marked during …..
The modern estates instead fostered a sense of isolation and anonymity, and reduced any existing sense
of community. The product was fatally flawed; large blocks simplified the land-use pattern, and the
nooks and crannies that house economically marginal but socially desirable uses and activities [Carmona
2003].

The rush to build high and fast ‘system-built’ blocks – prefabricated towers which could be assembled
on site as a mean of housing in the cities of the UK, and the idea that ……… [Gibbered 2008].