There is magic in the invention of new towns. Who wouldn’t want to plan out their ideal urban community, like Sim City and its many video game imitators, or Babar the elephant building Celesteville with its palace of work, palace of pleasure, perfect jobs for each citizen and a lake for swimming and sailing? Our king had great fun devising his Poundbury model town. The lucky members of the government’s new towns taskforce in England have been dreaming up a modern generation of new civic places, and are due to unveil their plans in July.
They work in the shadow of the great 1946 New Towns Act, and plans drawn up under a similar committee, chaired by Lord Reith, which led to the building of Stevenage, Harlow, Crawley, Corby and others. In the next waves came the ambitious city of Milton Keynes, Peterborough and others.
