After some wartime planning, the British New Towns were launched in 1945-6 by the post-war Labour government. The New Towns were essentially statist, top-down initiatives to relieve the problems of congested urban areas and intended as self-contained and balanced communities for work and living. This paper critically examines the experience of Stevenage, the first New Town (designated November 1946), in light of changing political, economic and social circumstances at local and national levels. Its early years were very unsuccessful in fulfilling the foundational aims of the programme. This reflected a combination of strong local opposition, excessive government impatience and clumsy management so that, before 1951, it had a very poor record of housing completions. The 1950s and 1960s were highly successful for Stevenage’s growth and, to a large extent, in meeting the foundational aims of New Towns. It was outstandingly successful in becoming self-contained as regards employment. There were however limitations in the extent to which it was a socially balanced community that was truly relieving the problems of Greater London, whence most of its new arrivals had come. Because new residents gained house tenancies in Stevenage on the basis of the main breadwinner’s job, there was soon an upper working-class/lower middle-class predominance. The unskilled working class, ethnic minorities and older people were markedly underrepresented, present in much lower proportions than in congested inner London. There was also underrepresentation of managers, higher professional groups or the self-employed, reflecting both residential choices and the branch plant nature of its manufacturing economy. Several of these aspects became more problematic during the 1970s and 1980s, as the weaknesses of inner metropolitan areas grew. There were efforts henceforth to make housing tenancies less directly related to jobs. However, in 1980 the Stevenage Development Corporation was wound up and, during its final years, initiative had already been passing to other hands. Its rental housing stock was transferred to the local council while home ownership also grew markedly during the 1970s. The shift to private initiative went further when the Conservative Government after 1979 insisted that industrial and commercial assets soon be sold to help finance the remaining New Towns in the programme. These important and continuing changes, together with wider shifts such as manufacturing job decline, rise of service employment, growing car-based mobility and growing place of women in employment had further impacts for Stevenage. They raised further questions about how far it fulfilled the original New Town conception and whether that conception was even any longer relevant. The last section shows that Stevenage, although continuing to be an attractive location for employers, is now a much less self-contained and balanced community than in earlier decades. = Le programme des villes nouvelles britanniques a été lancé en 1945-46 par le gouvernement travailliste sur la base de rapports publiés pendant la guerre. Ces villes nouvelles étaient de initiatives étatistes, hiérarchiques, menées afin de soulager les problèmes de surpeuplement des villes britanniques ; elles étaient censées devenir des cités autonomes et indépendantes des grandes zones urbaines. Cet article examine l’expérience conduite à Stevenage, la première ville nouvelle (décidée en 1946) à la lumière de changements contextuels aux niveaux national et local dans les domaines politique, économique et social. Il cherche à évaluer dans quelle mesure le développement de la ville a répondu aux ambitions du projet initial dans le domaine du logement, de la mixité sociale et de l’emploi. Il vise aussi à mesurer l’impact de l’abolition de la development corporation dans les années 1980 sur l’évolution de la ville et avance un bilan au début des années 2020.
Ward, Stephen V.
School of the Built Environment
Year of publication: 2022Date of RADAR deposit: 2023-11-03