British Cities & New Towns

Past, present, future

Roman London

Medieval London

17th Century London

• London in 1650s• Size dictated by travel

time across the city – on foot or by carriage.

• City remained small• No sewage system• Very little public

infrastructure• Life expectancy very

low

Georgian – late 18th – early 19th

• Wealthy landowners, e.g., FitzRoy family, built terraces of housing in areas such as Bloomsbury (Fitzrovia).

• Relatively high density• Cess pits• Private water companies

supplied the wealthy• 1750 17% urban

population

London 1854

• Grew as railways developed, mainly to the North

• Workers’ fares enabled development of early suburbs, eg, Islington, Highgate

• Thames a “running sewer”

19th century housing

• 1890 – over 60% urban population

Dr John Snow

• Identified cause of cholera – tracked it to Broad St well.

• Pressure placed on Parliament to tackle disease & sewage disposal

Thomas Crapper…

• 1851 – life expectancy in inner city areas – 26

• In rural areas – 57• 1848 – 1st of several

Public Works Acts designed to improve water & sanitation

• Wealthy people had fixed bathrooms & WCs installed

• The poor shared with other families or had latrines at the bottom of the garden

Inter-war/early 20th century growth

• 1930s underground lines enabled development of outer suburbs

• Many 10th C slums cleared

• “Tenements”, poor quality housing constructed

Older planned settlements

• Saltaire, Bradford.

• Port Sunlight, Lever Bros, Merseyside.

Ebenezer Howard the Garden City Movement

• Letchworth – the 1st modern “new town”.

New Towns – why?

• Massive amount of housing stock lost during war

• Poor quality slum housing demolished

• No open space in cities• Air pollution in cities• Traffic congestion• Poor infrastructure• 1950/60 tower blocks

were an alternative

Simple Plan of 20th Century New Towns Stevenage & Milton Keynes (city)

Structure of 1940/50s New Towns• Main roads kept separate from residential areas• Local roads link residential areas to other parts of the town/city• Neighbourhoods – served by local services, shops, junior

schools etc• Each neighbourhood separated from the others by open space• Several neighbourhoods served by higher order district service

centres – a hierarchy developed• Industry on NE edge of the towns• Designed to be self-sufficient• Early industries were branch factories – hit hard by closures in

1980s recession• Narrow range of skills in population• High unemployment today• Those close to London, other major urban areas, - commuter

settlements• (See Telford Map)

The future?• Green belt disappears as Blair

fails to honour countryside vow• Tony Blair came to power

proclaiming his "love of the countryside". Figures released last week show, however, that he has allowed thousands of acres of Britain's most protected green belt land to disappear since 1997.

• Mr Blair's Government has approved 162 different schemes for building in the green belt - land that is meant to be preserved to prevent urban sprawl - according to a parliamentary written answer.

• The result is that housing estates, rubbish dumps and gypsy caravan sites occupy land previously covered with grass and trees.

• Major blow to green belt defenders

• THE borough's green and pleasant hills could be lost if the Government presses ahead with controversial plans to build thousands of new homes in the Midlands.

• That's the warning from the Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) who are so concerned that Solihull could lose almost 500 acres of greenfield land that they are holding a public meeting in the town centre next week.