Planning the World’s New Towns – A Tale of Two Countries, 1975-2013

Abstract

Reflecting their extensive domestic programmes, the UK and France became major exporters of New Town planning expertise. Yet each country delivered its expertise in different ways. Drawing on the UK’s own New Towns programme, a public sector international New Town planning agency, the British Urban Development Services Unit was created in 1975 but abandoned in 1978. Instead, national expertise was exported by UK private planning consultants, with strong government encouragement. By contrast France created a single public sector agency Groupement d’intéret économique Villes Nouvelles de France in 1984 that operated until 2013. The chapter interprets their different approaches, showing that the UK was much earlier affected by neo-liberal, pro-market political ideologies that instinctively favoured private rather than public sector approaches. In France, by contrast, neo-liberal sentiments were only slowly accepted and private planning consultancies were much less important.