New Town Background

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Stevenage is the UK’s first New Town, developed after the Second World War as a utopian place where communities could live and work together in a healthy and modern environment. The social reforms that shaped the New Town movement were first expressed here in a pioneering master plan that provided access to housing, employment, green spaces, shopping areas, and art- all connected by easy transport links. Amongst other experimental achievements, it was the first place to create a pedestrianised town centre and a highly unique cycling and walking network.

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New Towns developed from growing concern over the impoverished and cramped living conditions for many people living in urban places (particularly London). The first major social reform came from the Garden City movement from the turn of the 20th century onward, inspired by Sir Ebenezer Howard’s 1898 manifesto To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform. The Garden City towns, however, did not receive the necessary financial support and instead relied on wealthy private investors, which meant that they were not planned and managed as originally envisioned. The revolution, inspired by Willaim Morris’ vision of society replaced by an arts-and-crafts based return to the land, ended up creating nicer homes for the middle classes in garden cities/towns, but it did not address the wider issues of social reform for slum-dwelling working-class people.

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Toward the end of the First World War, with many people suffering increased hardship, the Garden City leaders reasserted their principles as ‘New Townsmen’, advocating that 100 new towns be built by the government. Government promises had been made during the war for ‘homes fit for heroes’, but the extent of housing was not fulfilled and primarily occurred as suburbs rather than new, self-sustaining towns.

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Bombing during the Second World War then exacerbated the need to develop and provide for communities, and government developments led to the New Towns Act 1946.  With a now centralised and geared up welfare state and a population with a can-do attitude, ready to forget the politics and horrors of both world wars, New Towns were an opportunity to start anew.

 

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Stevenage Art and Architecture

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The New Town also called for a style of architecture that embodied the movement. It needed to express a modern, reformed, and equal society. The many original Stevenage New Town buildings were about using new materials and technology – like reinforced concrete – to meet new building needs and for building forms to more honestly represent modern functions, materials, and social ideals – such as equality and democracy – rather than reusing and mixing historical styles (called historicism and eclecticism respectively). Much like how the New Town movement was rooted in previous decades, these buildings took their influence from earlier forms of modernism. The influence of the International Style’s sleek, steel and glass, white box facades is apparent; while the functionalism, modesty, and social ethos of Scandinavian humanism is also on display. Even a reference to the great modernist and founder of the De Stijl movement, Piet Mondrian, is shown in the buildings’ coloured panels and in the fountain basin. 

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However, these New Town buildings also separated themselves from their modernist predecessors as bolder and more unapologetic forms that utilised gritty, raw reinforced concrete. These early examples of Brutalism were a statement about a new, more ambitious vision for social reforms and modernism as the first New Town.

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For some of the buildings, engineers and architects embraced the machine age through prefabricated construction. Although this may have resulted in mass-produced construction, these systems enabled New Towns to provide for everyday living during extreme shortages, and so there is an ethical dimension to New Town planning.

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With the current Town Centre regeneration, there is an opportunity for Stevenage to explore its history and move forward. It’s an opportunity to appreciate and enhance the New Town landscape as well as continue the community’s intangible heritage as pioneers and creators. Just as the Joyride sculpture symbolised a new, utopian society, we have an opportunity to represent and inspire a future vision.