THE ECONOMIC THEORY UNDERLYING THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE BRITISH NEW TOWNS PROGRAMME   (A copy of the introductory chapter of the Economics of the New Town Programme file on the New Towns Record CD-ROM published by the Planning Exchange, Glasgow, in 1997)   The ideas of Ebenezer Howard provided the theory underlying the establishment of the British new towns programme. Howard envisaged that a Garden City built on agricultural land could provide housing affordable to all members of society by creating new urban values. Leaving aside social policy objectives, new town development can be theorised as achievement of the benefits of large scale comprehensive urban development on undeveloped land.   That summary conceals a number of interrelated components. New town development has to meet a number of costs not usually faced by small scale development at the periphery of existing urban areas. New town development requires the construction of a wide range of facilities, the co-operation of many different organisations and professions, investment well in advance of population, and financial support over a long period. To meet the extra costs associated with these requirements, new town developers have to capture the value of the new property values created. For Howard these values would to be captured by the Board of Management of the Garden City for the benefit of the inhabitants.   Small scale development at the fringe of existing towns and cities can take advantage of already existing urban facilities. But the large scale new town construction involves new infrastructure costs - such as roads, provision of drainage and sewerage facilities, schools, public buildings, public open space, buildings for employers and other employment related investment, - which small scale development can often avoid.   Howard recognised that existing public bodies could not undertake the range of functions required for new town development because their powers to acquire land or levy rates were limited by law. The Garden City Corporation would be a quasi public body, but with the freedom to act as a private owner of property. Garden City would have an elected Board of Management which, in carrying out the will of the people would solve to a large extent the problem of local self- government. (Howard, 1985, p 56-57) The New Towns Committee of 1946 under the Chairmanship of Lord Reith recommended that new towns should be built by development corporations whose Boards were appointed by central government (Reith, Interim Report, 1946). Later such bodies with members appointed by central government became known as QUANGOs - Quasi Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisations. The powers of the development corporations were extensive. The New Towns Acts allowed them freedom to undertake any activity conducive to the development of the new town.   Both Howard and the New Towns Committee of 1946 thought in terms of new towns complete with a full range of facilities. Howard envisaged in 1898 that a Garden City would meet the capital and running costs of schools and local government without the necessity of rates or special taxes. The new towns development corporations established nearly half a century later did not take over the local government, nor local government functions such as education. But the goals of the development corporations were in some other ways more extensive than those envisaged by Howard for the Boards of Management of Garden Cities.   The terms of reference of the New Towns Committee added the crucial phrase self-contained and balanced communities for living and working which has generally been interpreted to enrich the meaning of complete new towns in at least two dimensions. The term self-contained has been interpreted with emphasis on the journey to work; Britain s new towns were expected to be balanced with regard to the levels of employment and population, and it was assumed that this balance would minimise the level of commuting from the town. The term balanced has also been interpreted to mean balance in the social and employment structure, so that new towns would not be dominated by either a single employer nor by a single social class.   Neither of these ideas was clearly anticipated by Howard. Howard s Garden Cities were to be part of a system of Social Cities which were to be closely connected by a railway network. Howard did not discuss levels of commuting, but argued that the system of public transport which connected these Social Cities would be superior to that which connected different suburbs of London. Howard s main concerns were to abolish overcrowding in London and to achieve a marriage of town and country . Howard envisaged that rents in Garden Cities would be much lower than in London and so would be affordable by members of low income groups, but he did not explicitly advocate social balance.   Neither has it been envisaged that other towns and cities, in Britain or elsewhere, should become self-contained and balanced communities . Long distance commuting to places like central London has been encouraged. The normal processes of urban growth have favoured the growth of white collar suburbs and blue collar concentrations in inner city areas.   The goals set for the planning of the new towns were in these ways more ambitious and comprehensive than those generally adopted in the planning of historic cities or other urban areas. The breadth of these goals encouraged the involvement of organisations and professions not usually closely associated with town planning. In addition to the professions such as town planning architectural, surveying, and engineering which are associated mainly with planning of the physical environment, new town planning involved social and economic matters encouraging participation by professions who came to be known by titles such as social planners and employment development specialists.   The acquisition of land at low cost goes some way to offset the additional infrastructure cost and other costs involved in new town construction. But in order to acquire the land at lowest cost it is usually necessary to purchase well in advance of development. Much of the infrastructure has to be built in advance of population growth. The scale of development involved in new town construction requires finance over a longer period than is required for small scale development - so increasing interest payments,. The period required to demonstrate financial profitability is unlikely to come in less than, say, ten years - so increasing apparent risk. And at that stage there is need for further capital advances. For a period which is usually measurable in terms of decades new town development requires continued financial support.   Howard envisaged that the new town would be financed by mortgage debentures with interest at not more than 4%, with a sinking fund to pay off the capital debt. The new towns of Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City were financed, with some difficulty, more or less according to this pattern (see Purdom, 1949). The solution adopted for the British new towns programme was much simpler. For most of their life the development corporations of the new towns were financed by sixty year loans from central government.   The economic success of new town development depends upon the recovery by the development agency of the extra costs involved. Successful construction creates urban property values which are expressed in the market value of property in the new town. The Second Interim Report of the New Towns Committee of 1946, stressed the importance of the development corporation retaining the freehold of land and envisaged that the letting of shops would be very remunerative . But the Committee, chaired by Sir Reginald Wilson, on the form of accounts of the new town development corporations which reported in 1951 gave much greater emphasis to property values. The Wilson Report argued that the economic achievements of the development corporations should be judged by the total property values created:   The detailed plans of development are governed by a Master Plan in which housing, industry, town centre, open space and social service must fit harmoniously together, and the total value created will normally be greater than the sum of the separate parts. A small scale if imperfect analogy is provided by the accounting for civil engineering projects which take several years to complete, such as a bridge. The bridge is an integrated affair. There is no point in attempting an exact account for each span of the bridge separately. No single span is more important than the other, and in any case the total cost will contain many important items of expenditure such as planning and preparatory works, including flood precautions, which cannot readily be identified with any of the spans individually. The achievement of each particular New Town must be judged, ultimately, by reference to the total value created over a long period, when the fruits of policy and administration have really begun to show, and not by individual pieces or individual periods of development. (Wilson Report, 1951, pp 5-6)   The acceptance by government of the recommendations of the Wilson Report had a significant influence on the new towns programme. One of the main objectives (according to the Chairman) of the Committee - to give the development corporations freedom of action - was achieved. The development corporations could make and execute plans for the new towns without being influenced by the existing distribution of property values. The argument denies to central government, or any other body, the authority to say to a development corporation that a particular plot of land should not be designated as open space, for example, because it cost so much to buy.   This power quickly became taken-for-granted by new towns planners, but it is worthy of emphasis because this power is not available to other land use planners in Britain (except in expanded towns under the Town Development Act of 1952 and in Comprehensive Development Areas). Nor are such powers generally available to planners in other capitalist societies. Elsewhere effective planning depended upon a degree of consistency between the plans and the distribution of land values. Only in the new towns did planners have tabula rasa powers.   The Wilson Committee Report determined the form of accounts of the development corporation for the period 1952 to 1973 and the distinctive treatment of land values continued until 1986. Until the form of the accounts was radically changed in 1987, the accounts of the development corporation included separate estimates of value of the land and buildings components for all property bought and sold. Land within the designated area was effectively treated as a homogenous commodity. Many of statistics of land values quoted later in this document are notional figures in the sense that they are residuals resulting from estimates of the land value of the development corporations purchases and sales of land and buildings. The Wilson Committee Report argued in effect that a comparison between land value implicit in the total value created over a long period in comparison with such estimates of the historic cost would provide the proper basis for assessing the financial performance of the development corporations.   The development of the first generation of British New Towns accorded closely to Howard s economic theory reinforced by contributions by the New Towns Committee and the Wilson Report. The major difference was that the New Town Development Corporations were the creations of central government not quasi public local bodies as envisaged by Howard and as manifested in the private companies which developed Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City before the New Towns Act of 1946. The first generation of new towns were also favoured by low interest rates close to the levels assumed by Howard. But later generations of new towns faced high interest rates, rapid inflation, and changes in government policy and situations far removed from those of Garden City.   The economic record of the first generation of new towns is illustrated by taking Harlow as an example. Harlow, designated in 1947 and wound up in 1980, was probably the most financially successful of the new towns. The experience of Harlow contrasts in many dimensions with that of Milton Keynes which is used as a second case study. Milton Keynes was designated twenty years later in 1967 and brought to the end of its development stages in 1986. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/filearea.cgi?LMGT1=NEW-TOWNS&a=get&f=/econ.txt Bovenstaand de link naar de website van dit artikel.   menu pagina naar boven