New Towns

New towns have been built for centuries. With some exceptions, such as planned capital cities, twentiethcentury new towns were built as a response to the perceived problems of the expanding metropolis following industrialization. However, this broad rationale hides a large number of distinctive reasons for specific new town projects and programs. For example, new towns have been promoted as providing a planned mechanism for urban growth to relieve pressure from migration to larger cities; creating better environments than do center cities or suburban sprawl, with a balance of housing and job options and a healthy environment; providing infrastructure and services more efficiently than does incremental and unplanned development; limiting the loss of open space through better-designed development; promoting regional economic growth; and providing opportunities to develop new building technologies and urban forms.

There is no commonly agreed-on definition of a new town, although new towns must be large enough to have a sufficient mix of activities so that they can potentially be self-contained. Self-containment implies that all the activities of daily and weekly life can be carried out in the new town, which requires a mixture of jobs, housing options, and recreational and cultural opportunities.

There is no common terminology for new towns—in the United States, they are generally called new communities; elsewhere, they may be called satellite towns or garden cities. New towns take different forms. One typology of new towns much used in the 1970s distinguished among freestanding or self-contained new towns generally isolated from other developments; satellite new towns that had a complete mix of activities but were close to and integrated with a larger metropolitan area; new-towns-in-town, or new town enclaves that were large, comprehensive redevelopment sites in the existing fabric of the city; and add-on new towns or growth centers that used an existing small town as the basis for developing a new town. In the United States and internationally, the satellite new town is the most common form.

A few specialists consider the freestanding new town to be the only true new town type. According to others, large planned suburbs that are essentially residential are new towns in the sense of being new and comprehensively planned, though they do not have the elements for self-sufficiency in terms of a balanced complement of jobs, income groups, and housing options. Here, new towns are considered to be large developments—of more than 10,000 people—with all the components of self-containment but possibly linked to a wider metropolitan area.