ENGLISH cities are again bursting at the seams, 60 years after the New Towns Act sought to relieve postwar overcrowding. More than 90 per cent of the population now lives in urban areas covering just 8 per cent of the land. Since 1970 house building has fallen by 50 per cent, while the number of households has increased by 30 per cent, according to government figures. In 2005 the Barker report on housing supply stated that we need to build 209,000 new homes each year to meet demand, far more than the current annual level of 150,000. The Government responded by announcing an “ambition” to increase new housing provision to 200,000 units a year by 2016 — and, yet again, the (not so) New Towns are forming part of the solution.

In 1946 Stevenage in Hertfordshire was designated the first New Town. Ten more were built from scratch in the next five years, eight of them London overspill towns, including Bracknell, Basildon, Harlow and Crawley. The idealistic approach was similar to today’s “sustainable communities” (Stevenage was ahead of its time, with 50 cycle lanes and Britain’s first pedestrianised town centre).

Today many New Towns look decidedly less than Utopian, and redeveloping them falls to the private sector rather than the State. Two New Towns that have seen better days are Stevenage and Bracknell, both about to undergo massive regeneration at the hands of Stanhope, the development company responsible for the new Paternoster Square complex by St Paul’s in London, and Bishopsgate Tower, known as the Helter Skelter, which will be the City’s tallest tower when finished in 2010.

So what went wrong with the New Towns? Charles Walford, Stanhope’s property director, says that, behind the propaganda, they “weren’t very welcome in the first place, because they were plonked down in blue-rinse areas, where there was a lot of ‘We don’t want these slum chappies from the East End here’. It was all state-run council housing in Stevenage: terraces and semidetached in abundance, and the odd tower block. The brave new experiment just petered out and people reverted to type.”

In terms of infrastructure, Walford believes that initial investment couldn’t be sustained. “Over time the grand plan was not kept up. Stevenage is now a shopping centre that’s lost its shops.” Stanhope’s project director in charge of the Bracknell scheme, Rob Watts, agrees: “Normal towns change dynamically over time, but these were kept in aspic and not developed.”

At the heart of both redevelopments is a movement undreamt of by the New Town planners — the desire for town-centre living. In the 1950s every city worker wanted a house in the leafy suburbs; today they want an industrial loft conversion in the town centre. The next best thing is a flat in a brand-new development with shops and cafés on the doorstep, and that’s what Stanhope hopes to build in Stevenage, should planning permission be forthcoming (the application will be submitted next month). “There are only 150 people registered as living in Stevenage town centre,” says Walford, “and they’re mostly in an ex-council block. We’re putting ten times more people in the centre of the town.”

In the centre, 780 private one and two-bed-room flats will be built in five blocks of varying height, as well as 200 social housing flats above shops. About 400,000 sq ft of retail space, plus a department store, will also be created, as well as new council offices, a library, museum, bus station, car parking and a public square (the costs of these are offset by profits from retail rents). Disruption will be minimal, as the majority will be built on former council car parks. “The original plan for Stevenage was never really completed,” says Walford, “so that’s what we’re doing now.” But who will buy in shiny new Stevenage? “We’re aiming at a mixture of buyers, but London commuters will be a large percentage of it,” says Walford. “What we are riding on is the 20-minute connection to London by train.”

The same cannot be said for Bracknell, whose residents make do with an hour-long stopping service to London. Stanhope is pinning its hopes on wealthy shoppers from nearby Ascot and Virginia Water. “Less than a quarter of people living in and around Bracknell shop in the town centre,” says Watts. “We’ll try to give them a little bit of Windsor or Guildford, with the shopping and the parking that they want — convenient, accessible, all of those things.”

Stanhope’s plans for 700,000 sq ft of double-level shopping streets and 1,000 new town-centre flats (half over shops, half in accommodation blocks) have already won planning permission. “It’s that whole urban live-work-play thing,” says Watts. His biggest challenge is that “the old village high street was completely wiped away” when it became a New Town. “We’d love to be able to build on history or natural features, but there aren’t any. People have fallen out of love with these towns, so a big part of what we do is to create character. Bracknell will be a work in progress for the next 15 years.”

Perhaps then these New Towns will finally fulfil the ideals of their designers.

FACTFILE

There are 21 New Towns, built between 1946 and 1970, including Basildon, Corby, Crawley, Harlow, Hatfield, Hemel Hempstead, Milton Keynes, Northampton, Peterborough, Redditch, Runcorn, Skelmersdale, Telford, Warrington, Washington and Welwyn Garden City.

Explore Property

• Buying & Selling

• New Homes

• Overseas

• Interiors

• Investment

• Gardens

• Cool In Your Code

• Specials

• First-time buyer

Times recommends

• Second homes: credit crunch casualty or money-spinner?
• How I built my own sliding house
• Top 10 incentives for house buyers