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62). The Construction Of The New Towns Was Considered To Be Essential For ...

The construction of the New Towns was considered to be essential for both high economic growth and for solving the national post-war housing shortage. The Atlee government regarded the new towns as being highly beneficial to people's health as they moved away from major cities and industrial areas to places with cleaner air (Meller, 1997 p67).

In ecological terms such construction was harmful to the environment as more land was built upon and it meant a greater amount of pollution from traffic emissions, though of course nobody understood such implications at that time. Improvements in transport infrastructure and increasing levels of car ownership meant that the new towns were economically viable, as well as allowing their inhabitants to commute to the major cities to work in them (Daniels, Bradshaw, Shaw, & Sidaway, 2005 p. 147). Urban planning was thus considered to be very useful for the progress and development of London and the South-East of England, which traditionally has been the most populous and prosperous region of Britain. Urban planning was also intended to increase the prosperity levels of the other regions in Britain to be as high as possible to match the levels achieved in the South-East of England (Southall, 2000 p. 337). Controlled expansion of urban areas into the new towns was intended to solve the immediate post-war housing shortage and revive the British economy, whilst leaving the great bulk of the countryside untouched by new housing construction (Taylor, 1998 p.3).

Previous improvements in agricultural techniques meant that farming became more efficient nationally which had quickened the pace of urbanisation in Britain as a whole. Urbanisation in Britain had already had a strong impact upon the environment that went beyond the replacement of the countryside with polluting factories and unhealthy slum housing (Southall, 2000, p. 335). Higher crop yields from less land had the consequence that more land in rural areas became available to be used as development land. The greater availability of former agricultural land meant that is was easier to find enough land to construct new towns or expand existing cities across Britain. Urbanisation was a process that was accelerated by the need of industrial towns and cities to find workers to continue their expansion (Goudie & Viles, 1997 p. 5).

To begin with, the majority of new homes were traditional style houses that formed large council house estates right across the country, in architectural terms there was very little innovation or thought given to making the new housing stock architecturally sustainable or environmentally friendly. More attention was instead devoted to making all new houses comfortable, clean, and ensuring they were being built to last (Greed, 1996 p. 35). The new homes were intended to be better and larger than the ones that they had replaced.

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