Sites for Labour's New Towns that already have rail connections

[Starmill]

Plant shrubs instead.

Or you can buy a packet of mixed native seeds and just dump them on, leaving it as a mini wildflower meadow. That takes fairly little effort and barely needs any maintenance at all. You may want to border it with something of course and shrubs could be a good candidate. Traditionally this would have been thought of as a mess, yes, but nowadays it's really gaining popularity. At the end of the day it's your land though, you can do broadly what you like with it.

 

[Technologist]

It would be interesting to see research on this supposed attachment to garden space. My suspicion is that it may be significantly less in the under-40s.

(We have no front garden, opening directly onto the pavement instead, and it’s fine. Our back garden is more a very small “yard” and we barely use it. Living in a small town with easy access to the countryside and to the town park/playground means the communal space is much more appealing.)

This, with a lot of things people have an idea of what they would prefer but its often different when they try alternatives. As a social species many things are actually better when done as a group. Personally I have felt a lot more isolated since moving to a single family home in a newbuild suburb, but the issue of anti-social behaviour tends to move people towards personal ownership of spaces

This bit of work is looking at relative sizes of UK cities versus European ones, TLDR more people in European cities can get around on public transport because more people live near stations because those areas of towns can densify.

Mapping the 30-minute city

How easily can people reach the city centre? Ten case studies comparing the public transport networks and urban form of UK and Western European cities.

www.centreforcities.org

 

[urbophile]

This bit of work is looking at relative sizes of UK cities versus European ones, TLDR more people in European cities can get around on public transport because more people live near stations because those areas of towns can densify.

Mapping the 30-minute city

How easily can people reach the city centre? Ten case studies comparing the public transport networks and urban form of UK and Western European cities.

www.centreforcities.org

This seems singularly unhelpful. There is no definition of 'city': Manchester obviously includes the whole (or most) of Greater Manchester, whereas Leeds, for example, seems to ignore peripheral towns which are in fact within the city boundaries. I don't know if the continental boundaries are more logical. The maps don't make it clear which areas are within the 30-minute travel zone. The comments are repetitive and use much the same words to describe each city. I'm amazed that the only British city that is credited with a better-than-average public transport network is Bristol, which in my admittedly sparse experience seemed appalling. Certainly compared to cities with developed local rail and metro systems.

That's not to say that the general picture is false. Density of population is a major factor in the efficiency of cities. But I'd have thought Glasgow would have emerged better considering it has a tradition of tenement housing comparable to most continental cities.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I think that misinterprets 30 (or 15) minute cities. They're not about how quickly you can reach the centre, they're about how quickly you can reach daily essentials on foot or by bicycle (specifically not by car) - supermarket, primary school, doctor etc.

But to do what they want you are probably considering the general built up area, which is fairly comparable (and Hamburg is a bit bigger than Manchester, too).

Having personal experience of living in both, Hamburg's public transport makes Manchester's look like a sick joke. It's one of the best systems in the world in my experience - excellent rail coverage and excellent integration, and at a very fair price. Personally I'd say it's considerably better than London.

WY is a difficult one. It's clearly not one city, it's more like the whole Ruhrgebiet. The comparison would probably be with the whole West Midlands (rather than just Coventry, say) or with the North West (rather than just Manchester).

It's not just density, nor is it even mostly density - density simply affects the economics of the transport system. Any primarily bus-based city (which Manchester largely is) is always going to fare badly because buses are so slow. You need high capacity, high frequency (min 4tph, ideally 6 - and most routes in Hamburg go to 12 in the morning and evening peaks) rapid transit rail, with bus used to bring people to that on very short shuttle runs if they don't live close to a station. (And to refer back to my 4 leaf clover structure, that involves no buses and thus will be the fastest possible!)

But talking of density I'd be interested in a comparison of figures for the whole of the main built up area of Hamburg vs Manchester. I think they'd actually be remarkably similar (though Hamburg a little more dense), because Manchester is full of terraced housing (which is quite dense) and very little parkland, whereas while most housing (but not all) in Hamburg is 3-5 storey tenement or courtyard style flats there is a lot of greenery there too separating the blocks.

 

[HSTEd]

The government doesn't have a capacity or the political capital to build 50 Milton Keynes as these are centrally driven projects. Whereas the building of millions of homes can be devolved to regional bodies and they can put the funds into both transport for the new homes but also civic features for the residents of nearby towns that will be affected.

Would we build 50 Milton Keynes or just build one Milton Keynes 50 times the size?
To achieve the equivalent of 2 million homes built near railway stations, the actual answer would be one Milton Keynes 17 times the size, because ~117,000 housing units are present in Milton Keynes.

That's a Milton Keynes roughly 4x the linear dimensions, which whilst large still does not cover a significant fraction of England. That's essentially from King's Lynn to Spalding.

In case of the plan advocated by Centre for Cites the North East Councils would be pocketing about £4 billion, Birmingham £11 billion and Manchester £15 billion (I've adjusted for inflation vs the 2019 report). With those sort of incentives the local politicians will sell that scheme pretty effectively!

I very much doubt they would, £15bn for Manchester won't really get you very much - in return for massive and impossible-to-reverse changes to the built environment across the bulk of the city.
Any politician that went along with such a plan would be rapidly disposed of.

That's assuming the local electorate even believed that the £15bn will ever actually arrive, and they won't.
NIMBYism is not really a rational economic position, so it can't be bought off with economic bribery - at least not at reasonable cost.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Would we build 50 Milton Keynes or just build one Milton Keynes 50 times the size?
To achieve the equivalent of 2 million homes built near railway stations, the actual answer would be one Milton Keynes 17 times the size, because ~117,000 housing units are present in Milton Keynes.

That's a Milton Keynes roughly 4x the linear dimensions, which whilst large still does not cover a significant fraction of England.

Unless you want it to be very car-dependent, you probably want to build 200 (where did that 50 come from?) quarter MKs - noting the optimum public transport arrangement of the 4-leafed clover. And probably denser too.

But yes a 4x MK is still smaller than London or Greater Manchester. (MK is about 10 miles square-ish, or roughly the size of the main built up area of Liverpool before it moves onto beads on the railway strings).

 

[Burton Road]

The obvious site for a New Town outside the South East for me would be somewhere in mid-Cheshire, which is well served with existing stations as well as major road links, is in an economically successful area with high demand for housing, but has relatively poor quality countryside/landscapes because of the legacy of industry. To build a centre capable of serving a larger population you'd probably need a new station though, either along the WCML near Moulton, or where the proposed HS2 (and presumably any restored future version) crosses the Northwich-Sandbach line. Either way its links to London, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester could all be made very good relatively easily. New development would have to be limited to the lands west of the Northwich-Middlewich road, as the area east of that is undermined by brine caverns used for gas storage, so I'm not sure what the maximum potential population would be.

I very much doubt they would, £15bn for Manchester won't really get you very much - in return for massive and impossible-to-reverse changes to the built environment across the bulk of the city.
Any politician that went along with such a plan would be rapidly disposed of.

I mean Manchester is already undergoing a massive and impossible to reverse change in its built environment, and the locals are pretty relaxed about it.

 

[AlastairFraser]

The obvious site for a New Town outside the South East for me would be somewhere in mid-Cheshire, which is well served with existing stations as well as major road links, is in an economically successful area with high demand for housing, but has relatively poor quality countryside/landscapes because of the legacy of industry. To build a centre capable of serving a larger population you'd probably need a new station though, either along the WCML near Moulton, or where the proposed HS2 (and presumably any restored future version) crosses the Northwich-Sandbach line. Either way its links to London, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester could all be made very good relatively easily. New development would have to be limited to the lands west of the Northwich-Middlewich road, as the area east of that is undermined by brine caverns used for gas storage, so I'm not sure what the maximum potential population would be.

See my Acton Bridge proposal in my post towards the start of the thread.
That also avoids the cost of a new station.

 

[Bletchleyite]

See my Acton Bridge proposal in my post towards the start of the thread.
That also avoids the cost of a new station.

What you also need to consider, though, is how employment will work. It's notable that Milton Keynes and Stevenage have been relative successes, but Skelmersdale and Peterlee far less so. Which in practice means, without major political changes, that you're going to want them mostly in the South East, though they may also be viable if within easy commuting (=a direct train to) Manchester or Birmingham.

If East West Rail is built in full, a few of them along its route would make a lot of sense, giving easy access to employment in Oxford, Cambridge, Bedford, Milton Keynes and London, for instance. And I completely agree with Cheddington, and possibly another one at Tring Station (which is a couple of miles from Tring proper) - it's just farmland.

To be fair, I would be very surprised if Winslow didn't, once the station opens, undergo significant expansion a bit like Bicester has turned (despite not being a new town as such) from a small market town to a much larger place in the 20 years or so I've known it.

Buckingham might similarly be ripe for expansion if you could get a railway to it.

Probably also fairly large swathes of rural Sussex and Kent that might be suitable but I don't know those areas as well to specifically pick something out.

Actually, talking of Manchester, the area around Glazebrook station (a bit useless as it is) would be an ideal site for a 20-50K "figure 8" ecotown. Would probably need green belt regs changing though as it would run Warrington and Manchester together.

The other obvious North West one would be to mirror Skelmersdale towards the railway taking in Rainford Junction, which would mean it had two railway stations! (You could even consider moving the town centre nearer the railway and redeveloping the existing dive of a shopping arcade!). But is there enough employment in Liverpool? I suppose it would have direct trains to Manchester then.

 

[Burton Road]

See my Acton Bridge proposal in my post towards the start of the thread.
That also avoids the cost of a new station.

Acton Bridge seems the wrong side of Northwich to me as the housing demand is primarily in Cheshire East, and it would be practically impossible to connect to Manchester from the existing station.

What you also need to consider, though, is how employment will work. It's notable that Milton Keynes and Stevenage have been relative successes, but Skelmersdale and Peterlee far less so. Which in practice means, without major political changes, that you're going to want them mostly in the South East, though they may also be viable if within easy commuting (=a direct train to) Manchester or Birmingham.

...
Actually, talking of Manchester, the area around Glazebrook station (a bit useless as it is) would be an ideal site for a 20-50K "figure 8" ecotown. Would probably need green belt regs changing though as it would run Warrington and Manchester together.

The other obvious North West one would be to mirror Skelmersdale towards the railway taking in Rainford Junction, which would mean it had two railway stations! (You could even consider moving the town centre nearer the railway and redeveloping the existing dive of a shopping arcade!). But is there enough employment in Liverpool? I suppose it would have direct trains to Manchester then.

Taking employment into account the only obvious NW location would be in Cheshire, because it's the most prosperous area of the north of England but has its growth potential limited by major restrictions on house building in places like Macclesfield, Wilmslow, Knutsford etc. A Mid-Cheshire site to the west of these towns would be commutable to Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool (and should the station be a HS2 station London) and have local access to major employment locations in Warrington, north-east Cheshire and south Greater Manchester via the M56 and M6.

 

[Doctor Fegg]

To be fair, I would be very surprised if Winslow didn't, once the station opens, undergo significant expansion a bit like Bicester has turned (despite not being a new town as such) from a small market town to a much larger place in the 20 years or so I've known it.

Oh absolutely. Winslow is either going to get big like Bicester, or expensive like several of the Cotswold and Thames Valley stations. And which one depends entirely on planning policy.

 

[Technologist]

I think that misinterprets 30 (or 15) minute cities. They're not about how quickly you can reach the centre, they're about how quickly you can reach daily essentials on foot or by bicycle (specifically not by car) - supermarket, primary school, doctor etc.

But to do what they want you are probably considering the general built up area, which is fairly comparable (and Hamburg is a bit bigger than Manchester, too).

Having personal experience of living in both, Hamburg's public transport makes Manchester's look like a sick joke. It's one of the best systems in the world in my experience - excellent rail coverage and excellent integration, and at a very fair price. Personally I'd say it's considerably better than London.

WY is a difficult one. It's clearly not one city, it's more like the whole Ruhrgebiet. The comparison would probably be with the whole West Midlands (rather than just Coventry, say) or with the North West (rather than just Manchester).

It's not just density, nor is it even mostly density - density simply affects the economics of the transport system. Any primarily bus-based city (which Manchester largely is) is always going to fare badly because buses are so slow. You need high capacity, high frequency (min 4tph, ideally 6 - and most routes in Hamburg go to 12 in the morning and evening peaks) rapid transit rail, with bus used to bring people to that on very short shuttle runs if they don't live close to a station. (And to refer back to my 4 leaf clover structure, that involves no buses and thus will be the fastest possible!)

But talking of density I'd be interested in a comparison of figures for the whole of the main built up area of Hamburg vs Manchester. I think they'd actually be remarkably similar (though Hamburg a little more dense), because Manchester is full of terraced housing (which is quite dense) and very little parkland, whereas while most housing (but not all) in Hamburg is 3-5 storey tenement or courtyard style flats there is a lot of greenery there too separating the blocks.

This has nothing to do with 15 minute cities.

The analysis is looking at agglomeration economics, this is a property of how many people can interact and essentially means that large cities and city regions can have more specialisation and economies of scale and thus higher productivity. E.g. if you are a Dr in a town you can be a GP, if you are Dr in a city you can be a consultant in general hospital, if you are Dr in a global city you can be a world leading Prof advancing your profession. Or if your population is beyond a certain size you can have the population to support stuff like arenas, opera houses, world class museums, research institutes which then further attract more higher paying/value activities.

Cities in the UK are poorer and less productive than similar sized cities in Europe because they don't function as a whole unit, people cannot move about them via public transport. Their point is that even if you improve the public transport there won't automatically be an economic improvement because there isn't the density of people around the stops to benefit from it. The same goes for HS2 and NPR linking Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool together isn't that game changing if most people in those cities can't get to the station.

Regarding city sizes they are using urban area data which looks at how far the built up areas extend rather than where municipal boundaries end. By that measure Manchester and Hamburg are of comparable size.

There is an associated report that goes into greater detail.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Cities in the UK are poorer and less productive than similar sized cities in Europe because they don't function as a whole unit, people cannot move about them via public transport. Their point is that even if you improve the public transport there won't automatically be an economic improvement because there isn't the density of people around the stops to benefit from it.

Once again this isn't true. Density only affects economic viability of the system itself - if you're willing to subsidise it, it can be as good as you like and still bring the benefits. There are so many car journeys there that potential custom for a good public transport network is near-unlimited.

 

[Technologist]

I very much doubt they would, £15bn for Manchester won't really get you very much - in return for massive and impossible-to-reverse changes to the built environment across the bulk of the city.
Any politician that went along with such a plan would be rapidly disposed of.

That's assuming the local electorate even believed that the £15bn will ever actually arrive, and they won't.
NIMBYism is not really a rational economic position, so it can't be bought off with economic bribery - at least not at reasonable cost.

The bribery isn't directly for the people, its for the mayor and the council!

In general both sides would like to get their hands on that much money so it may not be quite the massive partisan issue either. £15 billion is a massive amount of money in council budget terms particularly if it is ring fenced into capital spend (the assumption being that day to day spend will scale with more council tax payers and business rates).

Most public will just enjoy big flashy things being built and probably won't pay enormous attention to geeky stuff like planning changes around stations, more development by rule rather than individual planning applications etc.

Once again this isn't true. Density only affects economic viability of the system itself - if you're willing to subsidise it, it can be as good as you like and still bring the benefits. There are so many car journeys there that potential custom for a good public transport network is near-unlimited.

1: If you have a less dense city then you either have people with an excessive distance to get to a public transport stop or you have to send the public transport on meandering slow routes to pick enough people up. In practice people will just use a car.
2: The cost does matter, if your subsidy ends up costing more than the benefits because you are attempting to create better public transport than the density allows then there is no rational for doing it.

Increasing density ultimately lowers property costs, gets better public transport and creates the catchment areas for good services within a walkable area.

 

[HSTEd]

The bribery isn't directly for the people, its for the mayor and the council!

In general both sides would like to get their hands on that much money so it may not be quite the massive partisan issue either. £15 billion is a massive amount of money in council budget terms particularly if it is ring fenced into capital spend (the assumption being that day to day spend will scale with more council tax payers and business rates).

If it is ring fenced into capital spend you won't be able to spend much of it without resulting in a deeply embarassing Birmingham Library situation.
The council will not be able to afford to operate any flashy new public services built.

But none of this helps when the threat of massive housebuilding gets the local government defeated in the next election and replaced with people who won't take the deal.

Most public will just enjoy big flashy things being built and probably won't pay enormous attention to geeky stuff like planning changes around stations, more development by rule rather than individual planning applications etc.

If that was true the bulk of local government would not be under the control of the anti development lobby.
But it is.

Increasing density ultimately lowers property costs, gets better public transport and creates the catchment areas for good services within a walkable area.

Increasing density doesn't lower property costs, because all increasing density benefit sis land costs.
And land costs are almost entirely determined by the stroke of the pen of the planning authority and can be whatever the planning authoriity wishes.
The cost of land excluding arbitrary planning tax is about £10,000 per hectare! It's negligible next to the cost of the rest of the property.

All other costs increase with increasing density, it forces the use of far more expensive construction techniques, restricts site accesses etc etc etc. Those construction techniques will also slow construction and prevent us from rapidly pumping out the millions of housing units we need to fix this.

In a new large development we can make use of low operating cost public transport systems that can serve low(er) densities without consuming enormous ongoing subsidies.
There would be no need to resort to road based buses with their enormous staffing costs and terrible operational characteristics. Even in the MK layout a single transport location per square puts virtually everyone within about 600m of it, and a large part of the population much less than that. In South Manchester I currently have to walk 510m to get to my nearest bus stop (at least one served at a useful intensity)

 

[Bletchleyite]

1: If you have a less dense city then you either have people with an excessive distance to get to a public transport stop or you have to send the public transport on meandering slow routes to pick enough people up. In practice people will just use a car.

Neither of those is really true. It has more to do with layout than density.

Much of Hamburg's outer reaches is quite low density. Around the station Kiwittsmoor where my student halls were (which is curiously analogous to Aughton Park in lots of ways - Hamburg has many Liverpool parallels) there are quite a lot of Einfamilienhaeuser i.e. detached houses and some flats - no more dense than Aughton, which itself probably has more terraces but also has detacheds and flats.

It's very hard to directly compare Hamburg and Manchester urban areas because it's very hard (as you said above) to define the city area. But on the face of it they seem to be of very similar density - Hamburg having far more greenery but in general building a bit higher, Manchester seriously lacking in greenery until you get outside the city (it's really lacking in parks compared to most other British cities) but being mostly Victorian terraces and 1930s semis.

2: The cost does matter, if your subsidy ends up costing more than the benefits because you are attempting to create better public transport than the density allows then there is no rational for doing it.

This depends on how you quantify the benefits.

Even within the UK it varies. Merseyrail is subsidised to the hilt and is thus basically the same as any S-Bahn you'll find in any German city (though the bus connections are weaker and there's a whole 100 degree-ish segment of the city it doesn't cover at all - but where it does cover people use it, even if there's a Rangie and a Jag on the drive). Leeds is almost a bus-only city (and what rail exists is very weak) so does less well, but costs less.

Increasing density ultimately lowers property costs

To a point. If you build three-storey townhouses instead of bungalows it does. But building flats is rather more expensive than building houses as modern techniques like wooden framing don't work.

gets better public transport and creates the catchment areas for good services within a walkable area.

Milton Keynes is a 15-20 (ish) minute city. It's just a question of how you lay those services out. MK probably does it better than most British cities because the local centre concept was designed in from the start, rather than you having haphazard parades of random shops (though you do get local centre like places in British cities - Old Roan is a bit like that for example - it's very German in appearance - you have a decent set of shops and a bus and rail interchange all together).

 

[Technologist]

If it is ring fenced into capital spend you won't be able to spend much of it without resulting in a deeply embarrassing Birmingham Library situation.
The council will not be able to afford to operate any flashy new public services built.

But none of this helps when the threat of massive housebuilding gets the local government defeated in the next election and replaced with people who won't take the deal.

If that was true the bulk of local government would not be under the control of the anti development lobby.

Increasing density doesn't lower property costs, because all increasing density benefit sis land costs.
And land costs are almost entirely determined by the stroke of the pen of the planning authority and can be whatever the planning authoriity wishes.
The cost of land excluding arbitrary planning tax is about £10,000 per hectare! It's negligible next to the cost of the rest of the property.

All other costs increase with increasing density, it forces the use of far more expensive construction techniques, restricts site accesses etc etc etc. Those construction techniques will also slow construction and prevent us from rapidly pumping out the millions of housing units we need to fix this.

Ok, forgive the brevity inherent with an internet forum post. When I say ring fenced for capital spend what I would mean is that a council can't take windfall cash an use it to spend on basic services which should be funded from other means. It would be reasonable for example to spend it on transport and a certain amount of running costs for a fixed period of time, the argument being that once bedded in it will need less support and also grow the tax base over that time. A better term would be "ring fence the money for economic development and civic infrastructure".

At the moment local councils have negligible incentives to sell residential development to local people, give them more incentives and you will get more of it. If the impact of being a NIMBY wrecker is to drop half the money they have to play with in the bin I don't think most parties or councils will take that option, the whole skill of being a politician is to get the public to accept or ignore things that don't benefit them and to notice the things that the politcal group has done for them.

The other part of the argument is that doing some of these changes actually stuffs silver into the mouths of existing residents. If you sit on a low density semi it would likely fit two 4 story town houses that could be subdivided into two properties each. There are policies that could unlock this opportunity such as street votes or local development orders.

The key point is that density creates value because people want to be near services and amenities which are created by other people and sustained by lots of people being able to access them (inc public transport). That value is captured by increasing the land price which can then be captured partially or wholly by local authorities to spend on further economic or civic development. If we're sensible we also have a long term wealth tax to get some of the value captured by the super wealthy from doing this!

 

[AlastairFraser]

Acton Bridge seems the wrong side of Northwich to me as the housing demand is primarily in Cheshire East, and it would be practically impossible to connect to Manchester from the existing station.



Taking employment into account the only obvious NW location would be in Cheshire, because it's the most prosperous area of the north of England but has its growth potential limited by major restrictions on house building in places like Macclesfield, Wilmslow, Knutsford etc. A Mid-Cheshire site to the west of these towns would be commutable to Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool (and should the station be a HS2 station London) and have local access to major employment locations in Warrington, north-east Cheshire and south Greater Manchester via the M56 and M6.

1) The housing demand may be in Cheshire East, but land is much more expensive in most of Cheshire East, and the existing infrastructure is worse too. Manchester wouldn't necessarily be a primary target to relieve - it's just a convenient location nearly equidistant from Manchester and Liverpool, people moving out of either city and the surrounding towns wouldn't necessarily work there after the move.

2) Encouraging commuting on HS2 would be entirely stupid, given it is specifically designed to relieve the WCML of intercity passengers, not commuters.
However, if you were to build in Mid Cheshire around an existing station, Goostrey station may be a good idea.
It has plenty of land to build on close by, but you'd have to be careful about getting close to Jodrell Bank and getting planning permission would be an absolute nightmare.

 

[DJ_K666]

Lichfield will have capacity going south as it stands not north. Rugby is expanding to the east with Rugby Parkway expected to open within a couple of years.

I really hate all these flashy 'Parkway' type names. It should be called 'Houlton' as Rugby Parkway is a misnomer. Plus its a mile from the motorway along a horrible road, the A428. I bet some suit dreamed that up at a meeting.

 

[AlastairFraser]

What you also need to consider, though, is how employment will work. It's notable that Milton Keynes and Stevenage have been relative successes, but Skelmersdale and Peterlee far less so. Which in practice means, without major political changes, that you're going to want them mostly in the South East, though they may also be viable if within easy commuting (=a direct train to) Manchester or Birmingham.

If East West Rail is built in full, a few of them along its route would make a lot of sense, giving easy access to employment in Oxford, Cambridge, Bedford, Milton Keynes and London, for instance. And I completely agree with Cheddington, and possibly another one at Tring Station (which is a couple of miles from Tring proper) - it's just farmland.

To be fair, I would be very surprised if Winslow didn't, once the station opens, undergo significant expansion a bit like Bicester has turned (despite not being a new town as such) from a small market town to a much larger place in the 20 years or so I've known it.

Buckingham might similarly be ripe for expansion if you could get a railway to it.

Probably also fairly large swathes of rural Sussex and Kent that might be suitable but I don't know those areas as well to specifically pick something out.

Actually, talking of Manchester, the area around Glazebrook station (a bit useless as it is) would be an ideal site for a 20-50K "figure 8" ecotown. Would probably need green belt regs changing though as it would run Warrington and Manchester together.

The other obvious North West one would be to mirror Skelmersdale towards the railway taking in Rainford Junction, which would mean it had two railway stations! (You could even consider moving the town centre nearer the railway and redeveloping the existing dive of a shopping arcade!). But is there enough employment in Liverpool? I suppose it would have direct trains to Manchester then.

Continuation of the unsustainable economic trends pulling population into the SE will just make things worse though. You'll precipitate another housing crisis if you incentivise people to come down by building New Towns in the South East. Smaller growth in the SE can be dealt with by new extensions to existing towns e.g. Winslow as you've said.
(Although I don't see it growing to the size of Bicester, it's too far from Oxford and MK has room to expand if more reasonably priced housing is desired. Maybe it would become an exurban London commuter town, if the proposed Chiltern services down East West Rail as an extension from Aylesbury Vale get the green light.)

Your Rainford idea isn't bad, although I think it might be opposed because it would mean unbroken development from Liverpool to Wigan, no?
As for Glazebrook, good luck building on the mosses in the area! I think it would be fun trying to build houses on rafts round there.

 

[The Planner]

I really hate all these flashy 'Parkway' type names. It should be called 'Houlton' as Rugby Parkway is a misnomer. Plus its a mile from the motorway along a horrible road, the A428. I bet some suit dreamed that up at a meeting.

Probably Warwickshire council, they are promoting it.

 

[DJ_K666]

Probably Warwickshire council, they are promoting it.

Yeah. Means they'll only screw it up if its them. I don't have a very high opinion of them tbh.

 

[bramling]

What you also need to consider, though, is how employment will work. It's notable that Milton Keynes and Stevenage have been relative successes, but Skelmersdale and Peterlee far less so. Which in practice means, without major political changes, that you're going to want them mostly in the South East, though they may also be viable if within easy commuting (=a direct train to) Manchester or Birmingham.

MK and Stevenage are only really successful in terms of being heavily reliant on London. Stevenage in particular is a pretty depressing place, and a walk around its town centre will paint a picture of something that's anything but a success story. What both places have done is choke fully their local road network. I think I also read somewhere that Stevenage is one of the most car dependant towns in Britain, with pollution levels to match.

 

[BrianW]

I really hate all these flashy 'Parkway' type names. It should be called 'Houlton' as Rugby Parkway is a misnomer. Plus its a mile from the motorway along a horrible road, the A428. I bet some suit dreamed that up at a meeting.

Sadly, what you are EDIT- or- I think of 'flashy Parkway' names, Rugby Parkway seems as appropriate as Bristol Parkway- more 'attractive' and 'successful' than Stoke Gifford. It seems well-located: M45/M1/A428/Rugby.

 

[DJ_K666]

Sadly, what you are EDIT- or- I think of 'flashy Parkway' names, Rugby Parkway seems as appropriate as Bristol Parkway- more 'attractive' and 'successful' than Stoke Gifford. It seems well-located: M45/M1/A428/Rugby.

Well certainly the M1, although I do maintain the A428 between the station site znd the M1 is horrible. The M45 can probably be scrubbed as that's a south facing junction to the south, unless someone wants to brave Coventry and wants to get away quickly ,(I always do lol)

 

[Bletchleyite]

MK and Stevenage are only really successful in terms of being heavily reliant on London. Stevenage in particular is a pretty depressing place, and a walk around its town centre will paint a picture of something that's anything but a success story. What both places have done is choke fully their local road network. I think I also read somewhere that Stevenage is one of the most car dependant towns in Britain, with pollution levels to match.

Unless there's a major policy shift, the only new towns that will be successful in England will be ones that can tap into employment in London, Manchester or Birmingham. Anywhere else you'll just build another Skelmersdale.

 

[AlastairFraser]

Unless there's a major policy shift, the only new towns that will be successful in England will be ones that can tap into employment in London, Manchester or Birmingham. Anywhere else you'll just build another Skelmersdale.

Not if you establish new employers or move government departments to the new towns.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Not if you establish new employers or move government departments to the new towns.

That's a major policy shift.

 

[Magdalia]

MK and Stevenage are only really successful in terms of being heavily reliant on London. Stevenage in particular is a pretty depressing place, and a walk around its town centre will paint a picture of something that's anything but a success story. What both places have done is choke fully their local road network. I think I also read somewhere that Stevenage is one of the most car dependant towns in Britain, with pollution levels to match.

Stevenage was not always like that.

Stevenage started off with thriving local employment on a big industrial estate between the railway and the A1(M) bypass.

Some of that is still there, particularly the bits linked to the aerospace industry, but much of it has gone. Anyone remember the old Geo W King factory next to the station on the down side, land now taken by the retail park?

Stevenage is a classic example of a town where local industry was devastated by the early 1980s economic recession then pivoting to London commuting as the financial services boom took off at the other end of the 1980s.

In those days the town centre was thriving but it is also a classic example of what happened to towns where the anchor tenants were BHS and Debenhams.

Stevenage is worth keeping an eye on as its residents have a very good record of voting for the winning party in General Elections.

 

[HSTEd]

Not if you establish new employers or move government departments to the new towns.

Dispersing government departments like that has definite costs, especially in terms of loss of experienced personnel and disruption.

In my view, this might work if we move the entire civil service out of London to a new administrative capital, but dispersing it is not going to do much beyond wrecking the remaining productivity of the civil service apparatus.
As for new private sector employers, it probably won't work without massive ongoing subsidies.

Small towns really don't have an economic raison d'etre in the modern world.
The existing ones we have are dying on their feet, we probably shouldn't try creating more.

Ok, forgive the brevity inherent with an internet forum post. When I say ring fenced for capital spend what I would mean is that a council can't take windfall cash an use it to spend on basic services which should be funded from other means. It would be reasonable for example to spend it on transport and a certain amount of running costs for a fixed period of time, the argument being that once bedded in it will need less support and also grow the tax base over that time. A better term would be "ring fence the money for economic development and civic infrastructure".

The problem is once you annualise running costs into a lump sum you won't get that much from the £15bn for Manchester.
It probably won't be enough to overawe politicians or the public.

A lot of public services don't really exhibit a bedding in effect, a library costs more or less what it costs - indeed costs will likely increase over time.
The only systems that really see bedding in are transport systems, and £15bn with annualised running costs probably won't get you that much.

At the moment local councils have negligible incentives to sell residential development to local people, give them more incentives and you will get more of it. If the impact of being a NIMBY wrecker is to drop half the money they have to play with in the bin I don't think most parties or councils will take that option, the whole skill of being a politician is to get the public to accept or ignore things that don't benefit them and to notice the things that the politcal group has done for them.

Politicians overall are not really more highly skilled than the general population. The realities of party politics leads to a desire not to rock the boat, and in local government there is always the threat that a new party can appear to crush you (as residents association candidates often do).
Proposing wholesale demolition and massive reconstruction of half of the city to pack in more people will not fly with the electorate.

The other part of the argument is that doing some of these changes actually stuffs silver into the mouths of existing residents. If you sit on a low density semi it would likely fit two 4 story town houses that could be subdivided into two properties each. There are policies that could unlock this opportunity such as street votes or local development orders.

It will take a lot of silver to stuff the mouths of the bulk of the residents, indeed an impractical number.
Additionally, individual demolitions or reconstructions into high density accomodation is going to consume a lot of tradespeople.
Tradespeople that simply don't exist.

We can throw up production line built manufactured bungalows an order of magnitude faster than we can demolish and stick build townhouses.

The key point is that density creates value because people want to be near services and amenities which are created by other people and sustained by lots of people being able to access them (inc public transport). That value is captured by increasing the land price which can then be captured partially or wholly by local authorities to spend on further economic or civic development. If we're sensible we also have a long term wealth tax to get some of the value captured by the super wealthy from doing this!

So you are hoping that people will volunteer to demolish their houses and replace them with high density construction, despite that you also propose to use a wealth tax to seize the value uplift that they gain from them?
Why would they go in for this disruption for a lump sum that will be rapidly taxed away from them and indeed will likely leave them worse off in the long term since their tax liability will have exploded?

Additionally, I live in a high density housing development - it is utterly miserable. I would give anything to be allowed to live in a low density semi. This is also why low density semis remain far more expensive than comparable high density housing units - because people actually like them rather than being forced to live in them for want of better options.