New Towns Acts
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New Towns Acts

The New Towns Acts were a series of Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom to found new settlements or to expand substantially existing ones, to establish Development Corporations to deliver them, and to create a Commission to wind up the Corporations and take over their assets and liabilities. Of these, the more substantive acts were the New Towns Act 1946 and the Town Development Act 1952. "The New Towns Act [1946] was intended to pre-emptively direct urban growth and infrastructural development into new towns, thereby decentralising population and economic opportunity while inhibiting urban sprawl."

New Towns were developed in three generations.

By 2002, about 2 million people were housed in the New Towns, in about 500,000 homes.

The 1944 Abercrombie Plan for London proposed eight new towns within 50 miles (80 km) of London for up to 500,000 people from inner London. Similar recommendations were made for other major conurbations including Manchester and Birmingham. The 1945 Attlee Government set up a New Towns Commission to formally consider how best to repair and rebuild urban communities ravaged in World War II.

In 1945, John Reith, 1st Baron Reith was appointed as chair of the New Towns Commission. The commission concluded that there was a need to construct new towns using the instrument of development corporations supported by central government. The New Towns Act 1946 cemented this vision in 1946 and New Towns were born.

The Reith Commission recommended that:

An Act to provide for the creation of new towns by means of development corporations, and for purposes connected therewith.

The New Towns Act 1946 (9 & 10 Geo. 6. c. 68) was the act that put into law the conclusions of the New Towns Commission. The act authorised the government to designate areas as new towns, passing development control functions to a New Town Development Corporation. Several new towns were created in the years following its passage. The act was replaced by the New Towns Act 1965 and, later, the New Towns Act 1981.

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