New towns movement

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While purpose-built towns and cities have many precedents in antiquity - the 195 BC iteration of Chang'an providing a case in point - the New Towns movement refers to an ideologically-driven social campaign. The best-known and possibly most influential of these was a government-driven building and development program which took place in two tranches in the United Kingdom after World War II. Towns were planned and built with two main intentions: to remedy overcrowding and congestion, and to organize scattered ad hoc settlements.^[1] An additional purpose was to rehouse people in freshly built, fully planned towns that were completely self-sufficient for the community. Ideological aspects of environmental determinism predominated in this last purpose.