Sam Bowman@s8mb
I think everyone excited about New Towns should visit Northstowe, a new New Town outside Cambridge (about 40 mins away), and the largest New Town in England since Milton Keynes.
It's been a disaster so far. It's been built very poorly/cheaply made and planned. The housing stock is ugly and cheap. It doesn't have a shop, a GP, or a gym, and it's been kind of a ghost town the times I've been. A lot of the residents are furious and feel totally misled into buying there.
And yet *it's probably the most prime place in England to build a New Town*!
So what's the problem? Partially it's lots of costs being put on to the new housing, including a 40% affordable requirement, which means developers build cheaply and cut corners to be able to have something to sell at a price people can afford (in the same way high land costs mean new builds are worse quality). Partially it's because Homes England, the Quango delivering it (and likely any future New Towns), is useless.
Labour's supposed wave of New Towns (I actually doubt any will happen of any significant size) will suffer from all of these problems. And most won't even have the benefit of being a short commute away from Cambridge!
