Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T22:17:35.571Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Political Participation in New Towns

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Michael A. Baer
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

From Ebenezer Howard's turn-of-the-century concept of garden cities ‘new towns’ have evolved. The growth of new towns is not a fad. The first British new town, founded by Howard and planned by architects Raymond Unwin and Barry Parker in 1903, was Letchworth. There has been a steady increase in the establishment of new towns in several countries since, and proposals for many more in the future. In Britain, twenty-nine towns were designated between November 1946 and July 1973. The final projected populations of the New Towns range from 13,000 in Mid-Wales to 420,000 in Central Lancashire New Town. Most have final projected populations in the 60,000–120,000 range. In the United States, the National Commission on Urban Growth, composed of U.S. Senators, Representatives, Governors, Mayors and County Commissioners, proposed that at least 110 new American cities be developed, with the aid of federal funding. And at a recent meeting of the International Association of Housing Science representatives of the Association's forty member countries were told that worldwide housing demands in the next thirty years will require the creation of 3,500 new cities.

Type
Notes and Comments
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , April 1978 , pp. 237 - 245
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Howard, Ebenezer, Garden Cities of Tomorrow (London: Faber, 1902, originally published as Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, in 1898).Google Scholar

2 Town and Country Planning (01 1974), pp. 40–1.Google Scholar

3 ‘Report of the National Committee of Urban Growth Policy’, in Canty, Donald, ed., The New City (New York: Praeger, 1969), pp. 169–74.Google Scholar

4 Markham, Wayne, ‘Housing Crisis Called Staggering By 2006’, The Lexington Herald and Leader (29 05 1976), p. D1.Google Scholar

5 Some notable exceptions in the English setting are: Heraud, Brian J., ‘Social Class and the New Towns’, Urban Studies, III (1966), 8–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; White, Leonard. ‘The Social Factors Involved in the Planning and Development of New Towns’, at the U.N. Round Table Conference on the Planning and Development of New Towns, 08 1964Google Scholar; Deakin, N. D., ‘The Non-Movers’, Town and Country Planning (01 1974), 15–25Google Scholar; Willmott, Peter, ‘Social Research and New Communities’, Journal of the American Institute of Planners, XXXIII (1967), 386–97Google Scholar; Thomas, Ray, London's New Towns (London: Political and Economic Planning, 1969)Google Scholar; Thomas, Ray, Aycliff to Cumbernauld (London: Political and Economic Planning, 1969)Google Scholar; Orlans, Harold, Stevenage: A Sociological Study of a New Town (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952)Google Scholar; Creswell, Peter, The New Town Goal of Self-Containment (Milton Keynes, Bucks.: Open University Press, 1974)Google Scholar; Horrocks, Meryl, Social Development Work in the New Communities (Birmingham: Centre for Urban and Regional Studies, University of Birmingham, 1974).Google Scholar

6 For development of these areas see Hornum, Barbara and Hornum, Finn, ‘Problems and Prospects of New Town Development: Notes on Some Research Problems’, Sociological Symposium, XIII (1975), 5–10.Google Scholar

7 Almond, Gabriel and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture (Boston: Little, Brown, 1965)Google Scholar; Patterson, Samuel C., ‘The Political Cultures of the American States’, Journal of Politics, xxx (1968), 187–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Lane, Robert, Political Life (New York: Free Press, 1959)Google Scholar; Milbrath, Lester, Political Participation (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1965)Google Scholar; Verba, Sidney and Nie, Norman, Participation in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1972).Google Scholar

9 Almond, and Verba, , The Civic Culture, p. 3.Google Scholar

10 Almond, and Verba, , The Civic Culture, Chap, 1.Google Scholar

11 Samples of 300 were drawn from the February 1975 electoral register for Basildon and Bracknell; of 303 for Milton Keynes. The response rates were 44 per cent, 45 per cent, and 39 per cent respectively. The sample data was matched with 1971 population census data to check representatives of the sample. Data on sex, marital status and age indicated that the respondents were indeed representative of the population.

12 Gans, Herbert J., ‘Planning and Political Participation’, Journal of the American Institute of Planners, x (1953), 3–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Comments made by Myron J. Aronoff, Tel Aviv University, and Peter Kloos, University of Leiden at a session on New Communities at the 34th Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology, Amsterdam, 1975.

14 White, Leonard E., ‘Participation of Families in the Organization and Development of Local Communities in New Towns’, British Housing and Planning Review, XVI (1961), 9–11.Google Scholar

15 Heraud, , ‘Social Class and the New Towns’Google Scholar: Creswell, Peter, ‘Evidence Submitted to House of Commons Expenditure Committee on New Towns’ (Open University, 1973)Google Scholar: Thomas, , London's New Towns.Google Scholar

16 1973 Household Survey, Table Report (Redditch: Redditch Development Corporation. 1973), p. 82.Google Scholar

17 Skelmersdale New Town Population and Social Survey, 1973, p. 35.Google Scholar

18 Almond, and Verba, , The Civic Culture, p. 246–9.Google Scholar

19 Verba, Sidney, Nie, Norman, and Kim, Jae-On, The Modes of Democratic Participation: A Cross National Comparison (Beverley Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1971).Google Scholar

20 United Kingdom national sample from the Five Nation Study. This data was made available by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research. The Consortium bears no responsibility for either the analyses or interpretations presented here.

21 Butler, David and Stokes, Donald, Political Change in Britain: Forces Shaping Electoral Choice (Harmondsworth, Middx: Penguin Books, 1971)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Political Change in Britain data was made available by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research.

22 Since more than a decade of relatively rapid inflation exists between the last Butler and Stokes survey and the collection of New Town data, comparative income categories could not rely on equivalent earnings expressed in pounds. Rather it was decided that the sample from each study would be split into categories of approximate equal proportions. The categories, A, B, C and D contain approximately 13 per cent, 40 per cent, 35 per cent, 12 per cent of each sample, with some variation due to coding schemes employed in the original studies.

23 Members of four or more organizations were coded into one category for the Almond and Verba study. We treated these respondents as though they belonged to four organizations. We also treated New Town residents who belonged to more than four organizations as belonging only to four.

24 Gans, , ‘Planning and Political Participation’.Google Scholar