Designing a New Town

A new town built on land strongly controlled under unified public or semi public ownership, should be distinguished by combination of town and country life style and of environment, an uninterrupted greenbelt encircling and intersecting the town. A planned urban community that combines residential, commercial and recreational areas. Due to increasing population, we provide new town for reducing the burden of the city. Designing a new town for self-sufficient and providing housing, commercial, basic facilities and recreational area . 

New towns are playing in the economic development of the countries they are emerging in, it is clear that economic motives are the dominant factor behind most new town initiatives. The present new towns are populated by the middle and upper classes, while the lower income groups live in the old city or in self organized cities and slums.

The New Town Movement 

The new town movement refers to towns that were built after World War II and that have been purposefully planned, developed and built as a remedy to overcrowding and congestion in some instances and to scattered and settlements in others. The main reason for it was to decongest larger industrialized cities, rehousing people in freshly built, new and fully planned towns that were completely self-sufficient and provided for the community. 

Records exist of plans for new towns back as far as the ancient Egyptians. Most of the “planned towns” in history were based on providing for military, trade or harbor needs. The idea of planning a city for the needs of the people who would live there didn’t crystallize until the end of the 19th century when Sir Ebenezer Howard, first suggested a series of “garden cities” north of London. However, it was another 50 years, at the end of World War II, when these garden cities really began to flourish. 

The world was moving into a new era of rapid urbanization. The problems of pollution, traffic congestion and the impersonalized isolation of urban sprawl were growing. The concept of creating new towns spread across Europe with the creation of planned communities to deal with these problems. These “new towns” sought to plan in advance the design and growth of cities. Some of the key features were: 

• Pedestrian friendly walkways separated from vehicle traffic to promote the safe movement of people between neighborhoods, schools and shopping 
• Architecturally innovative housing 
• Community owned land to create activity areas and a sense of openness 
• Community works of art 
• Close proximity of commercial and industrial parks for people to live close to where they work 
• A development philosophy to respect the land 

Need For New Towns 

Developing new towns for various purposes, such as, to exploit natural resources, to provide raw material to industries, to serve nuclei and act as catalytic agents for stimulating economic growth in backward areas, for administration and for special purposes. Although in most cases new towns are expensive to build and they take several years to develop fully, still they offer several benefits. Building of new towns does not mean that, we should stop the growth of major cities. Major cities develop, but new towns reduce the rate of growth of metropolitan cities. In this regard it is necessary to prepare national and state physical plans. The national physical plan should be the physical and ecological guide of the policies, programmes and strategies relating to population changes and distribution.