In British town planning, the green belt is a policy for controlling urban growth. The term, coined by Octavia Hill in 1875, refers to a ring of countryside where urbanisation will be resisted for the foreseeable future, maintaining an area where local food growing, forestry and outdoor leisure can be expected to prevail. The fundamental aim of green belt policy is to prevent urban sprawl by keeping land permanently green, and consequently the most important attribute of green belts is their openness.
A planned community, planned city, planned town, or planned settlement is any community that was carefully planned from its inception and is typically constructed on previously undeveloped land. This contrasts with settlements that evolve organically.
Livingston is the largest town in West Lothian, Scotland. Designated in 1962, it is the fourth post-war new town to be built in Scotland. Taking its name from a village of the same name incorporated into the new town, it was originally developed in the then-counties of Midlothian and West Lothian along the banks of the River Almond. It is situated approximately fifteen miles (25 km) west of Edinburgh and thirty miles (50 km) east of Glasgow, and is close to the towns of Broxburn to the north-east and Bathgate to the north-west.
Welwyn Garden City is a town in Hertfordshire, England, 20 miles (32 km) north of London. It was the second garden city in England and one of the first new towns. It is unique in being both a garden city and a new town and exemplifies the physical, social and cultural planning ideals of the periods in which it was built.
Harlow is a town and local government district located in the west of Essex, England. Founded as a new town, it is situated on the border with Hertfordshire, and occupies a large area of land on the south bank of the upper Stort Valley, which has been made navigable through other towns and features a canal section near its watermill.
A semi-detached house is a single-family duplex dwelling that shares one common wall with its neighbour. The name distinguishes this style of construction from detached houses, with no shared walls, and terraced houses, with a shared wall on both sides. Often, semi-detached houses are built in pairs in which each house's layout is a mirror image of the other's.
The Borough of Chorley is a local government district with borough status in Lancashire, England. It is named after the town of Chorley, which is an unparished area. The borough extends to several villages and hamlets including Adlington, Buckshaw Village, Croston, Eccleston, Euxton and Whittle-le-Woods.
Seacroft is an outer-city suburb/township consisting mainly of council estate housing covering an extensive area of east Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It lies in the LS14 Leeds postcode area, around 4 miles (6.4 km) east of Leeds city centre.
Euxton is a village and civil parish of the Borough of Chorley, in Lancashire, England. The population of the civil parish as taken at the 2011 census was 9,993, however, the population is now estimated to be around 14,000 due to the increase in housing developments in the village, including the Buckshaw development. The village is situated just to the west of Chorley, and to the south of Clayton-le-Woods.
The garden city movement was a 20th century urban planning movement promoting satellite communities surrounding the central city and separated with greenbelts. These Garden Cities would contain proportionate areas of residences, industry, and agriculture. Ebenezer Howard first posited the idea in 1898 as a way to capture the primary benefits of the countryside and the city while avoiding the disadvantages presented by both. In the early 20th century, Letchworth, Brentham Garden Suburb, and Welwyn Garden City were built in or near London according to Howard's concept and many other garden cities inspired by his model have since been built all over the world.
Buckshaw Village is a 21st-century village and industrial area between the towns of Chorley and Leyland in Lancashire, England, developed on the site of the former Royal Ordnance Factory (ROF) Chorley. It had a population of 4,000. It is divided between the civil parishes of Euxton (south) and Whittle-le-Woods in Chorley, with the north western part being in Leyland unparished area in South Ribble district.
Central Lancashire is an area of Lancashire, England.
London overspill communities are the communities created as a result of the government policy of moving residents out of Greater London into other areas in the South East of England between the 1930s and the 1970s. The policy was extended to relocate residents to several towns in the East Midlands, mostly Northamptonshire, situated near the M1 motorway and A1 trunk road. The policy even extended to the North West of England, with the town of Burnley in Lancashire, more than 200 miles from London, even being designated as a London overspill town.
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."
This history of Milton Keynes details its development from the earliest human settlements, through the plans for a 'new city' for 250,000 people in northern Southeast England, its subsequent urban design and development, to the present day. Milton Keynes, founded in 1967, is the largest settlement and only city in Buckinghamshire. At the 2021 census, the population of its urban area was estimated to have exceeded 256,000.
An overspill estate is a housing estate built at the edge of an urban area, often to rehouse people from inner city areas as part of slum clearances. They were created on the outskirts of most large British towns in the 20th century. The Town Development Act 1952 encouraged the expansion of neighbouring urban areas rather than the creation of satellite communities.
Radburn design housing is a concept for planned housing estates, based upon a design that was originally used in the community of Radburn within Fair Lawn, New Jersey, United States. The design is typified by the backyards of homes facing the street and the fronts of homes facing one another, over common yards.
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. 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.
The City of Edinburgh Council is the local government authority covering the City of Edinburgh council area. Almost half of the council area is the built-up area of Edinburgh, capital of Scotland. With a population of 514,990 in 2022, it is the second most populous local authority area in Scotland.
Public housing in the United Kingdom, also known as council housing or social housing, provided the majority of rented accommodation until 2011, when the number of households in private rental housing surpassed the number in social housing. Dwellings built for public or social housing use are built by or for local authorities and known as council houses. Since the 1980s non-profit housing associations became more important and subsequently the term "social housing" became widely used, as technically council housing only refers to housing owned by a local authority, though the terms are largely used interchangeably.
