ABSTRACT
Stevenage was, as expected, the first new town to be designated under the New Towns Act 1946. The Act received the Royal Assent in August and was followed within a few days by a draft designation order which was the subject of a public inquiry in October. The first four years of the new towns programme saw the replacement of idealism with disillusion about its feasibility and some ill-will about the mechanism for carrying it out. New towns were to be 'balanced and self-contained communities for working and living'. Whatever the intrinsic merits and feasibility of this aim, development corporations were from the start concerned to attract employment, to build houses for all income groups and to provide, or encourage the provision of, publicly and privately funded facilities for education, health and recreation. The Reith report had laid much emphasis on the representation of all income groups in new towns.
