The Governance of New Communities in Britain, France and North America, 1815–2004: The Quest for the Public Interest?

Since their appearance, new communities1 have been an almost constant source of debate amongst practising planners and academics, in the countries we use here as case studies. But while a vast amount of literature has been produced about their architectural, environmental and historical planning techniques, little attention has been given to what we refer to here as their ‘decentralized governance’. We propose to examine this here, from a comparative and historical perspective.