From Garden Cities to New Towns

The New Towns Act was passed in 1946. For nearly a half century before that campaigners had been working to spread the idea of new settlements in the form of what were originally conceived as garden cities. ¹ The nature of this preliminary campaign sets the scene for what follows in the postwar period. Established patterns and goals of campaigning as well as the continuing involvement of leading figures in the movement provide threads of continuity in the new setting of Britain after the Second World War.