ABSTRACT
The more frequent criticism of the London new towns is that they attract the young and the skilled, indeed cream off the best from London, and in so doing leave London more deeply entrenched in its own problems. It is anti-urbanism that lies at the root of the new town movement, as it did with the garden city movement. The Reith Committee analysed the problem of the future ownership of the new towns when it sat in 1945, but it went no further than analysis, stating instead that it would be unlikely that the matter would need to be decided upon for some twenty years. The 1946 Act in fact granted power to the Minister to ‘wind up’ corporations, but this provision was repealed by the New Towns Act (1959) which established the New Towns Commission, a national body with members appointed by the Minister in a similar manner as are members of a development corporation.
