A planned community, or planned city, is any community that was carefully planned from its inception and is typically constructed in a previously undeveloped area, this contrasts with settlements that evolve in a more ad hoc fashion. Land use conflicts are less frequent in these communities. The term new town refers to planned communities of the new towns movement in particular, mainly in the United Kingdom, it was also common in the European colonization of the Americas to build according to a plan either on fresh ground or on the ruins of earlier Native American villages.
- 1 Planned capitals
- 2 Africa
- 3 Asia
- 3.1 Burma
- 3.2 Indonesia
- 3.3 Malaysia
- 3.4 Philippines
- 3.5 Singapore
- 3.6 Iran
- 3.7 Israel
- 3.8 Palestinian territories
- 3.9 Saudi Arabia
- 3.10 United Arab Emirates
- 3.11 Japan
- 3.12 People's Republic of China
- 3.13 Taiwan
- 3.14 South Korea
- 3.15 South Asia
- 4 Europe
- 4.1 History
- 4.2 Belgium
- 4.3 Bosnia and Herzegovina
- 4.4 Bulgaria
- 4.5 Croatia
- 4.6 Czechoslovakia and Czech Republic
- 4.7 Denmark
- 4.8 Finland
- 4.9 France
- 4.10 Germany
- 4.11 Greece
- 4.12 Hungary
- 4.13 Ireland
- 4.14 Italy
- 4.15 Lithuania
- 4.16 Macedonia
- 4.17 Malta
- 4.18 Netherlands
- 4.19 Norway
- 4.20 Poland
- 4.21 Portugal
- 4.22 Romania
- 4.23 Russia
- 4.24 Serbia
- 4.25 Slovakia
- 4.26 Slovenia
- 4.27 Spain
- 4.28 Sweden
- 4.29 Turkey
- 4.30 Ukraine
- 4.31 United Kingdom
- 5 North America
- 6 South America
- 7 Oceania
- 8 See also
- 9 References
- 10 External links
A planned capital is a city specially planned, designed and built to be a capital. Several of the world's capitals are planned capitals, including Canberra in Australia, Brasília in Brazil, Belmopan in Belize, New Delhi in India, Abuja in Nigeria, Astana in Kazakhstan, Naypyidaw in Burma, Islamabad in Pakistan, Ankara in Turkey and Washington, D.C., in the United States. In Egypt, a new capital city east of Cairo has been proposed, the federal administrative centre of Malaysia, Putrajaya, is also a planned city.
Abu Dhabi (UAE) and some of the recently built cities in the Persian Gulf region are also planned cities, built on the money from the oil boom. Prior to the boom, these were just villages or towns.
The capital, Abuja, is a planned city and was built mainly in the 1980s. Several other cities are under development to accommodate the rapidly growing population, some of which include: Eko Atlantic City, a planned city of Lagos State being constructed on land reclaimed from the Atlantic Ocean. Upon completion, the new city which is still under development is anticipating 250,000 residents and a daily flow of 150,000 commuters. Centenary City, in the Federal Capital Territory, is another planned smart city under development. The city is designed to become a major tourist attraction to the country. A list of Nigerian cities and neighbourhoods that went through a form of planning are as follows:
- Abuja, one of the most populous planned cities, and the fastest growing city in the world.
- Banana Island, an affluent neighbourhood in Ikoyi, Lagos, Lagos State
- Bonny Island in Rivers State
- Centenary City in the Federal Capital Territory
- Eko Atlantic in Lagos State
- Festac Town in Lagos, Lagos State
- FESTAC Phase 2, the next phase for Festac has been proposed.
- Ikeja, the capital of Lagos State
- Lekki, a new city in Lagos State
- Victoria Island in Lagos, Lagos State
A number of cities were set up during the apartheid-era for a variety of ethnic groups. Planned settlements set up for white inhabitants included Welkom, Sasolburg and Secunda. Additionally the majority of settlements in South Africa were planned in their early stages and the original town centres still lie in a grid street fashion, some settlements were also set up for non-whites such as the former homeland capital of Bisho.
Naypyidaw (Burmese: နေပြည်တော်; MLCTS: nepranytau, officially spelled Nay Pyi Taw and Naypyitaw; pronounced [nèpjìdɔ̀]) is the capital of Myanmar, also known as Burma. It is administered as the Naypyidaw Union Territory, as per the 2008 Constitution, on 6 November 2005, the administrative capital of Burma was officially moved to a greenfield 3.2 km west of Pyinmana, and approximately 300 km north of Yangon (Rangoon), the previous capital. The capital's official name was announced on 27 March 2006, Burmese Armed Forces Day. Much of the city was still under construction as late as 2012, as of 2009, the population was 925,000, which makes it Burma's third largest city, after Yangon and Mandalay.
- Batavia (predecessor of modern Jakarta) was a planned city, modeled after Dutch 17th century coastal city architecture. First, in the 17th century as a planned fortified city, crisscrossed with Dutch-style canals dug in regular grid, the city served as the administrative center of Dutch East India Company.
- In early 19th century, the Dutch colonial authority moved their administrative center from the dilapidated and unhealthy port town of Old Batavia (now Kota area) several kilometres south to Weltevreden area (now Central Jakarta). Old Batavia and Weltevreden were connected by the Molenvliet Canal and a road (now Gajah Mada Road) that ran alongside the waterway, it was a well-planned community around the Koningsplein, the Waterlooplein and Rijswijk (Jalan Veteran). The area, then known as Weltevreden, which include the Koningsplein, Rijswijk, Noordwijk, Tanah Abang, Kebon Sirih, and Prapatan became a popular residential, entertainment and commercial district for the European colonial elite.
- Menteng, today a subdistric in Central Jakarta, was first built as a well-planned community. An urban design developed in the 1910s set the area to become a residential area for Dutch people and high officials, at the time of its development, the area was the first planned garden suburb in colonial Batavia. Supported by easy access to service centers and nearby to the central business district, this area has become one of the most expensive areas for residential real estate in modern Jakarta.
- In early 20th century, Bandung was planned by the Dutch East Indies government as a new capital city to replace Batavia. The idea was to separate the busy trading port or the commercial center (Batavia) from the new administrative and political center (Bandung). By 1920s the plan to transfer the capital to Bandung was underway, as the city began to laid the masterplan of a well-planned new city, grid of streets and avenues were laid, and numbers of government buildings were constructed, such as Gedung Sate that was planned as the colonial administrative center of Dutch East Indies. The plan, however, failed due to the Great Depression and the outbreak of the Second World War.
- Since Palangkaraya was established as the capital of Central Kalimantan province in 1957, the first president of Indonesia, Sukarno, outlined a plan to develop Palangkaraya as the future capital of Indonesia. Palangkaraya is far larger in area than Jakarta and safe from the danger of earthquakes and volcanoes, common on the island of Java.
- In late 1950s to first half of 1960s, Sukarno, Indonesia's first president, laid a masterplan to built Jakarta as the planned national capital of the Republic of Indonesia. He filled Jakarta with numbers of monuments and statues. Numbers of monumental projects were conceived, planned and initiated during his administration, including Monumen Nasional, Istiqlal mosque, DPR/MPR Building, and Gelora Bung Karno stadium. Sukarno also filled Jakarta with nationalistic monuments and statues, including Selamat Datang Monument, Pemuda Monument at Senayan, Dirgantara Monument at Pancoran, and Irian Jaya Liberation Monument at Lapangan Banteng, although many of this projects were completed later in his successor era (Suharto administration), Sukarno is credited for shaping Jakarta's monuments and landmarks. He desired Jakarta to be the beacon of a powerful new nation.
- Because of Jakarta's environmental degradation and overpopulation problems, in 2010s there has been an idea to build a new proposed capital city to replace Jakarta.
- See entries for Mines Wellness City, Shah Alam, Putrajaya, Cyberjaya, Petaling Jaya(New Town) and the Multimedia Super Corridor.
- Kulim Hi-Tech Park
- See entries for Nusajaya and Iskandar Malaysia
Quezon City was the planned city of President Manuel L. Quezon, who had earlier proposed a new city to be built on land northeast of the City of Manila. Carefully planned districts include Santa Mesa Heights (part of the original Burnham Plan for Manila), the Diliman Estate (includes the University of the Philippines), New Manila, the Cubao Commercial District, South Triangle, Housing Projects 1 (Roxas District), 2 and 3 (Quirino District), 4, 5 (Kamias-Kamuning District), 6, 7, and 8.
President Elpidio Quirino proclaimed Quezon City as the national capital on 17 July 1948, with President Ferdinand Marcos restoring Manila as the capital on 24 June 1976, he then created a metropolitan area called Metro Manila, which remains congested today due to failed execution of the Quezon City plan as well as the Burnham Plan.
Other planned cities (in order of foundation):
The new town planning concept was introduced into Singapore with the building of the first New Town, Queenstown, from July 1952 to 1973 by the country's public housing authority, the Housing and Development Board. Today, the vast majority of the approximately 11,000 public housing buildings are organised into 22 new towns across the country.
Each new town is designed to be completely self-sustainable. Helmed by a hierarchy of commercial developments, ranging from a town centre to precinct-level outlets, there is no need to venture out of town to meet the most common needs of residences. Employment can be found in industrial estates located within several towns. Educational, health care, and recreational needs are also taken care of with the provision of schools, hospitals, parks, sports complexes, and so on.
Singapore's expertise in successful new town design was internationally recognised when the Building and Social Housing Foundation (BSHF) of the United Nations awarded the World Habitat Award to Tampines New Town, which was selected as a representative of Singapore's new towns, on 5 October 1992.
In modern-day Iran more than 20 planned cities have been developed or are under construction, mostly around Iran's main metropolitan areas such as Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz and Tabriz. Some of these new cities are built for special purposes such as:
- Pardis, which is built as a scientific city.
- Poulad-Shahr, which is an industrial city built for the housing of Isfahan's steel industry workers.
- Shirin Shahr which is to provide housing for the sugar industry personnel.
- Tehranpars which was built to house Tehran's additional population.
- Shahrak-e Gharb, built as a massive project of modern apartment buildings.
- Parand which is intended to provide residences for the staff of Imam Khomeini International Airport.
- Shushtar New Town which was built to provide housing for the employees of a sugar cane processing plant.
576,000 people were planned to be settled in Iran's new towns by the year 2005.
For a list of Iran's modern planned cities see: List of Iran's planned cities.
According to politics of country settlement a number of planned cities were created in peripheral regions, those cities also known as Development Towns. The most successful is Ashdod with more than 200,000 inhabitants, a port and developed infrastructure. Other cities that were developed following Israel's lineation plan are Shoham, Karmiel and Arad. Modi'in-Maccabim-Re'ut has been another of the country's most successful planned cities. Construction began in 1994 and it now has a population of over 80,000. Modi'in also rates higher in terms of average salary and graduation rates than the national average, it was designed and planned by Israeli architect Moshe Safdie. Many Israeli settlements follow this model, including towns like Modi'in Illit and Betar Illit.
In 1975, Jubail Industrial City, also known as Jubail, was designated as a new industrial city by the Saudi government, it provides 50% of the country's drinking water through desalination of the water from the Persian Gulf.
United Arab Emirates
- Capital city of Abu Dhabi, is a planned city to some extent
- Certain new parts of Dubai, are planned
- Masdar City, conceived of as a mixed purpose residential and commercial area
The city of Kyoto was developed as a planned city in 794 as a new imperial capital (then called Heian-kyō), built on a grid layout modeled after the Tang dynasty capital of Chang'an (modern day Xi'an), and remained the capital for over a millennium. The grid layout remains, reflected in major east-west streets being numbered, such as 4th street (四条 shi-jō). In modern times, Sapporo was built from 1868, following an American grid plan, and is today the fifth-largest city in Japan. Both these cities have regular addressing systems (following the grid) unlike the usual subdivision-based Japanese addressing system.
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Borrowing from the New Town movement in the United Kingdom, some 30 new towns have been built all over Japan. Most of these constructions were initiated during the period of rapid economic growth in the 1960s, but construction continued into the 1980s. Most of them are located near Tokyo and the Kansai region, some towns, (Senri New Town, Tama New Town) do not provide much employment, and many of the residents commute to the nearby city. These towns fostered the infamous congestion of commuter trains (although as the metropolitan areas have grown, this commute has become relatively short in comparison to commutes from the new urban fringe).
Other New Towns act as industrial/academic agglomerations (sangyo-shuseki) (Tsukuba Science City, Kashima Port Town), these areas attempt to create an all-inclusive environment for daily living, in accordance with Uzō Nishiyama's "life-spheres" principle.
Japan has also developed the concept of new towns to what Manuel Castells and Sir Peter Hall call technopolis, the technopolis program of the 1980s has precedents in the New Industrial Cities Act of the 1960s. These cities are largely modeled after Tsukuba Academic New Town (Tsukuba Science City) in that they attempt to agglomerate high-tech resources together in a campus-like environment.
In the past, the Japanese government had proposed relocating the capital to a planned city, but this plan was cancelled.
Overall, Japan's New Town program consists of many diverse projects, most of which focus on a primary function, but also aspire to create an all-inclusive urban environment. Japan's New Town program is heavily informed by the Anglo-American Garden City tradition, American neighborhood design, as well as Soviet strategies of industrial development.
In 2002 Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi announced the end of new town construction, although the new towns continue to receive government funding and redevelopment.
- Ministry of Construction, Japan International Cooperation Agency, City Bureau. 1975? City Planning in Japan.
- Hein, Carola. 2003. “Visionary Plans and Planners: Japanese Traditions and Western Influences” in Japanese Capitals in Historical
- Perspective, Nicholas Fiévé and Paul Waley, eds. New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 309–43.
- Scott, W. Stephen. 2006. Just Housing? Evidence of Garden City Principles in a Postwar Japanese New Town. Undergraduate diss. New College of Florida.
People's Republic of China
Many ancient cities in China, especially those on the North China Plain, were carefully designed according to the fengshui theory, featuring square or rectangular city walls, rectilinear road grid, and symmetrical layout. Famous examples are Chang'an in Tang Dynasty and Beijing.
The terrains of Hong Kong are mostly mountainous and many places in the New Territories have limited access to roads. Hong Kong started developing new towns in the 1950s, to accommodate rapidly growing populations; in the early days the term "satellite towns" was used. The very first new towns included Tsuen Wan and Kwun Tong. Wah Fu Estate was built in a remote corner on Hong Kong Island, with similar concepts in a smaller scale.
In the late 1960s and the 1970s, another stage of new town developments was launched. Nine new towns have been developed to date. Land use is carefully planned and development provides plenty of room for public housing projects. Rail transport is usually available at a later stage, the first towns are Sha Tin, Tsuen Wan, Tuen Mun and Tseung Kwan O. Tuen Mun was intended to be self-reliant, but was not successful at the beginning and maintained as a dormitory town up until the recent decades like the other new towns. More recent developments are Tin Shui Wai and North Lantau, the government also plans to build such towns in Hung Shui Kiu, Ping Che-Ta Kwu Ling, Fanling North and Kwu Tung North. At present, there are a total of nine new towns:
- Tsuen Wan New Town
- Sha Tin New Town
- Tuen Mun New Town
- Tai Po New Town
- Fanling-Sheung Shui New Town
- Yuen Long New Town
- Tseung Kwan O New Town
- Tin Shui Wai New Town
- North Lantau New Town
- Zhongxing Xincun, Nantou County
- Linkou District, New Taipei—Guishan District, Taoyuan City (Linkou New Town, 林口新市鎮)
- Danhai, Tamsui District, New Taipei (Danhai New Town, 淡海新市鎮)
- I-da (I-da World, 義大)
New Songdo City is a planned international business centre to be developed on 6 square kilometres of reclaimed land along Incheon's waterfront, 65 kilometres west of Seoul and connected to Incheon International Airport by a 10 kilometre highway bridge. This 10-year development project is estimated to cost in excess of $40 billion, making it the largest private development project ever undertaken anywhere in the world.
Gwanggyo newtown is located 25 km south away from Seoul in Suwon city and Youngin city, Gyeonggi province. Gwanggyo newtown area 11 square kilometers was designated in 2004 by Gyeonggi Province, Suwon city, Youngin city, and Gyeonggi Development Corporation(GICO), it will accommodate more than 31,000 households. Gwanggyo newtown was not only for the housing supply but also for several regional goals such as provincial office movement, convention center building, and creating economic growth core in Gyeonggi provincial area, its infrastructure was scheduled to be constructed by 2012.
- Several ongoing developments in Hwaseong, including Bongdam, Dongtan, and Hyangnam
- Bundang, Seongnam City
- Ilsan, Goyang City
- Pangyo, Seongnam City
Since 2007 Sejong City was planned as the new capital but is becoming a research hub instead with many national research institutes moving there between 2013 and 2015, it has 0.8 million of planned population, which is the largest in all of the new town development plan ever.
An urban culture is evident in the mature phase of Indus Valley Civilization which thrived in present-day Pakistan and north western India from around 3300 BC, the quality of municipal city planning suggests knowledge of urban planning and efficient municipal governments which placed a high priority on hygiene. The streets of major cities in present-day Pakistan such as Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, the world's earliest planned cities, were laid out in a perfect grid pattern comparable to that of present-day New York City. The houses were protected from noise, odours, and thieves.
As seen in the ancient sites of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan and western border of India, this urban plan included the world's first urban sanitation systems. Within the city, individual homes or groups of homes obtained water from wells, from a room that appears to have been set aside for bathing, waste water was directed to covered drains, which lined the major streets. Houses opened only to inner courtyards and smaller lanes.
The ancient Indus systems of sewage and drainage that were developed and used in cities throughout the Indus Valley were far more advanced than any found in contemporary urban sites in the Middle East and even more efficient than those in some areas of modern South Asia today. The advanced architecture of the Harappans is shown by their dockyards, granaries, warehouses, brick platforms, and protective walls.
A number of medieval Indian cities were planned including:
- Ahmedabad in Gujarat. Established by Sultan Ahmad Shah in 1411.
- Jaipur in Rajasthan. Established in 1727 by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II.It is the capital of Rajasthan state of India.
- Udaipur in Rajasthan. It was the historic capital of the former kingdom of Mewar.
- Madurai, in the state of Tamil Nadu. It was the capital of the erstwhile Pandyan kingdom and is noted for its lotus-like symmetry.
- Fatehpur Sikri in Agra. Its planning was done by the Mughal emperor Akbar the Great.
- Vijayanagar in Karnataka, the capital of the erstwhile Vijayanagara Empire.
- Hampi in Karnataka, which was the former capital of the Vijayanagara Empire prior to the city of Vijayanagar.
All except the last one are satellites of Dhaka, Bangladesh's capital.
- Uttara Model Town
- Motijheel & Dilkusha (central business district)
- Tejgaon (an industrial area)
- Kawran Bazar (a commercial hub)
- Purbachal New Town (will be the capital of Bangladesh and now is under-construction)
The period following independence saw India being defined into smaller geographical regions. New states such as Gujarat were formed with planned capital cities, the major planned cities of India include:
- Navi Mumbai, World's largest planned city. Contains a population of 2.6 million.
- Manesar (Gurgaon)
- New Gurgaon
- Rajarhat (New Town, Kolkata), a very beautiful planned township near Kolkata
- New Delhi
- Chandigarh India's first planned city
- Durgapur India's second planned city
- Greater Noida
- Bhubaneshwar, the capital of Odisha
- Bokaro Steel City
- Dhule, Maharashtra, a city planned by the renowned architect of India, Sir Vishveshwarayya.
- Naya Raipur, the upcoming capital of Chhattisgarh
- Amaravati, a new city planned to become the capital of Andhra Pradesh
- Bidhannagar, Kolkata(Salt Lake City), planned township near Kolkata
- Jamshedpur, planned township in Jharkhand
- Bhilai, planned township in Chhattisgarh
- Solapur, planned drainage city
- Islamabad, whose first foundations were laid during the 1950s.
- Jauharabad- a planned town situated in Khushab District, Punjab, Pakistan.
- Sargodha Established by British for Air Defence
- Faisalabad Established by British and later Ayub Khan for Industry
- Gwadar Established by government as the southern leg for China–Pakistan Economic Corridor
- Lda City
- Bahria Town's in Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi are privately developed towns.
- DHA Karachi
- DHA Lahore
New settlements were planned in Europe at least since Greek antiquity (see article Urban planning), the Greeks built new colonial cities around the Mediterranean. The ancient Romans also founded many new colonial towns through their empire. There are, however, also traces of planned settlements of non-Roman origin in pre-historic northern Europe. Most planned settlements of medieval Europe were created in the period of about the 12th to 14th centuries. All kinds of landlords, from the highest to the lowest rank, tried to found new villages and towns on their estates, in order to gain economical, political or military power, the settlers generally were attracted by fiscal, economical and juridical advantages granted by the founding lord, or were forced to move from elsewhere from his estates. Most of the new towns were to remain rather small (as for instance the bastides of southwestern France), but some of them became important cities, such as Cardiff, Leeds, 's-Hertogenbosch, Montauban, Bilbao, Malmö, Lübeck, Munich, Berlin, Bern, Klagenfurt, Alessandria, Warsaw and Sarajevo.
The Romans built a large number of towns throughout their empire, often as colonies for the settlement of citizens or veterans, these were generally characterised by a grid of streets and a planned water-supply; and many modern European towns of originally Roman foundation still retain part of the original street-grid.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Slobomir is a new town in Bosnia and Herzegovina and its name means: "the city of freedom and peace". It is located on the Drina river near Bijeljina, it was founded by Slobodan Pavlović, a Bosnian philanthropist. It aims to be one of the major cities of post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina; in fact, the city will be located in two countries, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, although majority of it will be in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The city is named after its founder, Slobodan Pavlović, and his wife, Mira.
- Andrićgrad is town under construction by the famous Serbian director Emir Kusturica, and will be located in Višegrad, Republika Srpska.
The cities of Stara Zagora and Kazanlak, in central Bulgaria, were rebuilt as planned cities after they were burnt to the ground in the 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War. Also the city of Dimitrovgrad in south Bulgaria, that was planned as a key industrial and infrastructure center.
Červar-Porat is a resort town in western Croatia, located on the east coast of the Adriatic Sea on the Červar lagoon. It was built as planned town in the 1970s, although the area was inhabited in Roman times, during the War of Independence it was used as a camp for refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Vukovar. It was planned to house 6500 people.
The capital of Zagreb underwent major expansion during the 1960s. By that time, the city's official boundary was the river Sava, since nothing was built over it, after a flood in the 1960s, many residents were moved and some other districts were created for the residents, such as Dubrava, which was the interconnection between the Zagreb's old part and Sesvete. During the 1960s and 1970s, a planned part of Zagreb, Novi Zagreb (New Zagreb), was constructed, which lied on the other, uninhabited part of the river Sava, and is now one of major districts consisting of purely residential buildings and blocks. It is still under expansion and some new landmarks were built in it, the most famous one is the recent one, Arena Zagreb, built in 2008.
Czechoslovakia and Czech Republic
Prague was extended by large housing estates – "new towns" in the 1970s and 1980s: Severní Město (Northern Town), Jižní Město (Southern Town), Jihozápadní Město (South-Western Town) were the largest, with population around 100.000 each. Their remote position to the city centre was compensated for by underground lines constructed usually a decade after the completion of the housing projects. A new housing estate called Západní Město (Western Town) is currently (2017) partly under construction (Britská čtvrť) and partly in planning stage.
Fredericia was designed as a combination of town and military fortress following the devastation caused by the Thirty Years' War. More recent examples are Græse Bakkeby in North Zealand, and Ørestad, planned and built to strengthen development in the Copenhagen/Malmö region. The suburb Albertslund was also built from scratch in the 1970s, merging the two villages Vridsløselille and Herstedvester.
The city of Helsinki, previously a town of 5,000 inhabitants, was made the capital of the new Grand Duchy of Finland in 1812 by decree of Alexander I, Emperor of Russia, the city center was rebuilt with the lead of the German architect Carl Ludvig Engel.
The city of Vaasa was rebuilt about seven kilometers northwest of its original location in 1862, after a fire which destroyed the city in 1852, the new town was planned by Carl Axel Setterberg. The disastrous consequences of the fire were considered as the design included five broad avenues which divided the town into sections and each block was divided by alleys.
Hamina is an old Finnish Eastern trade capital, founded during the Swedish reign. The star-shaped fortress and the circular town plan are based on an Italian Renaissance fortress concept from the 16th century.
Many new cities, called bastides, were founded from the 12th to 14th centuries in southwestern France, where the Hundred Years War took place, in order to replace destroyed cities and organize defence and growth. Among those, Monpazier, Beaumont, and Villeréal are good examples.
In 1517, the construction of Le Havre was ordered by Francis I of France as a new port, it was completely destroyed during the Second World War and was entirely rebuilt in a modernist style, during the Trente Glorieuses, the thirty-year period from 1945 to 1975.
A program of new towns (French ville nouvelle) was developed in the mid-1960s to try to control the expansion of cities. Nine villes nouvelles were created.
- Near Paris: Cergy-Pontoise, Marne-la-Vallée, Sénart (former Melun-Sénart), Évry, Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines
- Near Lille: Villeneuve d'Ascq (Former Lille-Est)
- Near Lyon: L'Isle-d'Abeau
- Near Marseille: Rives de l'Etang de Berre
- Near Rouen: Val-de-Reuil
- Near Grenoble: L'Isle-d'Abeau
La Défense, in the greater Paris area, could also be considered a planned town, though it was not built all at once but in successive stages beginning in the 1950s.
Planned cities in Germany are:
- Bayreuth: an example of a medieval new city
- Bremerhaven: founded as a seaport in the 19th century
- Berlin – Friedrichstadt
- Eisenhüttenstadt: the "first socialist town" in Germany
- Freudenstadt: the roads follow the layout of the Nine Men's Morris game
- Glückstadt: founded in 1617 by the Duke of Holstein, King Christian IV of Denmark
- Halle-Neustadt: a "Stadtteil" or borough in Halle, Saxony-Anhalt
- Hellerau: first German garden city founded in 1909, today part of Dresden
- Karlsruhe: the roads follow the layout of a hand-held fan with the castle being at the juncture
- Ludwigsburg: planned new capital for the duke of Württemberg
- Mannheim Quadratestadt: squares named like ranks and files on a chessboard
- Munich Maxvorstadt: the first planned city expansion of Munich was realized from 1805 to 1810 according to a raster
- Neu-Isenburg: founded in 1699 as a town of exiles by French Huguenots
- Neustrelitz: founded in 1733 with streets spreading from an octagonal market place
- Neuwied: founded in 1653
- Putbus: built around a circular centre with radially aligned streets
- Sennestadt: founded in 1956, today part of Bielefeld
- Wilhelmshaven: founded as a naval base by the Kingdom of Prussia
- Wolfsburg: founded in 1938 to host the factories for the newly built Volkswagen
Planned cities in Greece are:
- Lakki: planned and built in the 1930s by the Italians to house members of its military stationed on the island of Leros; its initial name was Portolago
- Nea Alikarnassos: founded in 1925 to house Greek refugees
- Orestiada: founded in 1922 to house Greek refugees
- Paralia Distomou: planned and built to house workers of Aluminium of Greece
- Sparta: planned and built in 1834 after a decree issued by Otto of Greece
All Hungarian planned cities were built in the second half of the 20th century when a program of rapid industrialization was implemented by the communist government.
- The Akadémiaújtelep area of Budapest was designed in a unique geometrical fashion.
- Dunaújváros, built next to the existing village Dunapentele to provide housing for workers of a large steel factory complex. Once named after Stalin, the city maintains its importance in heavy industry even after the recession following the end of Communist era.
- Tiszaújváros, built next to the existing village Tiszaszederkény and was named after Lenin for decades. A significant chemical factory was built simultaneously.
- Kazincbarcika, created from the villages Sajókazinc, Barcika and Berente (the latter has become independent since then) in a mining area. The city and its population grew fast after the founding of a factory.
- Tatabánya, created from four already existing villages was developed into a mining town and industrial centre and shortly after its elevation to town status became the county seat of its county, a status it still maintains despite the presence of historically more significant towns in the area.
- Beloiannisz (although not a town, only a village) was planned and built in the 1950s to provide home for Greek refugees of the Civil War.
In the Republic of Ireland, as not in the United Kingdom, the term "new town" is often used to refer to planned towns built after World War II which were discussed as early as 1941, the term "new town" in Ireland was also used for some earlier developments, notably during the Georgian era. Part of Limerick city was built in a planned fashion as "Newtown Pery".
In 1961 the first new town of Shannon was commenced and a target of 6,000 inhabitants was set, this has since been exceeded. Shannon is of some regional importance today as an economic centre (with the Shannon Free Zone and Shannon Airport), but until recently failed to expand in population as anticipated, since the late 1990s, and particularly in the early 2000s, the population has been expanding at a much faster rate, with town rejuvenation, new retail and entertainment facilities and many new housing developments.
It was not until 1967 that the Wright Report planned four towns in County Dublin, these were Blanchardstown, Clondalkin, Lucan and Tallaght but in actuality this was reduced to Blanchardstown, Lucan-Clondalkin and Tallaght. Each of these towns has approximately 50,000 inhabitants today.
The most recent new town in Ireland is Adamstown in County Dublin. Building commenced in 2005 and it is anticipated that occupation will commence late in 2006 with the main development of 10,500 units being completed within a ten-year timescale.
In the past centuries several new towns have been planned in Italy. One of the most famous is Pienza, close to Siena, a Renaissance city, also called The Ideal Town or Utopia Town. Between 1459 and 1462 the most famous architects of Italy worked there for the Pope Pius II and built the city centre of the small town.
In early 20th century, during the fascist government of Benito Mussolini, many new cities were founded, the most prominent being Littoria (renamed Latina after the fall of the Fascism), the city was inaugurated on 18 December 1932. Littoria was populated with immigrants coming from Northern Italy, mainly from Friuli and Veneto.
Other well-known new cities are located close to Milan in the metropolitan area. Crespi d'Adda, a few kilometres east of Milan along the Adda River, was settled by the Crespi family. It was the first Ideal Worker's City in Italy, built close to the cotton factory. Today Crespi d'Adda is part of the Unesco World Heritage List. Cusano Milanino was settled in the first years of the 20th century in the formerly small town of Cusano. It was built as a new green city, rich in parks, villas, large boulevards and called Milanino (Little Milan); in the 1970s in the eastern metropolitan area of Milan a new city was built by Silvio Berlusconi. It is called Milano Due, it is a garden city designed for families of the upper middle class, with peculiarity of having pedestrian paths completely free of traffic. In the 1980s another two similar cities were built by Berlusconi, Milano 3 and Milano Visconti, each of them has around 12,000 inhabitants.
- The fortified cities of Senglea and Valletta were both built on a grid plan by the Knights of Malta in the 16th century.
- The town of Paola, also known as Raħal Ġdid (New Town), is built on a grid plan by the Grand Master Antoine de Paule.
- The towns of San Ġwann and Santa Luċija were built as planned cities in the 1960s and 1970s
One province of the Netherlands, Flevoland (pop. 370,000 (2006)), was reclaimed from the Zuiderzee (Southern Sea). After a flood in 1916, it was decided that the Zuiderzee, an inland sea within the Netherlands, would be closed and reclaimed; in 1932, a causeway (the Afsluitdijk) was completed, which closed off the sea completely. The Zuiderzee was subsequently called IJsselmeer (IJssel-lake) and its previously salty water became fresh.
The first part of the new lake that was reclaimed was the Noordoostpolder (Northeast polder), this new land included, among others, the former island of Urk and it was included with the province of Overijssel. After this, other parts were also reclaimed: the eastern part in 1957 (Oost-Flevoland) and the southern part (Zuid-Flevoland) in 1968, the municipalities on the three parts voted to become a separate province, which happened in 1986. The capital of Flevoland is Lelystad, but the biggest city is Almere (pop. 183,500 in February 2008). Apart from these two larger cities, several 'New Villages' were built; in the Noordoostpolder the central town of Emmeloord is surrounded by ten villages, all on cycling distance from Emmeloord since that was the most popular way of transport in the 1940s (and it's still very popular). Most noteworthy of these villages is Nagele which was designed by famous modern architects of the time, Gerrit Rietveld, Aldo van Eyck, Willem Wissing and Jaap Bakema among them. The other villages were built in a more traditional/vernacular style; in the more recent Flevolandpolders four more 'New Villages' were built. Initially more villages were planned, but the introduction of cars made fewer but larger villages possible.
- Oslo: After a great fire in 1624, it was decided by the then King Christian IV that the city would be moved behind the Akershus fortress. The new town, named Christiania, was laid out in a grid and is now the downtown area known as "Kvadraturen" (the Quadrature), the original town of Oslo was later incorporated into Christiania, and is now a neighborhood in eastern Oslo; Gamlebyen or "The Old City".
- The city of Kristiansand was formally founded in 1641 by King Christian IV. The city was granted all trade privileges on the southern coast of Norway, denying all other towns to trade with foreign states, as Oslo/Christiania before it, the city was behind a fortress, with a grid system allowing cannons to fire towards the two ports of the city and the river on the eastern end.
Four cities stand out as examples of planned communities in Poland: Zamość, Gdynia, Tychy and Nowa Huta. Their very diverse layouts are the result of the different aesthetics that were held as ideal during the development of each of these planned communities. Planned cities in Poland have a long history and fall primarily into three time periods during which planned towns developed in Poland and its neighbors that once comprised the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, these are the Nobleman's Republic (16th to 18th centuries), the interwar period (1918–1939) and Socialist Realism (1944–1956).
The Nobleman's Republic of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
The extreme opulence that Poland's nobility enjoyed during the Renaissance left Poland's elites with not only obscene amounts of money to spend, but also motivated them to find new ways to invest their hefty fortunes out of the grasp of the Royal Treasury. Jan Zamoyski founded the city of Zamość in order to circumvent royal tariffs and duties while also serving as the capital for his mini-state. Zamość was planned by the renowned Paduan architect Bernardo Morando and modeled on Renaissance theories of the 'ideal city'. Realizing the importance of trade, Zamoyski issued special location charters for representatives of peoples traditionally engaged in trade, i.e. to Greeks, Armenians and Sephardic Jews and secured exemptions on taxes, customs duties and tolls, which contributed to its fast development. Zamoyski's success with Zamość spawned numerous other Polish nobles to found their own "private" cities such as Białystok and many of these towns survive today, while Zamość was added to the UN World Heritage list in 1992 and is today considered one of the most precious urban complexes in Europe and in the world.
The preeminent example of a planned community in interwar Poland is Gdynia, after World War I when Poland regained its independence it lacked a commercial seaport (De iure Poles could use Gdańsk, which was the main port of the country before the War and is again today, but de facto the Germans residing in the city made it almost impossible for them), making it necessary to build one from scratch. The extensive and modern seaport facilities in Gdynia, the most modern and extensive port facilities in Europe at the time, became Poland's central port on the Baltic Sea; in the shadow of the port, the city took shape mirroring in its scope the rapid development of 19th-century Chicago, growing from a small fishing village of 1,300 in 1921 into a full blown city with a population over 126,000 less than 20 years later. The Central Business District that developed in Gdynia is a showcase of Art Deco and Modernist architectural styles and predominate much of the cityscape. There are also villas, particularly in the city's villa districts such as Kamienna Góra where Historicism inspired Neo-Renaissance and Neo-Baroque architecture.
After the destruction of most Polish cities in World War II, the Communist regime that took power in Poland sought to bring about architecture that was in line with its vision of society, thus urban complexes arose that reflected the ideals of socialist realism. This can be seen in districts of Polish cities such as Warsaw's MDM, the City of Nowa Huta (now a district of Kraków) and Tychy were built as the epitome of the proletarian future of Poland.
Vila Real de Santo António was built after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, on the same model that was used for rebuilding Lisbon, Portugal's capital city (also destroyed in the earthquake), and on a similar orthogonal plan.
The cities of Brăila, Giurgiu and Turnu Severin were rebuilt, according to new plans, in the first part of the 19th century and the cities of Alexandria and Călărași were built completely new the same time. The city of Victoria, located in the Braşov County, was built by the communist government in the beginning of the second half of the 20th century.
- Saint Petersburg was built by Peter the Great as a planned capital city starting in 1703.
- Magnitogorsk is an example of a planned industrial city based on Stalin's 1930s five-year plans.
- The Avtozavodsky district of Tolyatti is a planned industrial city of Soviet post-war modernism.
- Zelenograd was planned as center of textile industry and re-oriented and as center of the Soviet electronics and microelectronics.
Novi Beograd, meaning New Belgrade in Serbian, is a municipality of the city of Belgrade, built on a previously undeveloped area on the left bank of the Sava river. The first development began in 1947, the municipality has since expanded significantly and become the fastest developing region in Serbia.
Drvengrad, meaning Wooden Town in Serbian, is a traditional village that the Serbian film director Emir Kusturica had built for his film Life Is a Miracle. It is located in the Zlatibor District near the city of Užice, two hundred kilometers southwest of Serbia's capital, Belgrade, it is located near Mokra Gora and Višegrad.
- Partizánske was established in 1938–1939, when Jan Antonín Baťa of Zlín, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic) and his powerful network of companies built a shoe factory in the cadastral area of Šimonovany municipality. The newly created settlement for workers carried the name of Baťovany and was part of Šimonovany, with the growth of the factory, so grew the settlement. The whole municipality was renamed to Baťovany in 1948 and given town status, as a sign of recognition of local inhabitants fighting in the Slovak National uprising, the town was renamed Partizánske on 9 February 1949.
- Svit was established in 1934 by business industrialist Jan Antonín Baťa of Zlín, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic) in accordance with his policy of setting up villages around the country for his workers.
During the 16th and 17th centuries, the population of Spain declined due to emigration to the Americas and later kings and governments made efforts to repopulate the country; in the second half of the 18th century, King Charles III implemented the so-called New Settlements (Nuevas Poblaciones) plan which would bring 10,000 immigrants from central Europe to the region of Sierra Morena. Pablo de Olavide was appointed superintendent and about forty new settlements were established of which the most notable was La Carolina, which has a perfectly rectangular grid design.
Later kings and repopulation efforts led to the creation of more settlements, also with rectangular grid plans. One of them was the town of La Isabela (40.4295 N, 2.6876 W), which disappeared in the 1950s submerged under the waters of the newly created artificial lake of Buendía but is still visible just under the water in satellite imagery.
Gothenburg was planned and built as a major fortified city from nothing from 1621.
Karlskrona was also planned and built as a major city and naval base from nothing, beginning 1680.
Vällingby, a suburb, is an example of a new town in Sweden from after 1950.
Kiruna was built because of the large mine, from 1898.
Arvika was also a planned city.
Odesa was built as a planned city according to 18th-century plans by the Flemish engineer Franz de Wollant (also known as François Sainte de Wollant). The same engineer also planned the following municipalities in Ukraine in the late 18th century:
- Voznesensk (Ukrainian: Вознесенськ), in Mykolayiv Oblast
- Ovidiopol (Ukrainian: Овідіополь), in Odesa Oblast
Horishni Plavni, founded in the 1960 as Komsomolsk, is the most prosperous planned city in Ukraine, depending on the internationally important iron ore mining business.
Prypiat is another new city in Ukraine built in 1970. The city was abandoned on 27 April 1986 after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, on 26 April the city had 50,000 habitants, the majority working at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Now the abandoned town is highly contaminated by radiation. Most of the Prypiat's former inhabitants were resettled to Slavutych which was planned and built for that purpose.
The Romans planned many towns in Britain, but the settlements were changed out of all recognition in subsequent centuries, the town of Winchelsea is said to be the first post-Roman new town in Britain, constructed to a grid system under the instructions of King Edward I in 1280, and largely completed by 1292. Another claimant to the title is Salisbury, established in the early 13th century by the then Bishop of Sarum, the best known pre-20th-century new town in the UK was undoubtedly the Edinburgh New Town, built in accordance with a 1766 master plan by James Craig, and (along with Bath and Dublin) the archetype of the elegant Georgian style of British architecture.
The term "new town" often refers in the UK to towns built after World War II under the New Towns Act 1946, these were influenced by the garden city movement, launched around 1900 by Ebenezer Howard and Sir Patrick Geddes and the work of Raymond Unwin, and manifested at Letchworth Garden City and Welwyn Garden City in Hertfordshire.
Following World War II, some 28 projected towns were designated as New Towns under the 1946 Act, and were developed partly to house the large numbers of people whose homes had been destroyed by bombing during the war and partly to move parts of the population out of (mainly Victorian) urban slums. New Towns policy was also informed by a series of wartime commissions, including:
- the Barlow Commission (1940) into the distribution of industrial population,
- the Scott Committee into rural land use (1941)
- the Uthwatt Committee into compensation and betterment (1942)
- (later) the Reith Report into New Towns (1947).
Also crucial to thinking was the Abercrombie Plan for London (1944), which envisaged moving a million and a half people from London to new and expanded towns. (A similar plan was developed for the Clyde Valley in 1946 to combat similar problems faced in Glasgow.) Together these committees reflected a strong consensus to halt the uncontrolled sprawl of London and other large cities. For some, this consensus was tied up with a concern for social welfare reform (typified by the Beveridge Report), as typified in the motto if we can build better, we can live better; for others, such as John Betjeman it was a more conservative objection to the changing character of existing towns.
Following the building of Borehamwood, Middlesex, 12 miles north-west of central London, the first in a ring of major "first generation" New Towns around London (1946) were Stevenage, Hertfordshire, 27 miles to the north of London, and Basildon, Essex, 25 miles east of London along the River Thames. Hertfordshire built four other new towns, two in the vicinity of Stevenage (Welwyn Garden City and Hatfield), a third to the north called Letchworth, and Hemel Hempstead to the west. (Hall 1996: 133) New Towns in the North East were also planned such as Newton Aycliffe (which the social reformer and government adviser William Beveridge wanted to be the "ideal town to live in") and Peterlee. Bracknell in Berkshire, to the south-west of London, was designated a New Town in 1949 and is still expanding. Other London new towns from this era include Harlow in Essex and Crawley in West Sussex.
Later a scatter of "second-generation" towns were built to meet specific problems, such as the development of the Corby Steelworks. Finally, five "third-generation" towns were launched in the late 1960s: these were larger, some of them based on substantial existing settlements such as Peterborough, and the most famous was probably Milton Keynes, midway between London and Birmingham, known for its huge central park and shopping centre, designed from the outset as a new city – though in law it is a 'New Town'. The 1960s saw new towns crop up around England's second-city Birmingham, namely Redditch, Tamworth and Telford.
Other towns, such as Ashford in Kent, Basingstoke in Hampshire and Swindon in Wiltshire, were designated "Expanded Towns" and share many characteristics with the new towns. Scotland also gained three more new towns: Cumbernauld in 1956, famous for its enclosed 'town centre', Livingston (1962) and Irvine (1966).
In spite of the relative success of new towns in the London Metropolitan green belt, London continued to suffer from a chronic housing shortage, especially in the south-east. Another small New Town, Thamesmead, was developed adjacent to the Thames in the early 1960s but suffered from poor transport links, some improvement in infrastructure has been seen subsequently.
All the new towns featured a car-oriented layout with many roundabouts and a grid-based road system unusual in the old world. Milton Keynes in particular was designed with a grid-based distributor road system, the earlier new towns, where construction was often rushed and whose inhabitants were generally plucked out of their established communities with little ceremony, rapidly got a poor press reputation as the home of "new town blues". These issues were systematically addressed in the later towns, with the third generation towns in particular devoting substantial resources to cycle routes, public transport and community facilities, as well as employing teams of officers for social development work.
The financing of the UK new towns was creative. Land within the designated area was acquired at agricultural use value by the development corporation for each town, and infrastructure and building funds borrowed on 60-year terms from the UK Treasury. Interest on these loans was rolled up, in the expectation that the growth in land values caused by the development of the town would eventually allow the loans to be repaid in full. However, the high levels of retail price inflation experienced in the developed world in the 1970s and 1980s fed through into interest rates and frustrated this expectation, so that substantial parts of the loans had ultimately to be written off.
All New Towns designated under the New Towns Act of 1946 were serviced by a secretariat, the New Towns Association, a quango that reported to the New Towns Directorate of the Department of the Environment, it coordinated the work of the General Managers and technical officers, published a monthly information bulletin and provided information for visitors from around the world. As each New Town reached maturity, the town's assets were taken over by the Commission for New Towns. Set up in 1948, the New Towns Association was dissolved in 1998. All papers held by it and the Commission for New Towns are held in The National archives:
From the 1970s the first generation towns began to reach their initial growth targets, as they did so, their development corporations were wound up and the assets disposed of: rented housing to the local authority, and other assets to the Commission for the New Towns (in England; but alternative arrangements were made in Scotland and Wales). The Thatcher Government, from 1979, saw the new towns as a socialist experiment to be discontinued, and all the development corporations were dissolved by 1992 (with the closure of Milton Keynes Development Corporation), even for the third generation towns whose growth targets were still far from being achieved. Ultimately the Commission for the New Towns was also dissolved and its assets – still including a lot of undeveloped land – passed to the English Industrial Estates Corporation (later known as English Partnerships).
Many of the New Towns attempted to incorporate public art and cultural programmes but with mixed methods and results; in Harlow the architect in charge of the design of the new town, Frederick Gibberd, founded the Harlow Art Trust and used it to purchase works by leading sculptors, including Auguste Rodin, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. In Peterlee the abstract artist Victor Pasmore was appointed part of the design team, which led to the building of the Apollo Pavilion. Washington New Town was provided with a community theatre and art gallery, the public art in Milton Keynes includes the (in)famous Concrete Cows, which resulted from the work of an 'artist in residence' and have gone on to become a recognised landmark.
In Northern Ireland, building of Craigavon in County Armagh commenced in 1966 between Lurgan and Portadown, although entire blocks of flats and shops lay empty, and later derelict, before eventually being bulldozed. The area, which now has a population exceeding 80,000 is mostly a dormitory town for Belfast.
Derry was the first ever planned city in Ireland (the city is now located in Northern Ireland). Work began on building the new city across the River Foyle from the ancient town of Derry (Doire Cholm Chille or Doire) in 1613, the walls were actually completed five years later in 1618. The central diamond within a walled city with four gates was thought to be a good design for defence; in 1963 under the Matthew Plan the new city of Craigavon was founded out of the original towns of Portadown and Lurgan. This town today lies mostly incomplete as the troubles halted construction, the plan initially was to construct a relief settlement to take people out of the crowded city of Belfast.
Two "post-war new towns" were planned at East Kilbride (1947) and Glenrothes (1948), then the late 1950s and early 1960s saw the creation of Cumbernauld, Irvine and Livingston. Each of these towns is in Scotland's list of 20 most populated towns and cities. Glenrothes was the first new town in the UK to appoint a town artist in 1968. A massive range of artworks (around 132 in total) ranging from concrete hippos to bronze statues, dancing children, giant flowers, a dinosaur, a horse and chariot and crocodiles, to name but a few, were created. Town artists appointed in Glenrothes include David Harding and Malcolm Robertson.
The only new towns in Wales have been Newtown and Cwmbran. Cwmbran was established to provide new employment in the south eastern portion of the South Wales Coalfield, the town is perhaps most widely known now for its international sports stadium and shopping centre.
When Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald began to settle the West in Canada, he put the project under the command of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). The CPR exercised complete control over the development of land under its ownership, the federal government granted every second square mile section (totalling 101,000 km²) along the proposed railway line route to the CPR. The CPR decided where to place railway stations, and thus would decide where the dominant town of the area would be; in most instances the CPR would build a station on an empty section of land to make the largest profit from land sales – meaning that the CPR founded many of the Canadian West's towns, such as Medicine Hat and Moose Jaw, from scratch. If an existing town was close to the newly constructed station but on land not owned by the CPR, the town was forced to move itself to the new site and reconstruct itself, essentially building a new town. Calgary and Yorkton, Saskatchewan, were among the towns that had to move themselves.
After the CPR established a station at a particular site, it would plan how the town would be constructed, the side of the tracks with the station would go to business, while the other side would go to warehouses. Furthermore, the CPR controlled where major buildings went (by giving the town free land to build it where the CPR wanted it to go), the construction of roads and the placement and organization of class-structured residential areas.
The CPR's influence over the development of the Canadian west's communities was one of the earliest examples of new town construction in the modern world. Later influences on planned community development in Canada were the exploitation of mineral and forest wealth, usually in remote locations of the vast country, among numerous company towns planned and built for these purposes were Corner Brook and Grand Falls in Newfoundland, Témiscaming and Fermont in Quebec.
In the modern suburban context, several "New Towns" were established in the suburbs of large cities. Early examples include Leaside in Toronto and Mount Royal in Montreal. Both were planned and developed by the Canadian Northern Railway as middle class suburbs, though both, Leaside in particular, featured large industrial tracts. Leaside had its own municipal government until 1967, while Mount Royal continues to enjoy autonomy from the City of Montreal.
In the post-war period, new corporate new towns were developed. Bramalea, located in Brampton, Ontario and Erin Mills, located in Mississauga, Ontario, were both developed in phases. Both included residential, commercial and industrial components. Development in Erin Mills continues to this day.
CityPlace, Toronto is another example of a planned community.
Tenochtitlan was the capital of the Aztec empire, which was built on an island in Lake Texcoco in what is now the Federal District in central Mexico. The city was largely destroyed in the 1520s by Spanish conquistadores. Mexico City was erected on top of the ruins and, over the ensuing centuries, most of Lake Texcoco has gradually been drained.
Although Panama City itself is not planned, certain areas are such as Costa del Este, an exclusive high density residential and business area, very close to downtown Panama City, the project combines many skyscrapers with beautiful green areas, and it is close to a highway that connects it to the city center. Other planned areas, but in a lesser degree, are Punta Pacifica and the former Canal Zone.
In the colonial history of the United States, the first planned community was St. Augustine, planned in 1565. The earliest towns in English-speaking America such as Jamestown had only rudimentary elements of planning, the first comprehensively planned town was Charles Town (later Charleston, South Carolina), which was founded in 1670, planned in 1672, and relocated in 1680. Later planned cities were Philadelphia, 1682; Albany, 1695; Williamsburg, 1699; Annapolis, 1718; New York City 1731 (redesigned by the British);and Savannah, 1733; New Haven, 1748 (with an early plan dated 1638); and Alexandria, 1749. The national capital (Washington, D.C.), and several state capitals (Jackson, Mississippi; Columbus, Ohio; Indianapolis, Indiana; Raleigh, North Carolina; Columbia, South Carolina; Madison, Wisconsin; Salt Lake City, Utah; Tallahassee, Florida; and Austin, Texas) were essentially carved out of the wilderness to serve as capital cities.
In Beaver County, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, American Bridge Company founded Ambridge, Pennsylvania in 1905 as a company town for American Bridge; American Bridge is still based near Ambridge today in nearby Coraopolis, Pennsylvania.
Another well-known company town is Gary, Indiana, which was founded in 1906 by the United States Steel Corporation as a home for its new steel mill, the Gary Works, and named after Elbert Henry Gary, the chairman of the company. For many years the Gary Works was the largest steel mill in the world, and it dominated the town, the main entrance being at the northern end of Broadway, the city's main thoroughfare, the fortunes of this planned city have historically risen and fallen with those of the steel mill: prosperous in the 1930s, the city has lost 55 percent of its population since 1960.
Riverside, Illinois, Radburn, New Jersey, and Kansas City, Missouri's Country Club District are other early examples of planned communities. Established in 1912, Shaker Heights, Ohio, was planned and developed in by the Van Sweringen brothers, railroad moguls who envisioned the community as a suburban retreat from the industrial inner-city of Cleveland. Kohler Company created a planned village of the same name west of the company's former headquarters city of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, which incorporated in 1912. In 1918, the Aluminum Company of America built the town of Alcoa, Tennessee for the employees of the nearby aluminum processing plant.
During the Florida land boom of the 1920s in Southern Florida, the communities of Coral Gables, Opa-locka, and Miami Springs, now suburbs of Miami, were incorporated as fully planned "themed" communities which were to reflect the architecture and look of Spain, Arabia, and Mexico respectively, and are now considered some of the first modern planned communities in the United States. Oldsmar, located in west central Florida, was developed by automobile pioneer Ransom E. Olds.
In 1928, San Clemente, California was incorporated by Ole Hanson who designated that all buildings must be approved by an architectural review board in order to retain control over development and building style.
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, several model towns were planned and built by the Federal government. Arthurdale and Eleanor, West Virginia, federally funded New Deal communities, were Eleanor Roosevelt's projects to ease the burden of the depression on coal miners. The Tennessee Valley Authority created several towns of its own to accommodate workers constructing their new dams; the most prominent being Norris, Tennessee. Three "Greenbelt Communities", Greenbelt, Maryland, Greenhills, Ohio, and Greendale, Wisconsin, built by the Federal government during the 1930s were planned with a surrounding "belt" of woodland and natural landscaping.
During World War II, the Manhattan Project built several planned communities to provide accommodations for scientists, engineers, industrial workers and their families, these communities, including Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Richland, Washington and Los Alamos, New Mexico were necessary because the laboratories and industrial plants of the Manhattan Project were built in isolated locations to ensure secrecy. Even the existence of these towns was a military secret, and the towns themselves were closed to the public until after the war.
The Levittowns—in Long Island, Pennsylvania and New Jersey (now known as Willingboro, New Jersey) – typified the planned suburban communities of the 1950s and early 1960s. California's Rohnert Park (north of San Francisco) is another example of a planned city (built at the same time as Levittown) that was marketed to attract middle-class people into an area only populated with farmers with the phrase, "A Country Club for the middle class."
Many other places, such as Orange County, California, the Conejo Valley in Ventura County, Valencia in Los Angeles County, as well as Phoenix, Arizona and Northern Arizona also have many master planned communities following the housing boom in the 1960s, which is when the fathers of Scottsdale, Arizona foresaw a huge amount of growth in Arizona. Some of those communities include Anaheim Hills, Rossmoor, Irvine, Ladera Ranch, Laguna Niguel, Mission Viejo, and Talega, Thousand Oaks, Westlake Village, Newbury Park, Valencia in California and (in the Phoenix area) Marley Park, Talking Rock Ranch, McCormick Ranch, Rio Verde, Tartesso and Verrado in Buckeye, Arizona. The neighborhood of Warren in the city of Bisbee has the distinction of being Arizona's first planned community; in the Conejo Valley, which is in the East County Area of Ventura County, all cities were master planned. Most notably, the Thousand Oaks, Newbury Park, and Westlake Village area was master planned by the Janss Investment Company, which was also responsible for the development of Westwood Village, part of the Westside in Los Angeles. Valencia is an area that is a master planned community that incorporated into the City of Santa Clarita, developed and planned by the Newhall Land and Farming Company. About 25% of Orange County is composed of various master planned communities, much of which was done by the Irvine Company, and since 1990, 85% of all developments in Orange County and a slightly smaller amount of communities in Arizona were part of a master planned community. 75% of all resales today in the Phoenix area are homes in master planned communities, and 80% of all new home construction permits issued by Arizona building departments are master planned communities. These communities provide functionality to the precious land left in the area, as well as the ability to create a housing-business-transportation-open space balance.
The era of the modern planned city began in 1962–64 with the creation of Reston, Virginia which was begun just a year before Coral Springs in western Broward County, Florida, and Columbia, Maryland. In more recent years, New Urbanism has set the stage for new cities, with places like the idyllic Seaside, Florida, and Disney's new town of Celebration, Florida.
In the United States, suburban growth in the Sunbelt states has coincided with the popularity of Master Planned Communities within established suburbs. Texas was at the forefront of this trend. Las Colinas, established in 1973, was one of the first such examples and is still growing. Las Colinas is a 12,000 acres (4,900 ha) master planned community within the Dallas-area city of Irving. In 2006, residents approved changes to deed restrictions to allow greater density of urban mixed-use and residential construction. Also in the 1970s, just north of the existing town of Spring, Texas (north of Houston), oil and gas industry executive George P. Mitchell developed The Woodlands, a major residential and commercial master planned community which is now considered one of the premier residential and business destinations in the Houston area. The Woodlands is still experiencing huge growth to this day; in the 1990s, Cinco Ranch was first developed just south of the existing town of Katy, one of the western suburbs of Houston, and has contributed to the explosive recent growth of Houston's suburban west side.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, master planned commercial developments such as Bishop Ranch in San Ramon and Hacienda Business Park in Pleasanton have attracted major corporate tenants to relocate from downtown Oakland and San Francisco; these companies include Safeway, Chevron Corporation and AT&T (as the former Pacific Bell).
In recent years, new towns such as Mountain House, San Joaquin County, California, have added a new wrinkle to the movement: to prevent conurbation with nearby cities, they have imposed strict growth boundaries, as well as automatic "circuit breakers" that place moratoriums on residential development if the number of jobs per resident in the town falls below a certain value. Centennial new town part in Tejon Ranch halfway between Los Angeles and Bakersfield, will incorporate such restrictions in order to minimize the commuter load on severely congested I-5. Coyote Springs, Nevada, Destiny, Florida and Douglas Ranch in Buckeye, Arizona are amongst the largest communities being planned for the 21st century. A recent twist is the town of Ave Maria, Florida, founded in 2007, which is anchored by a Catholic university and has a large Catholic church in the center of town surrounded by commercial and residential development.
Urban planner Pedro Benoit designed a city layout based on a rationalist conception of urban centers, the city has the shape of a square with a central park and two main diagonal avenues, north-south and east-west. (In addition, there are numerous other shorter diagonals.) This design is copied in a self-similar manner in small blocks of six by six blocks in length. Every six blocks, one finds a small park or square. Other than the diagonals, all streets are on a rectangular grid, and are numbered consecutively.
The designs for the government buildings were chosen in an international architectural competition. Thus, the Governor Palace was designed by Italians, City Hall by Germans, etc. Electric street lighting was installed in 1884, and was the first of its kind in Latin America.
Juscelino Kubitschek, President of Brazil from 1956 to 1961, ordered the construction of Brasília, fulfilling the promise of the Constitution and his own political campaign promise. Building Brasília was part of Juscelino's "fifty years of prosperity in five" plan. Lúcio Costa won a contest and was the main urban planner in 1957, with 5550 people competing. Oscar Niemeyer, a close friend, was the chief architect of most public buildings and Roberto Burle Marx was the landscape designer. Brasília was built in 41 months, from 1956 to 21 April 1960, when it was officially inaugurated.
The former capital of Brazil was Rio de Janeiro, and resources tended to be concentrated in the southeast region of Brazil. While the city was built because there was a need for a neutrally located federal capital, the main reason was to promote the development of Brazil's hinterland and better integrate the entire territory of Brazil. Brasília is approximately at the geographical center of Brazilian territory.
Lúcio Costa, the city's principal architect, designed the city to be shaped like an airplane. Housing and offices are situated on giant superblocks, everything following the original plan, the plan specifies which zones are residential, which zones are commercial, where industries can settle, where official buildings can be built, the maximum height of buildings, etc.
In 1889, Brazil became a republic, and it was agreed that a new state capital of Minas Gerais, in tune with a modern and prosperous Minas Gerais, had to be set; in 1893, due to the climatic and topographic conditions, Curral Del Rey was selected by Minas Gerais governor Afonso Pena among other cities as the location for the new economical and cultural center of the state, under the new name of "Cidade de Minas," or City of Minas. Aarão Reis, an urbanist from the State of Pará, was then set to design the second planned city of Brazil (the first one is Teresina), and then Cidade de Minas was inaugurated finally in 1897, with many unfinished constructions as the Brazilian Government set a deadline for its completion. Inhabitation of the city was subsidized by the local government, through the concession of free empty lots and funding for building houses. An interesting feature of Reis' downtown street plan for Belo Horizonte was the inclusion of a symmetrical array of perpendicular and diagonal streets named after Brazilian states and Brazilian indigenous tribes.
Goiânia: The plan was for a city of 50,000 with the shape of a concentric radius – streets in the form of a spoke, with the Praça Cívica as the center, with the seats of the state and municipal government – The Palace of Emeralds and the Palace of Campinas. In 1937, a decree was signed transferring the state capital from the Cidade de Goiás to Goiânia, the official inauguration only occurred in 1942 with the presence of the president of the republic, governors, and ministers.
- Guayana City – Bolívar State
- Guyana City is a city in Bolívar State, Venezuela. It lies south of the Orinoco, where the river is joined by the Caroní River, the city, officially founded in 1961, is actually composed of the old town of San Félix at the east and the new town of Puerto Ordazat the west, which lies on the confluence of the Caroní and Orinoco Rivers and is the site of the Llovizna Falls. There are bridges across the Caroni and a new bridge across the Orinoco (Second Orinoco crossing), the city stretches 40 kilometers along the south bank of the Orinoco. With approximately one million people, it is Venezuela's fastest-growing city due to its important iron and steelworks and aluminium industries, the city has a large hydroelectric power plant, Macagua Dam. Guayana City is one of Venezuela's five most important ports, since most goods produced in Bolívar are shipped through it, onto the Atlantic Ocean via the Orinoco river. Due to its planned nature, the city has a drastically different feel to it than many other South American cities, the towers of the Alta Vista district recall Barranquilla, and many of the residential neighborhoods have architecture and landscaping that are similar to suburbs in the United States in the 1950s, including 'cookie cutter' homes, sidewalks, and patterned lawns. This is an artifact due to the presence in the 1960s and early 1970s of US Steel, an American company with iron mining operations in the region. US Steel built housing for hundreds of its American expatriate workers and families, who lived in Puerto Ordaz and other communities until the nationalization of the Venezuelan steel industry forced the company and its workers to leave.
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Australia's most prominent fully planned city is Canberra, designed by American architect Walter Burley Griffin, the early central areas of two other major capital cities – Adelaide and Melbourne – were also planned by surveyors. Walter Burley Griffin was Australia's most notable city planner having also designed smaller cities and towns including Leeton and Griffith in New South Wales. A controversial Japanese-backed planned city, Multifunction Polis, was proposed in the 1980s but never implemented.
- Forest Lake, Queensland, Brisbane (completed 2004)
- The New Rouse Hill, Sydney (current)
- Golden Grove, South Australia (Completed 1991)
Adelaide was founded by British and German colonists in 1836 to test out Edward Gibbon Wakefield's theories of systematic colonisation. Convict labour was not employed and the colony in theory would be financially self-sufficient; in practice, government assistance was used in the early stages. Land had been sold before anyone set foot in the largely unexplored territory and the city (the basis for the future central business district) was surveyed and planned in a remarkably short space of time. Adelaide's design has been praised for its four-square layout, its choice of setting and its ample parklands which have had minimal encroachment of developments, the town centre was in sufficient proximity to a water source, the River Torrens.
Melbourne was planned as a free settlement in 1837 through the Hoddle Grid, drawn up by Robert Hoddle under instructions from George Gipps, the original plan for Melbourne as part of the first land sales (prior to the planning only a handful of existing settlements were built on the fringe of the grid). The grid featured wide parallel streets, spanning a gently sloping valley between hills (Batman's Hill, Flagstaff Hill and Eastern Hill) and roughly parallel to the course of the Yarra River. The deliberate exclusion of city squares or open space within the grid was a subject of future frustration for the municipality and residents Elizabeth Street, Melbourne, in the centre of the grid, was built over a gully and has therefore been prone to flooding, despite a later extension and later inclusion of planned suburbs, Melbourne's original plans were not as extensive as Adelaide's, and the city rapidly outgrew its original boundaries. As such, it is often not considered to be a planned city, but the grid continues to define much of the character of the Melbourne city centre.
Canberra, established in 1908, was planned as the capital city of Australia and is Australia's most notable and ambitious example of civic planning. The city was designed to be the Federal Capital following the federation of the six Australian colonies which formed the Commonwealth of Australia, the new nation required a capital that was located away from other major settlements such as Melbourne and Sydney. Canberra is thus located in a Territory – the Australian Capital Territory – and not a State. Prior to this time the land that Canberra is found on was farming land, indigenous settlements, and forest; in 1912, after an extensive planning competition was completed, the vision of American Walter Burley Griffin was chosen as the winning design for the city. Extensive construction and public works were required to complete the city, this involved the flooding of a large parcel of land to form the center piece of the city, Lake Burley Griffin. Unlike some other Australian cities, the road network, suburbs, parks and other elements of the city were designed in context with each other, rather than haphazard planning as witnessed in much of Sydney. Notable buildings include the High Court, Federal Parliament, Government House, War Memorial, Anzac Parade and headquarters of the Department of Defence.
New Zealand has several small New Towns, built for a specific purpose. Examples include Kawerau in the Bay of Plenty (a mill town), Twizel in North Otago, Mangakino in the Waikato (both for hydroelectricity), and Turangi near Taupo (for the Tongariro Power Scheme). Construction of Kawerau began in 1953. Twizel was built in 1968 to service nearby hydroelectric projects and was supposed to close on their completion. However, its residents managed to save the town in 1983. Mangakino, constructed from 1946, was also meant to be a temporary construction town, but it too remains today. John Martin, the founder of the Wairarapa town of Martinborough, set out the town's first streets in the pattern of the Union Flag in the 19th century.
- Lists of purpose-built capital cities
- List of planned cities
- Cardus and decumanus in Roman coloniae
- Company town
- Garden city movement
- Grid plan
- Housing estate
- Model village
- Multifunction Polis
- Olympic Movement
- Principles of Intelligent Urbanism
- Private community
- Urban planning
- List of urban planners
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|Wikimedia Commons has media related to Planned cities.|
- International New Town Institute (INTI)
- European New Town Platform
- Town and Country Planning Association (formerly the Garden Cities Association)
- The Alicia Patterson Foundation: Disappointing New Towns of Great Britain
- Movie: New Towns in Scotland
- UK Model Villages, Garden Cities and New Towns[permanent dead link] (this links to a Keyhole Markup Language file that opens in Google Earth to see aerial photos of the places.)