New-town development in many countries in the world is aimed at decongesting major cities. These towns are planned and built for the main reasons of reducing decongesting large industrialized towns and settling people in freshly built self-sufficient communities. New-town projects have been undertaken in many parts of the world like Europe, USA, Brazil, and Australia.
Early British new-towns were small and limited their population (392). Their limited size indicated that they were huge populations. Their antigrowth nature was held in the belief that bigness meant disorder. However, recent new-towns in European countries like Netherlands, France, and Spain have been designed to stimulate the growth of the entire urban regions. This is done by setting up a cluster of industries around the town which create employment for people from rural areas as well as draw people from nearby congested cities. A good example is when Sweden planned a series of satellite cities around Stockholm and linked them to the capital by good transport infrastructure (392).
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Contrary to Europe, Australia has a different new-town concept. Australia designed and built Canberra in an interior rural area away from the coast. The city is home to the national government. With limited natural resources, the government had an uphill task of attracting investors. Thankfully, the project was successful, and the result was a beautiful city with low unemployment rates and high average weekly incomes (392).
In like manner, the city of Brasilia in Brazil had a plan similar to that of Australia. The city was constructed in the interior to help develop the nation’s interior (393). The idea was to make it the capital and help siphon people from older cities like Rio de Janeiro. However, the population of the city grew faster than it was anticipated. This city was soon congested, and shanties started coming up.
In the USA, new-town development was on a different dimension if compared to Europe and the other two reviewed countries. New-towns depended on ideal situations, plans, and investments of private businesses. This was different to other countries where the government planned such settlements. Radburn was built 20 miles from New York in an attempt to adapt Ebenezer Howard’s idea of a garden city. Greenbelt towns were also built during the great depression to resettle many people who were out of work (394). However, the project never achieved its intended purpose because the towns failed to attract their own industries and create employment. Soon after, attention shifted to the 2nd World War and less funded were available to develop the towns.
In conclusion, Ebenezer’s idea of garden cities of tomorrow has been borrowed to develop new towns in different countries. Even though the planning and execution of the various projects may be different, the final intended purpose is to decongest major industrial cities.
