With this initiative, France took over the baton from the UK, which considered itself the birthplace of new towns. The British new towns programme began in 1946 and was largely completed by the early 1970s. Attention shifted to urban regeneration. In 1972, one of the people directly involved wrote: ‘The new towns chapter in our history today as we know it is closing. . . . It is our old towns that must be the new towns of the future.’ *  The new towns concept, with its roots in Ebenezer Howard’s garden city theory, was a typical growth model. As such, it fitted in well with the expansive economic climate in post-war Britain, where an optimistic faith in the future merged with the ideal of the welfare state. Instead of unbridled growth of the existing cities, a choice was made for deconcentration: ‘A policy of planned decentralisation from congested areas.’ The new towns were principally a solution to overpopulation in the big cities. The concrete reason behind the concept was Patrick Abercrombie’s plan for Greater London, which proposed dealing with congestion by moving a million inhabitants to new satellite towns around London. *  Design, construction and development were managed centrally via the Ministry of Town and Country Planning, which made it possible to rapidly achieve high housing production. To begin with, the scope was limited to a maximum of 50,000 inhabitants: a conveniently arranged community without the massiveness, congestion and anonymity of the metropolis.

Although the aim was to achieve ‘self-contained and balanced communities for work and living’, *  the emphasis remained firmly on housing. Employment was principally guaranteed by the proximity of existing economic centres. The economic crisis in the 1970s and stagnating population growth meant a quiet end for the new towns programme. Attention shifted to small-scale urban regeneration in the long-neglected old inner cities. The centralist new towns organization was gradually dismantled from 1975 to 1985. At the same time, the British Urban Development Services Unit (BUDSU) was established in 1976, to make use of the amassed expertise. The aim was to acquire contracts for British companies abroad in the field of urban planning and development. In spite of several projects in former French colonies, this unit was disbanded once again in 1979 due to lack of success. *