How can political parties solve the housing crisis? The vogue a few years ago was to talk about garden cities, although once it became clear that the National Planning Policy Framework had upset a lot of Conservative voters, politicians started to prevaricate over plans for more garden cities, and then eventually published a ‘prospectus’ asking for locally-led ideas.
I spent this morning exploring Milton Keynes, which was a New Town, rather than one of the original garden cities, but which planning policy wonks, including Number 10’s Alex Morton, hold up as an example of a new development built from scratch which has become hugely successful, with high rates of private sector job creation.
People don’t tend to be particularly complimentary about Milton Keynes (often because they haven’t bothered visiting it), but while its planners clearly made efforts to make it greener than most towns, with trees planted down central boulevards, it’s probably fair to say that town planners might not want to repeat all of its architectural choices.
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