New Towns: The Citizenship Opportunity
By Lucy Webb, Director at Inner Circle Consulting; Lucy Bush, Director of Research and Participation at Demos; and Eleanor Fawcett, Built Environment Fellow at the 1851 Royal Commission
New Towns must be judged by more than the number of homes they deliver. While housing numbers and infrastructure remain critical, the real test of success is whether we can create places where people can flourish and cohesive, resilient communities can grow. This is the opportunity of the New Towns programme - to cultivate citizenship from the outset that is collaborative, proactive, creative, relational and long-term.
It's a proposition we have been considering since the new towns agenda was announced, culminating first in Demos’ paper and then a packed panel discussion at UKREIIF. We have heard words like ‘thrilling’ and ‘optimism’ in relation to the New Towns opportunity, it being seen as a chance to innovate and create a new relationship between people and place. What has become very clear is that this opportunity is real. The case is clear: when citizens are involved early, deeply and meaningfully, the benefits ripple across the system.
We have a chance to reframe development from being simply a physical exercise to instead being a long-term civic project, one that builds support for development rather than opposition. An argument that runs through questions of placemaking, governance, stewardship and the legal frameworks that shape how places evolve.
The citizenship opportunity
Citizenship is a practical foundation for building identity, belonging, trust and long-term civic pride. People must feel they are active participants in shaping the places around them, rather than passive recipients of decisions made elsewhere. The argument is not that consultation should happen more often in a narrow procedural sense, but that citizenship should be understood as an ongoing relationship between people and place. That relationship begins with establishing the objectives before development starts, grows through early participation and co-design, and continues through the governance and stewardship arrangements that shape how a place evolves over time.
And this emphasis on participation extends to placemaking. Successful New Towns cannot be reduced to masterplans, land assembly and delivery programmes alone. They must be places that feel coherent, walkable and connected; places where green spaces, schools, public realm and community infrastructure are designed to support everyday life and create opportunities for interaction. Good placemaking, in this account, is not an aesthetic add-on.
Governance, stewardship and institutional trust
Stewardship is central to whether these ambitions can endure. If New Towns are to succeed as communities rather than simply as developments, they need governance structures capable of looking beyond initial delivery. We need long-term stewardship vehicles, accountability and institutional consistency. But this ambition cannot be framed in naivety. We need the legal structure around it to support without compromising competing challenges around pace and viability.
This is particularly evident in the consideration of Development Corporations and other coordinating institutions. These bodies are potentially important vehicles for bringing together public and private partners, aligning infrastructure delivery and providing continuity over long time-scales . But if we really want to use this opportunity to build differently, we can’t use cookie cutter versions of old delivery models that got us where we are today.
We need new delivery mechanisms to ensure that this generation of New Towns are not conceived in isolation from the communities around them or the people that will one day call them home. Integrating citizen voice into the decision-making architecture will help ensure that values and places align more closely with people’s needs and aspirations, rather than just default to ‘business as usual’ approaches. And this may unlock an ambition for a more fundamental rewiring of the economics of asset ownership, to ensure that existing communities and future residents feel the benefit of local growth and investment.
Good new towns do not arrive as isolated projects imposed on a place. They work when community stewardship is built in from the start, when the surrounding context is properly understood, and when new development gives something back to the existing community rather than serving only new residents. That requires governance, legal structures and investment models that reflect the place they are intended to serve. The challenge is not just how to deliver quickly but how to retain control at the local level and build in community stewardship from the beginning.
There is no single model that should be applied everywhere. Diversity in approach, in design, in delivery and in governance matters. The right structure should reflect the place rather than copying a formula from elsewhere. In some cases that may mean a more formal model that still seeks to preserve local leadership and community ownership. In others, it may mean a collaborative plan-led approach that works through partnership and long-term commitment rather than relying on the full machinery of a formal development vehicle.
What we can learn from what’s already happening
Middleton is an example where careful consideration was given to the governance model, to retain local control and build community stewardship. The emphasis is on a cooperative model, extending the idea beyond the legal label into areas such as energy and transport, shaping the wider civic character of a place.
Thamesmead points to a different lesson. Here, Peabody and partners have shown that success does not always depend on adopting the most formal structure available. Instead, long-term delivery, a holistic plan, partnership with the host boroughs and a commitment to investment in existing homes, social and cultural infrastructure, stewardship and socio-economic outcomes can together create the basis for confidence and legitimacy.
For Stockport, it has been about proof of concept and the gradual building of trust. Rather than beginning with the heaviest use of formal powers, the MDC chose an approach that is collaborative, working with the local authority, developers and investors while demonstrating tangible benefits to the community. Trust that is likely to pay dividends as the MDC approaches more difficult sites over time.
The London Legacy Development Corporation is a clear example of where a more formal structure was needed to coordinate across multiple host boroughs, but where success still depended on collaboration, political sensitivity and a clear shared vision from the start. Importantly, the ambition was never permanent centralisation, but a commitment from the outset to hand powers back over time.
Ebbsfleet, meanwhile, shows what stewardship can look like when it is embedded early, with a model intended to build community ownership, leadership and connection around green and community assets.
Conclusion
The opportunity presented by new settlements is not only to build at scale, but to embed citizenship, belonging and stewardship into the way growth is planned and delivered. Critically, success comes through a clear focus on the role of quality and long-term vision.
To support citizenship in new towns, legal frameworks must create the conditions in which local leadership can be exercised, trust can be sustained and community ownership can grow. If that happens, New Towns can become more than a response to housing need. They can become places where communities have the capacity to shape their future and where development leaves behind not only homes and infrastructure, but a lasting civic identity.
This is not a new ambition. There are clues, lessons learnt and successful models to be found across the UK and beyond. But to embed citizenship, these initiatives need to be no longer acts of rebellion or utopian dreams, reliant on unique leadership or the goodwill of volunteers, but to be acknowledged as essential, mainstreamed and delivered consistently and at scale.
We are committed to this challenge and actively working with partners to realise the opportunity. Please get in touch if this is of interest to you.