http://wikitravel.org/en/Stevenage#b

Just heard an interesting blurb on NPR (National Pubic Radio in U S) about the UK's first planned 'new town' built after WW2 near London - one of many that would follow.

Sounds like an interesting off-beat destination for me and perhaps others interested in these unique places. And after reading Wiki Travel's intro to the town I have put it on my upcoming trip to the U K -

<Stevenage is a town of approximately 80,000 in the county of Hertfordshire, in the south east of England, only around 32 miles north of central London. The town is well known for being the first ever 'new town'; new towns were a series of towns built near London after World War II. Stevenage as a whole is not as a major tourist attraction, but there are some attractions that may attract local visitors. An interesting fact about the town is that a view of Stevenage from the air, shows it as a heart shape.

Stevenage is a must for architecture and planning historians, sociologists and socialists to visit, it represents, perhaps, the most successful of the great Post-War experiments with new housing. This was a huge project to relocate those who were displaced by the war in clean, open, and healthy new towns. Its often unattractive architecture is mostly that of the 1960s and 1970s; in this it is perhaps unfortunate, but it was also conceived with a strong vision in mind.

Anyone been to Stevenage and if so what did you think?

Thanks

Steveage pictures

http://www.google.com/search?sugexp=...=1600&bih=1075

Yes & it's an awful place.

awful places are rather interesting to me - thanks for the boost to go there!

says full of 60 and 70s architecture, which in London at least was dreary - I expect a dreary dreary town even more drearier if as usual has dreary English weather.

Dreary - I luv that!

There's a remarkably sensible literary book recently out about Stevenage, which is particularly interesting about how it's changed in its (by our standards) short life. http://www.granta.com/New-Writing/Stevenage. I THINK there's an e-version on Amazon.

Younge's point (and it's generally true of many New Towns) is that when he grew up there, it was a really nice place: the reputation of most immediate post WW2 New Towns started to collapse only round the late 70s. Unlike many further north, Stevenage has never really seen its economy collapse - though its "niceness", in his view, owed a lot to high levels of ongoing public-sector spending on things which more conventional towns funded through charities, volunteers or the private sector. Come Thatcher, and a more frugal attitude to such things, the amenities disappeared in a way they didn't elsewhere. Stevenage also had a rather Soviet philosophy of shopping: its town centre hasn't survived the proliferation of out of town shopping in the area in the way older local towns have, and it now has something of the disconcerting emptiness (and just a bit of the crime culture) you find in some American deindustrialised town centres. New Towns' difficulties (and they're not universal) are as much cultural and philosophical as economic.

Incidentally, Wiki's misleading about the history. The nearby Welwyn Garden City and Letchworth (both still worth visiting, much more economically and culturally resilient and by no means "dreary") were the first English New Towns, established in the early years of the 20th century. Stevenage is no earlier either than a raft of similar New Towns outside the London area designed, in a similar way, to rehouse those made homeless by the Blitz.

If you're visiting Stevenage, it helps to visit Milton Keynes. Designed a complete generation later, it's a great deal more successful, and feels far more like a real town - only one designed round the way many people wanted to live in the late 20th century.

Most of the first post-war New Towns suffered similar fates to many redevelopment areas in other countries: the lack of any preexisting sense of community and the very limited social and economic infrastructure led to a lot of disorientation, and arguably, antisocial behavior. The term "new town blues" was coined in Britain - an increase in diagnoses of depression (particularly among women not in the workforce) that started appearing in the new towns in the 50s and 60s.

The same phenomena was noted in the US among populations displaced through postwar urban renewal in major cities; perhaps the most famous study of this was Herbert Gans' groundbreaking "Urban Villagers" study of working class Boston families, and also a similar piece he did about the sociology of Levittown.

Part of the problem with the Stevenage generation of new towns is that they were all built very rapidly in the 1950s, and have gotten very old simultaneously, with a lot of the infrastructure (and indeed the buildings) starting to wear out all at once. It puts a big demand on the local authorities right at a time when public finance is in rough shape in the UK.

Things like pedestrian-only town cores, strict segregation of land uses and separation of functions (housing/commerce/industry) was deemed innovative at the time, but almost immediately revealed to be a source of sterility not conducive to community-building (cf Jane Jacobs) but the damage was done. If you want to visit the poster child of this brief infatuation with "modernist" town planning, go up to Glasgow and visit the Cumbernauld Town Centre. Cumbernauld was developed at roughly the same time as Stevenage (actually as an "overspill" city from Glasgow) and the Town Center was the result of somebody channeling Corbusier's id in their dreams. It was voted Britain's Worst Building a few years ago, a richly deserved title IMO.

Enjoy your tour of Stevenage. When you're done, do a walking tour of the Barbican in the City. <i>That</i> ought to get your spirits up.

Please tell me you're joking when you say you're thinking of going there. I have been to Stevenage, oh, maybe 100 times for business reasons and it's one of my least favourite destinations. Full of sprawling 1960/70's concrete buildings, council estates encirling boarded up shops and factories and shell-suited chavs hanging around the local takeaways and off-licences. I used to stay in nearby Hitchin when I was up there - much nicer.

Full of sprawling 1960/70's concrete buildings, council estates encirling boarded up shops and factories and shell-suited chavs hanging around the local takeaways and off-licences>

Gordon - those things delight me, in a weird way so you entice me more but thanks for the comment from personal experience.

flanner - thanks a lot for those links - I think it may have been that bloke author they were interviewing on NPR - he grew up in Stevenage he said

and yes Milton Keynes is also on my list - especially the cows they have there.

Milton Keynes is worth the visit, Stevenage is not.