6

THE NEW TOWNS

To this must be added the remark made by the Hemel Hempstead Corporation,
 which is able to contrast the excellent social accommodation in Adeyfeld,
 its first neighbourhood, with the later makeshifts to which it has had
to resort. ‘Early provision of adequate social facilities’ is essential ‘if the
new inhabitants are to be happy and capable of forming a community. . ..
There is no guarantee that the improvised means provided with the physical
aid of the new residents in the earlier neighbourhoods can successfully be
repeated.’

4. THE BALANCED COMMUNITY

The concept of balance’ is one of the central ideas in the construction
»f New Towns, that mark them off from ordinary housing estates, private
speculative projects and mere dormitory suburbs. It means that a town
should not only have enough schools, cinemas, shops and other amenities
for its population, but that this population should be sufficiently diverse in
ts interests and occupations to give the town a healthy civic complexity. We
wave learnt from such places as Dagenham, Jarrow and Merthyr, the price
that communities can pay for being too limited either in social composition
or industrial range.
This is why the Reith Committee laid such emphasis on social balance,
and insisted that the New Towns must not be one-class communities linked
to unplanned factory development. The Committee urged that New Towns
should include ‘ head offices and administrative and research establishments,
including sections of Government Departments and other public offices.
It is most desirable that proprietors, directors, executives . . .’ should live
in the town. . . Many professional men and women, writers, artists and
other specialists not tied to a particular location . . . retired people from
home and overseas, from every kind of occupation, as well as people of
independent means.’

Social Structure
It has not been easy to achieve this aim; indeed, it is not being properly
fulfilled. The middle classes do not take kindly to living in New Towns.
partly because they prefer to buy rather than rent their homes, partly for
reasons of snobbery. In all the New Towns in the London area, there has
been a tendency for property values to fall slightly, as “ professional men and
women . . . people of independent means,” sought to sell their houses and
move, if only to what the estate agents describe in their advertisements as
: desirable property, outside New Town area.” For some of these New Towns
were at first bitterly resented by the middie class, whose small country-town
retreats seemed threatened by the new housing areas and the inflow of workers
from London. Moreover, the managerial class, whose work has brought
them to a New Town, seem to prefer to buy a house some little distance