irishboyinlondon

Cool! An original new towns promotional film!  Really worth a watch! Interesting too that they choose to give the man living the dream a bicycle (and separate infrastructure)!

via: futurecitylab:

“Many of us who write about cities like to share rediscovered videos from times gone by. The videos are especially notable when ideas with currency today are discussed in other contexts, providing opportunities to compare, contrast and sometimes be humbled by history.

Here is a prescient video from 1948, about “Charlie.” This cartoon protagonist champions the basics of the new town movement in post-war Great Britain, a Garden City-inspired effort to alleviate housing shortages. The initial phases of the movement brought towns such as Stevenage, Crawley, Hemel-Hempstead, Harlow, Hatfield and Basildon (see Osborn and Whittick’s classic The New Towns (1963) for the full story).

An interesting tidbit: as the video explains, the “neighborhood centre” was a key premise of the British new towns. It was based on the guiding principles of the Reith Report as implemented through the New Towns Act of 1946. Similar to then-contemporary American “neighborhood unit” principles, a new towns commonly featured structured neighborhoods of 5,000 to 10,000 inhabitants with at least one elementary school, local shops, a park and a public house.”

via the atlantic :cities