Utopian Basingstoke
I
in a town as unlovely as Basingstoke. But if the plans for its redevelopment go ahead it will become one of the most civilised places in the country. I doubt if its 26,000 inhabitants thought this when they first heard they were to accommodate 50,000 more people—mainly 'overspill' from London—in the next fifteen years. But those who have studied the models and pictures currently on display in their town hall will realise that because they are taking Londoners under their wing they are to have a gracious way of living unknown in this country since affluence set in.
Today the words 'gracious living' have a new meaning. They suggest a life in which it is pos- sible to buy a pound of sausages, collect your daughter from nursery school or go to and from work without being bothered by noise, fumes, danger and discomfort. The Basingstoke of to- morrow will be a pedestrian's town. It will offer a greater number and variety of local jobs to its residents, thus discouraging the habit some have of commuting to London. It will also be a town with a real centre—a place that will make its residents look inward rather than outward. There will be no need for them to escape from it, either in their leisure hours or their working hours, because it will offer the best possible escape from twentieth-century horrors right at its very heart. People will do their shopping and visit cafes, cinemas, libraries and other public buildings in a holiday-promenade atmosphere, without going anywhere near motor traffic.
This is something that has already been thought up in the planning of the most recent new towns—notably the LCC's abandoned pro- ject for Hook, a few miles from Basingstoke, and the venture now progressing fast at Cumber- nauld, near Glasgow. But it is the first time any- thing of the kind has been planned on so large a scale for an existing town. If the plan gets Ministerial blessing it will be a fascinating ex- perience to watch the traffic gradually dying out of the central streets of Basingstoke as the town itself gets larger, piling up its stock of offices, shops and factories (with room for 26,000 more jobs) and its extra 20,000 houses. Most of the banned traffic will move thankfully along a new system of by-passes which will accom- modate seven major roads that now blast into the town centre. And traffic that really needs to be in the town will follow its own limited routes which will take it, for example, to the rear goods yards of shops.
The fronts of these shops will be served only by pedestrian ways. Shoppers walking from this existing shopping centre to a new one being built to the north will, in fact, be walking on to a great raft or bridge that will reach across a small valley. And it is into this valley, and under the raft—with all the new shops, public build- ings and even housing above it—that public transport and private cars will come. It is here, too, that 3,500 cars will be parked, so that their owners can travel up to the shoppers' Utopia by escalator.
The whole idea seems so simple that you ma? wonder why no one has done anything like it before. One reason is that only recently has the pressure of the private developer become great enough for planners to realise that, if he is prop- erly handled, he can be an ally rather than an enemy. And then, of course, there is the ex- tremely complex business of getting the neces- sary finance—money to pay for the special skills needed in the design of town development, and to pay loan charges on acquisitions that are not likely to show a profit for some time.
Basingstoke is rather a special case. Like other 'London overspill' towns--there are ten more, all less elaborate—it has the backing of the London County Council. It is, in fact, a joint effort by the borough council, the LCC and Hampshire County Council—all working through a joint committee and its own develop- ment group, with Robert Steele, a surveyor, as its director, and A. G. McCulloch as its chief architect and planning officer. The usual govern- ment subsidies will be given for housing, and the two county councils are sharing between them the responsibility for the cost of special design staff.
If such a project as this is a reasonable proPn` salon, why is it that other fair-sized towns are not trying to prepare their own similar plans? The trouble is that even if a local council be- came wildly enthusiastic—to the point of pay` ing three shillings for the brochure* describing the Basingstoke scheme—it might not know how to set about assembling a team of pro- fessional advisers to consider its particular problems, let alone how to pay for them. But this problem is, I am told, being considered by Leslie Lane, the chief planner of the LCC, who is abandoning his seven-year job this morah. to join the Civic Trust. He is hoping the Tills' will find a way of putting ambitious towns touch with the right men to advise them. Above all, he wants them to be able to learn "(it merely from ideas on paper, but from good e% amples. The Civic Trust, as he points out, Wa successful in the example it set for other local authorities by helping Norwich to perform its well-known face-lift on buildings in Magdalen Street. Mr. Lane believes that local authori0t; may be equally sceptical about the possibility of renewing their town centres, controlling the enthusiasm of the private developer and OW with the motorist—until they see a finished "" ample with their own eyes. I am sure he is right, and that just as soon as one British town centre has been impressively rehashed to suit modern needs everyone will try to get into the act. Not everyone will do it quite infert°..
so well (we have had some pretty
copies of the Magdalen Street scheme), but almost anything would be better than the alter- native--the seizing up of all town centres he" cause no one had given enough thought to foolishness of allowing piecemeal deve1411 and haphazard traffic control. stake * BASINGSTOKE TOWN DEVELOPMENT. -- Iota. Development Group, Trafalgar House, Wirle
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