Medieval and modern new towns : a comparative study

This study was generated by the writer's twenty years of responsibility for \nthe architecture and planning of Runcorn new town in Cheshire. It draws on this \nexperience to chart the development of Runcorn and the towns founded by Edward 1 \nin North Wales between 1277 and 1284. \nThe work is written in two principal sections dealing with Runcorn and Conway \nrespectively and concludes with a chapter drawing together those points of \ncomparison and contrast made apparent by the main body of the work. \nThe first section in each part examines how these new towns each formed part \nof a larger programme of town building designed to re-orientate regional \neconomies in the aftermath of war. The process of planning the new towns is then \ndiscussed in the context of contemporary functional requirements and the \nconstraints imposed by the selected sites. The origins of the settlers \nrecruited to the new towns is analysed and a theory put forward concerning the \nmethods whereby the medieval new towns were populated by the royal administration. \nThe problems of land assembly are examined and the remarkably similar principles \nof financial compensation for acquired land that were adopted in the medieval \nand modern periods. The administration and internal organisation of the new \ntowns are compared and how these related to local government which itself was \nreorganised contemporaneiously with the development of the new towns. The basis \nof the economic life of the towns is examined in the context of wider economic \nfactors affecting the financial fortunes of medieval kings and modern democratic \ngovernment. The trades and occupations of the early settlers are analysed and the \nrelationship of the royal administration and the development corporation to the \nsocial and economic life of the new towns. Internal trade and how this was \naffected by external lines of communication is considered and the concluding \npart of each section of the work deals with the settled towns and their \nrelationship to the regions in which they were planted.