Image: JR James,2013, 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.Attribution-Non Commercial 0) Creative Commons License
A Failed Utopia?
2017
marked the fifty-year anniversary of the completion of the first phases of Cumbernauld
New Town, with its Town Centre opened in 1967. Our latest CPD Event hosted by
the RTPI West of Scotland Chapter discussed how, in its relatively short history,
Cumbernauld has been popularly “celebrated, neglected, and then reviled”. Behind
this story however, lies another, more optimistic vision of the town, from which
many residents have gone on to become well known planners and architects. Many
of the critics of the new towns and the other postwar reconstruction and overspill
projects, view them as “failed utopias”: attempts to provide a radically
reordered urban environment which fell flat in the face of shifting political priorities,
economic conditions and social norms.
Plan and Reality
At
first glance, Cumbernauld’s story is no different from this mould. The Town
came out of the blocks to international acclaim when in 1967, the American Institute
of Architects declared that the “dreams of the 1920’s and 30’s are being built
on a hill near Glasgow” in presenting their Community Architecture Award. In
this, the Institute was surely casting a glance to the radical work of figures
such as Le Corbusier and his “Ville Contemporaine” from 1922: a grand edifice
of motorways, monumental tower blocks and manufactured parkland. Accordingly,
Cumbernauld’s form was characterised by complete separation of vehicles and pedestrians
on site, most (in) famously achieved via the town centre “megastructure” raised
above the central roadway. The housing areas were also punctuated by both point
and slab blocks underpinned by a centralised landscape strategy. Unfortunately, these visions were let down by
reality: only around a quarter of the originally planned town centre was
completed as the construction challenges and capital requirements of such an
avant-garde building set in. The original unity of conception within the town’s
housing areas was also eroded as recession and then deregulation set in, making
it that much harder to maintain these carefully planned environs. These
challenges reflected the dubious distinction of ‘Plook on the Plinth’ being
placed upon the town in 2001 and 2005, judges particularly scathing about the town
centre as a “rabbit warren on stilts”.
My Town the New Town?
Despite
the unhappy side of the Town’s history, our event which attracted a healthy mix
of built environment professionals and local community members, highlighted a
number of alternative views of Cumbernauld. Despite
the radical planning and architecture which shaped the Town’s development, the historical
research presented by speaker Diane Waters of Historic Environment Scotland and
myself, also highlights a counter current in the thinking of the Cumbernauld Development
Corporation (CDC). In this light, the archive indicates that the vehicle pedestrian
separation was not an attempt at establishing some kind of ‘auto-topia’ but at
mediating the needs of pedestrians and other street users, particularly
children with the growing mass car ownership of the time. Similar ideas of
balance were present in the CDC’s approach to integrating old buildings on the
site into the new town design, as well as attempting to re-establish natural
woodland for new residents to enjoy.
The open
discussion panel highlighted how the town in its central location with good
access to green spaces remains a desirable place to live, particularly for families
as was the original design intention. Like many other towns in Scotland, Cumbernauld
has attracted a diversity of new residents from around the world who continue
its’ story. A number of regeneration
challenges for the town centre continue to be explored. The building holds a particular fascination
for urbanists, with the Bauhaus School visiting the town in 2009 and my own
students at the Glasgow School of Art generating a number of good ideas for
reviving the area, earlier in the year.
All
of this points to the fact that the new towns cannot be reduced to ‘failed
utopias’ past tense: they remain with us as evolving places, continuing to
provide housing, jobs, recreation and the life stories that come with these. This is not to be evangelical about Cumbernauld or any other new town,
just to respect the original visions, the challenges to these visions and the
need to keep debate on them alive. This debate is all the more relevant considering the recent suggestion from some quarters of Parliament, that
Scotland should build new towns again.
