New Town Home Town

Thirty-two new towns have been built in the United Kingdom since the last war. They attract suspicion, praise, and denunciation. Writer and teacher Colin Ward is a passionate observer of the urban environment, and in this film he sets out to discover which of these responses is just. What sort of life do people lead in the new towns? Are the new towns expensive failures or the sole success of British post-war planning? In Harlow, Peterlee and Runcorn he hears from architects, 'first generation' residents, and their children who have known no other home town. At Milton Keynes, the youngest and biggest of the new towns, he examines its reputation as 'the Muhammad Ali ' of the new towns - brash, self-confident, but perhaps a winner.