Is It Possible to Build Financially Successful New Towns? The Milton Keynes Experience

Richard B. Peiser and Alain C. Chang
Additional contact information
Richard B. Peiser: Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA, rpeiser@gsd.harvard.edu.
Alain C. Chang: Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA, changa@koll.com.

Urban Studies, 1999, vol. 36, issue 10, 1679-1703

Abstract: The last generation of British new towns is being completed with the dissolution of the New Towns Development Corporations. As the final chapter of the new town movement in Britain draws to a close, this paper examines their financial success by focusing on Milton Keynes. Reputedly one of the most successful new towns, Milton Keynes was the last new town to be started and had the largest projected population. The paper examines the financial accounting reports from 1971 to 1993 and computes the economic returns for the new town as a whole and for each of the major property types. We find that Milton Keynes lost more than one-half a billion pounds. The paper explores why this happened and what the lessons are for new town development efforts around the world. The paper concludes that while it is possible to develop financially successful new towns, it is extremely difficult.

Date: 1999
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1080/0042098992773 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:36:y:1999:i:10:p:1679-1703

DOI: 10.1080/0042098992773

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Urban Studies from Urban Studies Journal Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().