A HEART AND SOUL

Diving in to the belly of the new town beast

A place needs a heart and soul, if it is to survive. Gaining an identity and standing on it’s own two feet. A priority for new towns was the creation of a central place to bring disparate areas together as one and prove to the rest of the world that these fledgling settlements were establishing themselves.

This desire to unite the new towns came in an era when the British public’s appetite for shopping was reaching new heights, fuelled by mass production and an increase in disposable income. Shopping as the primary leisure activity had become as utopian an idea as the almighty car and not surprisingly the Development Corporations knew that a retail led town centre was the obvious choice for success.

A traditional town might develop over a few hundred years, spreading out around a market square, or along the banks of a river. But here, in the future, a bold, plan would be brought to fruition, landing like a UFO, right in the middle of things.

Shop until you drop, eat until you belch and remember to pay for your parking. You are now entering a private zone, your town centre, at least until the doors are locked at 7pm. CCTV is in operation.

It’s here, in the town’s shopping centre that the intricate issue of ownership rears its ugly head. Building so much so speculatively means new towns are initially constructed with public money, really there’s no other choice and it’s one of the main reasons the new towns worked. So it’d be natural to assume that the infrastructure continues to belong to taxpayers. Well, in the case of Telford, it doesn’t.

This is a privately owned town centre. Public, only whilst the landlords grant you permission to enter. This is a world in which the philosophical and literal centre of our community can be owned by anyone with enough cash. And yes, of course the money from the sale went back into the town, but isn’t this more a question of the town we want to live in? Public versus private, one of the biggest and most concerning contradictions in town planning and it feels at odds with a free utopia.

From the outside it’s a hard sell, grey and flat. That’s irrelevant though, there is no architectural requirement here. Metal panel work is punctured by the occasional skylight and heating vent, hinting at the delights within. There’s no particular relationship with the weather, or nature or anything other than the infrastructure out here - car parks, loading bays and the bus station. I skim along the edge of this monolith until sliding doors pull me through, like passing into the jaws of an air-conditioned, blunt-toothed crocodile.

Gilt edging, mirrored surfaces and cold tiled floors draw me in to the American influenced shopping mall at the heart of the new town, it’s not a square or a hub or a meeting place, but instead a polished, rather repetitive experience of security guards, information desks and shops offering fashion and homeware in brightly lit, custom built, windowless spaces. It’s warm, dry and somewhat sterile. Be here and spend money. Meet here and spend money. Be here in exchange for money. A commercial heart to give the new town economy a push start and very successful indeed.

There are people here all day, every day. T-shirts in December. Greggs sausage rolls on tap. It’s easy to spend all day here, and that’s kind of the point. This is a destination town centre. The biggest criticism, easily levelled at places like this, is that this is, essentially, an out-of-town shopping mall drafted in as a showcase centre piece, something it can only ever fall short of.

Creating a cultural life would be second-best in these retail led schemes, development corporations made attempts at creating a well rounded life, building theatres and libraries when budget and time allowed. This didn’t always happen in the town centres, often being cast outside of the central zone, where space for car parking was less in demand. Symptomatic, perhaps of a town dreamt up by utopians, but constructed by realists. Governments can’t, don’t and won’t create culture. There’s no way around it. And why should we expect them to anyway? The development corporation would continuously be criticised for a lack of community spirit, but what more could they really be expected to do other than bricks and mortar?

I stride out in search of more, the town centre here also provides civic and commercial office space, set around a new town square. Following the signs, underpasses and staircases brings me to an overgrown, oily green pond. The man himself, Thomas Telford in attendance. It’s an underwhelming experience, in comparison to the shopping centre. Everything here an afterthought.

Todays planners embrace the Bilbao effect, bringing cultural and architectural impact to a place, new town planners embraced the retail effect. Other parts of the new town centre may have suffered as a result, but still, this was a bold and powerful adventure in utopian building.