Information for Students
New towns are an ideal subject for your undergraduate or postgraduate studies.
The New Towns movement is highly relevant today: we are rediscovering the importance of walkable neighbourhoods; high quality urban green space; and good housing to support public health.
Benefits of using archive material
The archives can be used in your dissertation instead of questionnaires and interviews, or alongside other research methods. You can also be confident that your research is new, the archives are just being made available. When looking at current developments, it can be difficult to see who made a decision and why because key information is confidential. Planners and developers may be reluctant to share information with a student. In the New Town archives, all of this is available to you, so you can readily see how and why decisions were made.
There are many potential topics you could focus on for your dissertation as an undergraduate or postgraduate student in geography, urban planning, and other built environment degrees.
Using the archive
Your first step would be to contact the archive and find out what resources are available. You can look at the archive catalogue online from home or on campus. To look at the original maps, plans, reports, brochures, photographs and letters you need to visit the archive in person. These are not located in the New Towns, but in the ‘county town’ with other important public records. There is no charge to look at the documents, but some archives charge a very small fee for you to take photographs of the documents to look at later, typically £5 per day.
There are thousands of documents you could look at. The good news is they are all catalogued, or being catalogued right now, so you can easily find materials on a particular topic. Still, it is helpful to think early on about what planning topics interest you most. Finding a topic you can really get into will help you get a better grade, and give you something you can talk about with enthusiasm in a job interview.
Architecture and Urban Planning students
It is common for architecture and urban planning students to undertake a design project rather than a dissertation. If your design project is in a New Town, the archive material can help you understand the original design principles. For example, original designs for green wedges, cycle routes or public art could help integrate new developments into the existing urban fabric. If you are looking major refurbishment and re-use of some existing buildings in your design, then the original architectural drawings may be in the archives.
Professional artists use archive material in their socially engaged practice. In 2019, artist Lu Williams was commissioned by Essex Cultural Diversity Project to produce a collaborative zine with local residents and artists. Archival research was undertaken in Essex Record Office to inform the content to produce a contemporary rethink of the original Basildon Development Corporation tenants handbook. Click on the images bellow to read more. (imagesⓒ Essex Cultural Diversity Project / The Artist)
Students in the arts and humanities
As well as geography, planning and built environment degrees, there is nothing to stop students in other subjects making use of these new resources. Many of the archives participating in the project already have relationships with history degree programmes at nearby universities. Other subjects that have used new town archives in their assignments include: creative writing, photography, fine art, museum studies, and linguistics. There are large photographic collections, which go beyond simply documenting the new towns. The New Town Development Corporations employed photographers who fully explored the artistic and technical aspects of their commissions. These photographs stand up to comparison with the best urban photography of the 20th Century.
Click on an image to enter town archive page