Towards A Theology of New Towns - The Implications of the New Town Experience for Urban Theology
This is a synopisis of Christopher Baker's PhD entitled Towards A Theology of New Towns - The Implications of the New Town Experience for Urban Theology (University of Manchester,
The Introduction lays the groundwork for defining a new town theology by outlining in preliminary form the distinctive nature of new towns as a typology of urban settlement. These towns were designated under the 1946 New Towns Act, and in terms of social and physical planning aims, were qualitatively different in scale and ambition from other post war settlements such as expanded towns and redeveloped areas. The concept of contextualising urban theology is then discussed, including a description of the present urban theology with which a new town theology will interact. The present tradition is characterised as predominantly reflecting on the inner-city experience. This is followed by a brief description of the different typologies of new town, ranging from the early Mark 1 types, designated and built in the 40s and 50s, to the Mark 3 types designated and built in the 60s and 70s and beyond.
The first chapter examines the history of the English New Town, tracing its roots to Ebenezer Howard and the Garden City movement, and the building of Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City. It then examines the social and political context of the 30s and 40s that helped create the favourable conditions under which the first new towns were designated, namely the post-war consensus which embarked on the social and economic reconstruction of Britain via macro-economic management of health, welfare, education, employment and housing. The discussion in this chapter also includes reference to other important attempts at constructing an ideal modern community that were influential during this period. The chapter ends by charting the demise of new town building and top-down planning initiatives following the collapse of the social democratic consensus in the late 70s and the various critiques of the new town building programme that followed.
The second chapter looks at the existing corpus of work reflecting on the churches' work in the new towns, a body of research that is small but significant, and peaking from the mid 60s to the early 70s. It highlights the nature of the relationship between the churches and the development corporations which was often ambiguous, ranging from close symbiosis to criticism. This research identifies typologies of church response which coincide with the typological developments of the new towns, from early dual purpose buildings, to more sophisticated multi-use buildings and pastoral centres, including some highly ambitious experiments in physical design and ecumenical collaboration. The purpose of these two chapters is to identify the new towns as a discrete entity in terms of planning and theological discourse.
The third chapter moves reflection on the churches' engagement with the new towns to the present by describing the methodology that will be employed in this research. This research is undertaken according to the principle of theoretical saturation - that is to say theories generated by research from existing literatures are then tested out by a quantitative self-completed postal survey (to a sample survey of ministers covering all English new towns) and further tested and refined by qualitative methods (in this case semi-structured interviews to both ordained and lay people in a selected sample of new towns). The emerging theories are then further tested by reference to external statistical analysis using national, regional and local government statistics for representative new towns. The sample survey is ecumenically based. The 5 theories of new town development and experience identified and tested by this research are: the new town as symbol of technical excellence, the new town as pioneering community, the new town as missed opportunity, the new town as context for new town blues, the new town as urban pathway.
The fourth chapter analyses the statistics gathered from the quantitative sources of this research (i.e. the self-completed postal survey). The responses are clustered under themes and presented in graphic form which show interesting typological and regional trends. They show for example early (Mark 1) new towns still reflecting monochrome ethnicity, poor cultural and transport facilities, and unattractive town centres, with the worse housing and poorer employment opportunities being found in the northern and midland towns. Mental health issues feature strongly in all new towns as does a perception of poor facilities for younger people. The wave of Mark 2 towns such as Runcorn and Skelmersdale have no better ratings than some Mark 1 new towns for key areas such as housing and culture/leisure facilities. Many new towns now face problems of transport demand and building deterioration. Mark 3 new towns (e.g. Milton Keynes, Northampton and Peterborough) and some of the Mark 1 new towns in the south have more vibrant economies and more slightly more diverse communities, but even here there are significant pockets of poverty and evidence of above average levels of social dysfunctionality.
The fifth chapter describes in first-person narrative and reported form the responses to the qualitative aspect of the research (i.e. semi-structured interview) Existing themes and clusters of experience are both amplified and added to as a result of the deeper level of research. It articulates more clearly the problems faced by the churches in engaging in a coherent ecumenical response to the needs and lifestyles of new town communities, as well as identifying some successful models of engagement. It further amplifies the impact on community formation of architecture, neighbourhood planning and housing design, which in the case of the new towns are largely perceived in negative terms.
It also identifies three stages in the lifecycle of new town development. The first is the pioneering phase identified in all new towns when the utopian rhetoric of the new towns as communities of technical excellence and social progress most closely matched the experience of those moving in. Some 15 - 20 years later, the euphoria begins to wear off as people realise the social and economic implications of moving to the new towns. This is characterised by the coming to terms with reality phase during which the intense community-orientated activity associated with the pioneering phase give was to more subdued patterns of existence. The physical environment also begins to show signs of early decay and some areas begin already to become stigmatises as areas of high crime, poor health and low educational and employment potential. The final stage (some 25 - 30 years after construction) comes the fragmentation stage, which is exacerbated by right to buy and shifts in traditional manufacturing industry which fragment much of the earlier traditional working class solidarities on which a fragile sense of community was being built. Those original new town inhabitants who can afford to move out to new private communities now being built on the edge of the new towns which only serves to reinforce a sense of stigmatization and hopelessness (especially in Mark 1 and 2 new towns).
The purpose of chapters 4 and 5 is to record the contemporary experience of the churches' engagement with the new town communities, and to test the theories identified in Chapter 3.
The final chapter elaborates a new town theology based on analysis of the data generated by this research. It shows that some of the theories of new towns relating to the 60s and 70s still persist, in particular the strong evidence for the continuing existence of 'new town blues'. This is reflected in perceptions of uncertainty, neurosis and spiritual emptiness (and in some cases the stress of coping with chronic poverty and poor housing) that have emerged through the experiences of mobility, fragmentation and the freedom to choose. It is suggested that these experiences are now part of a much wider phenomenon that poses the churches and urban theology with new sets of pastoral and methodological questions.
These new questions reflect the shift towards socially monochrome communities on the edge of larger conurbations or towns, who have little need to engage with the 'local' (rather they inhabit what Manuel Castells calls the space of flows) and who have little sense of local belonging provided by the new housing and retail environments created for them on the edge. These communities no longer dwell in the public space of the inner-city, but inhabit a privatised existence based around the home, but also one that is physically dispersed in terms of distance from work, family and roots. These edge communities epitomised by some of the later new towns are now becoming more of a social reality - what can now be called the post-modern, post-industrial community. The two contrasting traditions of traditional (inner-city) vs post modern (new town) theology are summarised in diagrammatic form.
| Urban Theology (inner-city tradition) | New Town Theology (Post-modern tradition) |
|---|---|
| Public | Private |
| Centre | Edge |
| Diverse | Monochrome |
| Localised | Dispersed |
| Space of place | Space of flows |
These conditions, epitomised by many new towns, give the church a far less sharp sense of what it is engaging in, particularly when it comes to discerning levels of not only physical, but spiritual poverty or need. The research concludes by offering five new paradigms or ways of being church that might enable more connection to be made with hyper-mobile and transient communities.
A church that offers a flexible experience of community is responding to the high levels of rootlessness and social fragmentation observed in the new towns by being more pluriform in terms of choice, flexibility, mobility and associationalism. To use again Castells' helpful analogy, the churches need to become communities of flows which follow the currents of post modern, post-industrial urban life and create spaces of encounter and conversation. This will mean a radical rethinking in terms of the time, place and methodology of being church, a reformulation that has barely begun. Some helpful models derived from the new town experience are the holiday club church, the shopping mall church, the leisure centre church, the social services church.
A church that offers a sense of spirituality mediated through symbolism would respond to the prevailing rootlessness and lack of maturity in the landscape of edge and new town communities. These landscapes are inevitably largely devoid of cultural and spiritual signposts. The language of cultural and spiritual exchange has been lost mainly because these things essentially belong to the public realm of shared experience and do not fit in well into the privatised realm of domestic and consumerist agendas. The churches must not forget that in new towns and suburbs they are one of the few organisations that understand the importance of cultural depth and spirituality.
A church that offers a model of bottom-up ecumenism is necessary for mission and ministry in new areas for which resources are limited. This research is littered with testimonies to the well-meaning but ultimately flawed attempts at creating ecumenical communities from the top-down. If young church communities are going to be given any hope of engaging in the new hyper mobile and secularised environments in which many will choose to live in the future, then they must be allowed to do so unencumbered by undue denominational demands. Ecumenical Christian communities must be allowed to evolve their own local 'unitary' structures which are tailor-made to the context in which they are placed.
A church that offers partnership-working is in touch with the associational nature of community belonging that exists in many new exurban areas. Effective community engagement needs to take account of the many different 'communities', life roles, work and leisure patterns that people are now engaged in and therefore needs to be flexible and network-based. It also needs to recognise that at a global as well as a local level, partnership working is the only creative way forward, bringing together all sections of the community (business, statutory and voluntary) to pool knowledge and expertise in the cause of a common resolution, especially when combating the effects of social exclusion and poverty.
Finally a church that also offers prophetic witness recognises that sometimes a counter-cultural critique is required. In the past, groups like the New Town Ministers Association sought to critique some of the inherent ideologies of the Development Corporations and their maters plans. These clearly expressed the gospel of modernism, a secular 'good news' that claimed human happiness could be achieved through the provision of material technology. Instead what was created, in the opinion of many interviewed for this research, was an unhealthy dependency on authority structures and a spiritually and culturally sterile environment. The more recent post-modern evolution of urban space into areas of 24 hour business, culture and privatised consumption has again sidelined the voice of the church which has struggled to express a sustainable critique to the current notion of the individual's right and freedom to consume whatever is required, apparently regardless of the cost to others' human rights and the environmental sustainability.
The dissertation concludes:
These paradigms (discovered during the course of this research) speak of a growing experience of mobility, transience, choice and 'edge', an experience which not only affects more than 2 million people in new towns in the UK, but also will be of direct experience to increasing numbers who in the next 30 years will choose to live in dispersed new settlements in up to 4 million new homes in an increasingly global context. The new town experience also contains within it important lessons from history and significant indicators of future ministry patterns for the churches' as they seek to connect the Gospel narrative with those living in new communities increasingly disconnected from any notions of shared, local space.