Community and Social Mix in Planning - The New Towns

Abstract

<p> Briefly, the idea of this paper is to discuss the recent British and American new towns in the light of various theories of the nature of (the formation of) community, and to use that discussion to generate research themes and research categories for new towns and new communities. The main part, then, (Chapter 3) is devoted to what might be termed "middle range" theories of the nature of urban community, and draws heavily on the distinction between "neighbourhood" and "City" approaches, and that between "class-structural" and "status-issue" approaches. Chapter 3 provides antithesis to those ideas I term "geographic" or "psychological", (Chapter 2) which tend to ask how man is determined by the physical or social nature of community rather than vice versa. The interpretation of the new towns (Chapter 4) is very much in terms of the preceding chapter, and here the concept of class mix, or social mix, is here drawn on at some length. In Chapter 5 the examination of research ideas attempts to probe this interpretation, and further to characterize the divergent empirical approaches suggested by more (Chapter 3) or less (Chapter 2) socially theoretic approaches.</p>