A new documentary charts the recent history of Basildon, one of Britain’s first post-war new towns.
What happens to a city when the ideals that built it start to fade? This question lies at the heart of New Town Utopia, an affecting new British documentary released this month that charts the recent history of the model modernist city of Basildon.
Founded in 1949 roughly 30 miles east of London, Basildon was one of Britain’s first post-war new towns, a network of planned settlements that developed on the earlier Garden City model. Created by state development corporations in a spirit of practical idealism, these new towns sought to provide better homes and lives for mainly working class residents of Britain’s crowded, bomb-damaged cities.
In Basildon, the resulting city—green, rigidly-zoned, and almost exclusively state-owned housing—proved for decades to be a largely successful community. But as the film reveals through the words of Basildon artists, musicians, and creatives, the sense of vibrancy and cohesion the city fostered started to fray in the 1980s as the country’s government abandoned the social democratic values that underpinned the town’s creation.
Watching the film, it’s easy to see how heartening and radical towns like Basildon must have seemed after the war. Their creation was part of a wave that also introduced Britain’s first fully-fledged social security system and tax-funded National Health Service. The ideals that underpinned Basildon’s creation were humane, says New Town Utopia’s director Chris Smith. “The original vision behind Basildon was very noble—to create a place for people to live where they would be able to grow their communities,” he tells CityLab. “Where they would experience art and culture, where [there would] be a lot of green space.”
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