When first opening Lessons from the British and French New Towns, I immediately thought of the Technicolor Pathé Newsreel New Town (1959) that featured the New Town of Stevenage. The narrator of this short film noted that wherever one turned the outlook was ‘gay and eye catching’, with works of art, continental style kiosks and contemporary streetlighting; here the designers and architects were ‘going all out for comfort and simplicity’. It was considered that these ‘attractive innovations’ might be copied elsewhere: a ‘design for living for the future, a town planned down to the last nail’. This book is a product of a collaboration initiated in 2017 that led to the establishment of a New Town Heritage Research Network in the UK and Europe focusing on the heritage and legacy of towns like Stevenage. It explores whether these ‘paradises’ have been lost and, as the towns reach maturity (it being 50 to 70 years since their founding), whether there is a dichotomy between the legacy and conservation of the original concepts and their adaptability to meet current functional needs. The title has a question mark because, at the outset, the editors explain that these stories in Britain and France are contested, and the successes and failures of the towns remain open as they continue to change and evolve.

Although the first of the nine French New Towns was not designated until 1966, and thus built much later than its British counterparts, the stories are presented within a shared European heritage, woven together to examine differences and similarities. Case-studies are presented from British and French perspectives to enable key questions to be discussed, such as: initial goals and unexpected problems; shared concepts and experiences; the transferable lessons to be applied to prospective new settlements; and, for reflection, the renewal, regeneration and growth of established New Towns. The contributors come from a vast array of backgrounds – a strength of the book, as it enables the narrative to build through each essay. The reader's understanding is heightened through a range of concepts, with the authors using their expertise to contest accepted narratives. Structurally, the book begins by assessing public policy perspectives in the first section, then moves onto three successive parts looking at the towns and their residents from a sociological perspective, the wider regional and international context from a geographic standpoint and finally the heritage from a physical architectural viewpoint.

An essay that I was personally drawn to was Bob Colenutt's discussion about ‘Loss and longing’ in UK New Towns, examined through the framework of ‘hauntology’. This was a concept previously explored by the critic Mark Fisher, regarding the disappearance of modernism in contemporary culture, and, in this context, Colenutt looks at how the initial ‘enthusiasm and utopian thinking’ (p. 35) of New Towns had been lost, with a sense of being haunted by what could have been. The author believes that this high point of town planning ‘aimed at creating a modern future was stolen’ (p. 36), and shares how this came about through government policy and professional revisionism. Susan Fitzpatrick's case-study meanwhile, about the expansion neighbourhood of Birchwood in Warrington, a partnership New Town built in the 1980s, is an essay where further online exploration seemed justifiable. The Development Corporation's vision had been to explore an ‘ecological approach’ to landscape, by creating a natural woodland for the houses and amenities, and the author points us towards the blog ‘Days of the New Town’ that shares the experiences of residents through interviews and photographs.

The writing does occasionally become dense in places with too much specific terminology, particularly around the complex subject of processes and policies. Admittedly, this issue does get easier to navigate on a second reading, but sometimes at the expense of the specific narrative or case-study that is then given too little space to unfold. The comprehensive introduction is helpful, however, as it presents an overview of New Towns: origins; development processes, features, subsequent renewal and retrospective assessments; and plans for revival in Britain. As this introduction also gives a synopsis of what was explored in each essay, though, it seemed unnecessary duplication to include an abstract as well, plus further summing up in the conclusion. Another issue for the structure of the book is a lack of photographs, tables and diagrams to explain specific points. Loic Vadelorge's essay about ‘heritage reflection’ in public art in French New Towns, although fascinating, needed photographs to illustrate specific projects, for example to help the readers comprehend the vast architectural scale of ‘Axe Majeur’ by Dani Karavan in Cergy-Pontoise (1980). In contrast, the diagrams in Tony Champion's essay on ‘London New Towns in their changing regional context’ enable the readers to chart his thought processes and analyse the findings for themselves. The images provided in Alina Congreve's comprehensive discussion about public art in British New Towns are also fundamental to the charting of these interventions, and in how new works were planned to sustain and reinvigorate their public art collections. One image shows the text-based memorial ‘Milton Keynes Rose’ in Campbell Park (2014), which had recorded significant town dates on granite pillars, with space left for more to be added. Catherine Blain's further discussion on public art in French New Towns includes an image of the innovative Evry Pyramids terraced dwellings with spaces defined by amazing sculptural brick artworks, which certainly whet the appetite for further study.

The book concludes that New Towns are not a paradise but a ‘qualified success’ (p. 217) with much of which they can be proud. Within the New Town Heritage Research Network's first phase, it produced a ‘New Town Heritage Agenda – a Call for Action’, supported by a growing movement for protecting New Town architecture, design and public art heritage across Europe, with authorities devising regeneration and enhancement strategies. Overall, the authors certainly give us a reason to feel more positive about the future of New Towns: a ‘design for living’ that works for the old and the new.