Polkemmet New Town

a proposal for a new town in Scotland's central belt

Housing is too expensive

In recent years, particularly from 2021 to 2023, housing rents in Scotland have risen sharply (source):

It's not just rents that've gone up, prices for sale have also increased (source):

Given that it typically costs about £70,000 to build an average sized home, a fraction of the cost to buy one, house buyers are being ripped off. Houses are a lot more expensive to buy than threy are to build, because the supply of new houses is artificially restricted by planning laws.

(Houses would cost a lot less to build if they were mass produced in standard sizes in factories and assembled on site, instead of being individually hand-crafted as they are at present, but that's another story.)

The BBC recently reported that First-time buyers face toughest test for 70 years:

First-time buyers are facing the toughest conditions in 70 years to buy a home, according to a report by the Building Societies Association (BSA). Those buying a first home were increasingly reliant on having two high incomes or receiving parental support, it said.

[...] the cost of renting has also soared. Latest official figures, external showed private rental costs in the UK have risen by 9.2% in the last year.

And Scotland's population is increasing: from 2003 to 2021 it increased from 5.057 million to 5.48 million -- that's 23,500 people a year. This has obviously increased pressure on housing.

Why build new towns?

A large part of the reason for the expense of housing is supply and demand: there are fewer houses than people want to rent or buy. The fix is to build more, of course.

Houses can be built in existing towns and cities of course, but there is one big advantage to building in a new town: you're starting with a clean slate so you can build everything to a more efficient plan without having to fit new buildings around existing legacy architecture.

In particular, building a new town makes it very easy to do Transit-oriented Development, where high-density housing is built next to transit stops (train stations, light rail, trams or buses) so the maximum number of people are able to efficiently use the transit system. Shops, workplaces, etc should also be close to transit stops.

A related concept is that of 10 minute neighbourhoods, where you can get where you want to go (shops, etc) by a ten minute walk or less (800 m if you walk at 3 mph). The Scottish Government talks about "20 minute neighbourhoods" but that's 20 minutes for a round trip there and back, so means the same thing as what I'm calling a 10 minute neighbourhood -- I prefer my term as it sounds quicker.

High-density housing enables both transit-oriented development and 10 minute neighbourhoods. The most densely populated part of Scotland is the Leith Walk area of Edinburgh, with 12,900 people per km² which equates to 26,000 within an 800 m radius of a point. So a 10-minute neighbourhood could be centered on a tram or light rail stop, near to that stop could be local shops, takeaways, meeting places such as a pub or cafe, maybe a community center, an office block to provide local work opportunities, a GP surgery, etc.

As you can see from this view of Leith Walk, most of the housing is tenements, typically 4 stories high with 8 flats accessed from a common stairwell. Note that in Scotland "tenement" does not have the pejorative connotations that it does in some parts of the English-speaking world. Leith Walk itself is a main shopping street, and there is a tram line going along it:

For our new town there should be one or more tram lines, and each tram stop should be the nucleus of a 10-minute neighbourhood.

Where to build new towns?

The best place to build a new town is Scotland's central belt, between Edinburgh and Glasgow as then it will have good transport links to the rest of the central belt.

This map shows the railway lines between Glasgow (on the left) and Edinburgh (on the right):

Railway lines are in black marked 1435 (for the 1435 mm standard gauge, which railways in Britain use). There is one going to the north of Chapelhall, Whitburn and Livingston, and another to the south of them. Between the 2 railway lines, in red is the M8 motorway. Our new town will have a tram connecting between the two railway lines, and there will also be several park-and-rides so that people can drive off the motorway or major roads, park their car and take the rest of their journey by tram.

Polkemmet New town

Let's zoom in to the area around Whitburn, and build a tram line (in dark blue) between Breich Station and Westrigg Station:

We're going to call our new town Polkemmet as its center will be on Polkemmet Moor.

Now let's build another tram line:

• starting by connecting to the lower railway line at a new station ("New1")

• going NE along a disused railway line to Stoneyburn

• north to East Whitburn with a Park and Ride near motorway junction 4

• NW to Armadale Station,

• going back south to another Park and Ride near motorway junction 4A,

• crossing the other tram line at Polkemmet Center

• connecting to the railway line at new station "New2"

• and possibly continuing on, as an extension

Then finally we can add in where the housing and other buildings will go, the shaded areas on the map below:

There will be high density development up to about 800 m from each tram stop. Further way, there may well be medium and low density development.

Looking at the map, there are 30 tram stops. If there's an average of 10,000 people for each, that's 300,000 residents of our new town. If there's only half that, that's still 150,000 people, in what would be about 70,000 homes since each home in Scotland has an average of slightly over 2 people. By comparison, the existing population of West Lothian, the local authority area where this new town would be built, is around 180,000; Edinburgh has a population of 520,000 and Glasgow about 630,000.

Of course, this is only one suggestion. There are plenty of other places in the central belt where a new town could be built, using these ideas, such as directly to the east of Glasgow, between Whitburn and Livingston, between Livingston and Edinburgh, or in the Linlithgow-Polmont-Bo'ness area.

Architectural styles

It makes sense for each neighbourhood to have a common theme and architectural style. For example, Peter Higgs recently died and it would make sense to name a tram stop (and therefore neighbourhood) after him, and name streets after physicists (especially Scottish ones, such as James Clerk Maxwell) and sub-atomic particles.

King Charles is known to have strong opinions on architecture: the principles behind his Poundbury development make a lot of sense and are similar to the ideas I've advanced in this article. It would make sense, if a new Scottish town was being built, to get his personal support for the project, and one or more of the neighbourhoods -- or maybe even all of them -- could be built using his New Urbanist ideas.

The support of King Charles would probably also help to reduce objections to it.

Nimbyism

It's inevitable that any large-scale development plan will draw the ire of nimbies, so obviously this new town would. Nimbyism is a serious problem, harming economic growth, not just in Scotland but the rest of the UK and throughout the developed world. What's the solution?

One solution would be for an autocratic or semi-autocratic government to just bulldoze through all opposition. But that would be hard to achieve in Britain and would also have the bad consequence of increased authoritarianism.

So I propose a different solution: that whether a development goes ahead is determined democratically. Everyone within a certain distance from the development gets to vote on whether it can go ahead. The distance could be from 200 m to 2 km, depending on the size of the development. In the case of a large new town for thousands of people it would be the maximum distance so anyone <=2km from anywhere in the development would be able to use the democratic system to determine whether it goes ahead.

For the sake of example, let's assume there are 40,000 people on the electoral roll within 2km of this new town. If a certain number of them (say 1%, so 400 people) sign a petition objecting to it, then it goes to a vote. If more vote yes than no, the development is approved. But here's the catch: the developer can before the vote make a binding promise that if they win, they will give each voter a sum of money, say £1000, and lodge that money with the electoral authorities before the election. Then voters will have an incentive to vote yes, and that might change their votes.

Since it's a secret ballot, the money has to go to every voter regardless of how they voted. If the amount offered was big enough, then many developments would go through which now don't. Maybe a third of the population are nimbies, and a third yimbies with the other third being swing voters -- in which case if a developer offered a significant sum of money, that could easily sway these people's votes.

With this system, some of the added value created by new building developments would then be captured by local people.

Summary

Building a new town would create lots of much-needed housing in Scotland's central belt.

It's better to build a new town rather than add housing higgledy-piggledy to existing towns, because that way you can do transit oriented development, by building the transit system (a tram or light railway) first and then fitting in the housing around it. Each tram stop should form a local hub with shops and other facilities near it. There should be lots of high density housing near tram stops (to maximise the number of people who can get to one with a 5 or 10 minute walk); further away there can be medium and low density housing.

Housebuilding has been hindered in the UK due to planning laws, which make it hard to build things. This needs to change, so people can afford housing and so the economy can develop.

The scheme I've outlines places a new town in the middle of Scotland's central belt. There are obviously other places one could be built, using the same ideas.

Further reading

• Passive House is a standard for buildings that require little or no heating to keep warm

• Transit-oriented Development

• Population Distribution and Density of Edinburgh from the 2011 census

• Poundbury is a housing development on the outskirts of Dorchester built with significant input from King Charles