Sean Cleary, Associate Director, Ramboll’s Cities and Regeneration team
October 12, 2025
Unlocking the potential of new towns
As the UK faces increasing pressures on housing, infrastructure, and regeneration, it stands at a crossroads shared by many nations. The UK government’s New Towns initiative sets out to address these challenges, providing learning for other countries seeking to create thriving, future-ready communities.
Around the world, cities and regions are rethinking how communities grow and thrive. This moment presents a global opportunity to elevate standards for sustainability and innovation in community design. UK towns and settlements, once emblematic of post-war ambition, are now poised to inspire a new generation of renewal, resilience, sustainability, and inclusivity.
Transforming vision into reality through comprehensive planning
The New Towns initiative will take a placemaking approach in the development of new urban areas to ensure that they have a unique sense of identity and the relevant infrastructure and amenities to support the health and wellbeing of residents and neighbouring communities. This is aligned with our approach at Ramboll – to deliver strategy which ensures the development of highly liveable places.
“The drive for new homes and communities is about more than building new towns – it is about building futures. The long-term success of new towns hinges on creating vibrant places that foster health, happiness, safety and wellbeing for their communities.”
Supporting the New Towns initiative, Ramboll brings:
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Cross-disciplinary teams
who speak the language of infrastructure, planning, environment, transport, and finance, from strategy to deliverable plans
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Decades of experience
delivering complex, integrated projects across the UK and internationally, designing strategies to minimise risk, navigate challenges, and maximise benefit - not just on paper, but in people’s lives
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Whole-place thinking
that connects engineering, ecology, policy, and community, aligning stakeholders across multiple sectors and departments
Our new report, Unlocking New Places, shares:
- Cases demonstrating projects that we have delivered around the world
- Our approach to designing thriving, liveable places
- Our delivery strategy that aligns policy, investment and planning with viable outcomes
By integrating technical precision, extensive delivery experience, collaborative approaches, and forward-thinking strategies from inception, local visions can evolve into vibrant, liveable communities. This involves considering the diverse dimensions of sustainability, resilience, and deliverability.
Liveability: Equitable transition and community wellbeing
New settlements offer a unique opportunity to weave environmental, economic, and social fabrics into their very core. By ensuring a diverse mix of housing types, tenures, and affordability, new towns can foster inclusive communities where people from varied backgrounds thrive together.
Addressing challenges like housing affordability and social exclusion involves embedding affordability and inclusive design into the land-use strategy. Through socio-economic modelling and targeted stakeholder engagement, equitable access to opportunity becomes a foundation, not a privilege.
The success of new towns hinges on creating spaces that support health, happiness, safety, and wellbeing. Proactively integrating essential services like schools, healthcare, leisure, and cultural venues into planning from the start is vital. Especially in areas with high health inequalities, data-driven assessments can target investments where they are most impactful. This approach nurtures communities, ensuring developments are not just habitats but places where people flourish.
Deliverability: Coordinated and viable infrastructure
A joined-up approach is essential to capture the opportunities, constraints, and needs of every site. Realistic delivery strategies that build trust and momentum are crucial. By aligning physical and social infrastructure, integrating project teams, and fostering collaborative solutions, the benefits extend beyond paper to actual positive impacts on people’s lives. Planning for long-term growth and short-term viability simultaneously ensures that necessary services are available when residents arrive.
Innovation in construction is indispensable for meeting the UK's housing and climate goals. Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) offer solutions through modular systems, offsite manufacturing, and next-generation low-carbon materials. By conducting feasibility studies, selecting suitable contractors, and ensuring compliance, ambition transforms into execution. Long-term adoption of MMC, supported by local authorities, educational institutions, and industry bodies, integrates innovation as a fundamental driver of quality, speed, and sustainability.
Resilience: Future-ready communities
Resilience must be inherent from early design stages, encompassing flood risk mitigation, rainwater harvesting, thermal comfort, and renewable energy. Collaborative efforts between engineers, ecologists, and social development experts will ensure communities are prepared for 21st-century climate realities. Predictive analytics and digital modelling optimise infrastructure designs to manage climate risks and enhance community connectivity and health.
Regenerative design actively restores natural systems, enhancing resilience through high biodiversity net gain. Decarbonising energy and transport networks and designing biodiverse, circular material systems can make new towns climate-positive. Using lifecycle carbon analysis and nature-based solutions shifts the focus from mere compliance to innovative solutions that offer tangible benefits. From embedding rewilding corridors to designing net-zero civic centers, our approach ensures developments contribute more than they consume.
“The UK’s New Towns initiative is arriving at a pivotal moment that calls for fresh thinking about how we design places to thrive in the face of climate and societal change,” says Sean Clery. “Around the world, we’ve seen that when policy, investment, and planning align from the start, communities can deliver both resilience and regeneration. Our new report; Unlocking New Places, explores how a collaborative, evidence-based approach can turn ambition into places that truly enhance people’s lives.”
Next steps for the New Towns initiative
With plans to start building three new towns under the current UK Government, the establishment of a New Towns Unit will be essential in unblocking barriers to delivery and ensuring that the first New Towns to be built act as test bed for innovation.
Development corporations will also be established with planning powers and accountable delivery bodies to provide long-term certainty for communities in new towns. A Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) will be undertaken to understand the environmental implications of developing new towns and the UK government will publish the draft proposals and final SEA for consultation early next year. The locations to be progressed as new towns will be confirmed later in the Spring alongside a full response to the New Towns Taskforce’s report.
An immediate priority for Ministers and officials will be to work with local partners to develop detailed proposals. The Government will be looking for assurance that any location can be effectively and efficiently delivered in partnership with local communities, has a clear economic purpose, and will support economic growth. Different delivery vehicles will also be tested to learn lessons for how future large settlements are delivered and to contribute to a wider transformation of housing supply.
The mission is clear: create communities designed for health, equity, resilience, and deliverability.
Want to know more?
Sean Cleary
Associate Urban Designer
+44 7890 400283
Beverly Howard
External Communications Manager