The New Towns were a series of planned settlements across England built in the immediate post-Second World War years. Located primarily in a ring around London beyond the green belt, they aimed to address a severe housing shortage caused partly by the destruction of homes in the capital by wartime bombing. 

It was also a response to the more than four million soldiers who returned at the end of the war, an influx which created one of the biggest civilian challenges facing the post-war Labour government.

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