North Lanarkshire
‘Mark One’ New Town – Designated 9 December 1955
Cumbernauld was identified as a potential means of accommodating some of Glasgow’s population in Abercrombie’s Clyde Valley Plan of 1946, but was not designated until 1955. Cumbernauld was designed using a ‘whole-place approach’, consciously departing from the ‘neighbourhood’ principle adopted in the previous New Towns. Pursuing ‘urbanity’ as a ‘way of life’, it applied higher densities within fewer urban areas, with a single town centre on the hilltop. It contains some of the most notable examples of modernist architecture in the UK. It is a town of two halves, bisected by a motorway. The southern half was built with modernist low-rise in a Radburn-style layout by the Development Corporation. The northern half was developed by the private sector, with the Development Corporation acting as facilitator.
Key facts:
- Location: 21 kilometres north east of Glasgow.
- 2011 Census population: 52,270, in 22,105 households.1 By the 1990s Cumbernauld had grown to be North Lanarkshire’s biggest town.
- Local authority: North Lanarkshire Council.
- Local Plan status: North Lanarkshire Local Plan (adopted 2012).
New Town designation:
- Designated: 9 December 1955.
- Designated area: 1,680 hectares, revised later to 3,152 hectares.
- Intended population: 50,000, revised to 70,000 in 1960 (population at designation: 3,000).
- Development Corporation: Designated to accommodate Glasgow overspill population. Development Corporation wound up 31 December 1996.
Figures taken from Cumbernauld ‘5 minute’ fact sheet – TCPA New Towns and Garden Cities, Lessons for Tomorrow research, available here.
Council website:
https://www.northlanarkshire.gov.uk/
Information about regeneration:
https://www.northlanarkshire.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=14120
Local museums and archives:
The records of the Cumbernauld Development Corporation (Cumbernauld New Town): https://culturenl.co.uk/museums/archives-and-local-history-museums/north-lanarkshire-archives/about-our-collections/
Cumbernauld Museum: https://culturenl.co.uk/museums/visiting-us/cumbernauld-museum/
North Lanarkshire Archives: https://culturenl.co.uk/museums/archives-and-local-history-museums/north-lanarkshire-archives/
Cumbernauld at 50:
Photo credit: Magnus Manske, Wikimedia
