Re: New Towns

A display by Masters students exploring a speculative New Town in the North East.

New Towns have re-emerged as a key strategy in addressing the UK’s housing crisis, regional inequality, and future growth. Yet today, they must respond to new challenges, including climate change, energy demands, and evolving social needs.

RE: New Towns is an interactive exhibition that explores how a more equitable and responsive model of New Town development might be shaped through participation and collective thinking.

Using Washington, Sunderland as a case study, the exhibition reflects on the legacy of post-war New Towns as places shaped not only by planning, but by the everyday lives of the people who inhabit them. It invites visitors to reconsider the New Town not as a blank slate, but as a living system embedded within existing communities, infrastructures, and landscapes.

Through maps, models, images, and conversation, the exhibition creates an open platform for questioning how towns are formed, who they are for, and how they might change. RE: New Towns encourages visitors to take part in an ongoing conversation, where small ideas can shape the future of larger places.

This display has been produced by Masters students from the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at Newcastle University.

Student Producers:

Malaz Abdelgadir
Nazheef Basha
Vish Mistry
Navanita Silambanan

Image courtesy of Nazheef Basha