Word: runcorn
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...town concept have not yet been realized. When Skelm submitted for approval its two-tier town center with suspended roof, the Government was afraid it would not work. It hired a structural engineer to see if the center would really stand. After months, no decision has been reached. In Runcorn, a separate road system for the minibus proved too expensive so the buses will have to run partly on regular streets...
Skelm new town, begun in 1962, now has a population of 4000 in the midst of the old town of 6000. Runcorn, started two years after Skelm, has added only one hundred new town families to its original 25,000 population. According to the Government plans, both new towns will reach the 100,000 mark within the next twenty years...
...Skelm and Runcorn are hardly begun. But already they have had to face a series of economic, political, and social problems. For example, Skelm attracted industry too rapidly, Runcorn too slowly. The Government pays 65 per cent of a company's factory costs and 45 per cent of its machinery costs as an incentive to move into a new town. In 1962-63, this subsidy, plus energetic recruiting by Skelm, attracted so many factories so quickly that a housing shortage resulted. In Runcorn, two years later, Wilson's restrictive economic policy so discouraged industrial expansion that the new town could...
Skelm and Runcorn faced political difficulties arising out of the dual authority in the town. The national Government had formed a corpora- tion over each new town to draw up its master plan, provide utilities, and build factories and housing. The local government--the Urban District Council--was still largely in charge of providing playgrounds, community centers, schools, police protection, and fire service. The corporation was allowed to spend only fourteen dollars per person on these services...
...Runcorn, the Urban District Council had invested a lot of money in the old town center, and resented the corporation's decision to build a new shopping complex in another place. The Council hired its own group of architects, engineers, and planners to draw up an alternate plan for the new town. Their plan just happened to place the new shopping complex smack in the old town center. The Minister of Housing and Local Government had to be called in to resolve the debate--in favor of the corporation...