Initial research into comparative academic discourse about the UK and The Netherlands’ post-WWII New Towns Programme (NTP), and specifically its culmination in the last of the New Towns, was found to be very limited. In isolation, Milton Keynes and Almere are often exaggerated and considered part of a unique chronology by scholars typically from these respective countries.

In response, The Last of the New Towns study was carried out as part of the AR2A011 Architecture History Thesis module of the TU Delft MSc Architecture course. It is hoped that the following publication is the start of a greater corpus of work on New Town planning by the author. Born in Hertfordshire, the neighbouring county to Milton Keynes (Buckinghamshire), and now an international student at TU Delft, the module provided a special opportunity to understand and learn about New Towns in the context of both British and Dutch policy and planning.
Surprised by the many similarities between the two — starting from the Green Belt and the Groene Hart (Green Heart) and concluding with the polynuclear planning of Milton Keynes and Almere — this study positions the intersection of planning doctrine against each other from National to New Town scale.