New Towns and Coastal Regions: Lessons for Managing Urban Growth
By Vincent Fouchier, Director of Foresight, Partnerships and Territorial Innovation, General Directorate of Services, Aix-Marseille-Provence Metropolis
A Recurring Response to Coastal Development Pressure
French coastal areas are increasingly concentrating demographic, economic, and tourism-related growth. This attractiveness fuels rising pressure on land and urban development, raising important planning questions: should this growth be managed through proactive urbanization projects, including the creation of coastal “new towns,” or should priority be given to more gradual strategies focused on transforming existing territories?
In this respect, the experience of French and European new towns, developed primarily between the 1960s and the 1980s, provides a particularly valuable laboratory. Designed to manage urban expansion, these projects now offer sufficient historical perspective to draw useful lessons, especially in a context shaped by land-use restraint, economic uncertainty, and changing lifestyles.
This article revisits these experiences in order to shed light on contemporary choices for coastal development and planning.
New Towns: A Strategy for Managing Urban Growth
Modern new towns were based on a simple principle: transforming large agricultural or natural areas into planned urban settlements capable of accommodating a significant share of demographic growth. In France, a total of nine new towns were developed: five in the Paris region (Évry-Courcouronnes, Cergy-Pontoise, Marne-la-Vallée, Sénart, and Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines), together with Val-de-Reuil, Villeneuve-d’Ascq, the Étang de Berre area, and L’Isle-d’Abeau, located respectively near Rouen, Lille, Marseille, and Lyon.
These projects were conceived as complete urban centers, combining housing, employment, public facilities, and administrative functions. In this regard, they differ from the “new neighborhood extensions” commonly found in rapidly growing urban contexts.
Three major characteristics defined this model:
Long-term planning, often extending over several decades;
Prior land acquisition and control, ensuring overall coherence;
A commitment to functional balance, aimed at avoiding the creation of dormitory towns.
In the Paris region alone, these new towns eventually accommodated nearly one million residents. They undoubtedly contributed to structuring urban growth. However, their actual development trajectories often diverged from the original intentions.
The example of the coastal tourist resorts of southern France is particularly instructive. Although these projects did not benefit from the specific legal status granted to state-sponsored new towns, they were developed during the same period and on a significant scale. Their objective, however, was not so much to channel the demographic growth of Montpellier as to organize the development of mass tourism, following the implementation of the Mission Racine in the mid-1960s.
Ultimately, a Significant Transformation of Coastal Landscapes
The example of La Grande-Motte illustrates the scale of these interventions. A substantial portion of the Petite Camargue was urbanized to create what became one of France’s major seaside resorts. Today, La Grande-Motte has fewer than 9,000 permanent residents, yet it contains approximately 33,000 housing units and accommodates up to 90,000 residents during the summer season.
Cap d’Agde, Port Camargue, Port Leucate, and Port Barcarès are other coastal resorts that emerged from the French State’s determination, beginning in the 1960s, to organize and structure tourism development along the Mediterranean coast.
The Decisive Role of Location and Connectivity
The first and perhaps most important lesson for coastal territories concerns location.
The most successful new towns were those that benefited from strong connections to a major metropolitan area. High-quality rail links and road infrastructure proved decisive in enhancing their attractiveness. Conversely, projects located too far from metropolitan centers, or insufficiently connected to them, often struggled to thrive, sometimes compounded by mediocre urban design. Examples include Shannon in Ireland, Lelystad in the Netherlands, and Le Vaudreuil in France.
In a coastal context, this lesson calls for caution. A new urban development, even if well designed, may remain marginal if it is distant from a metropolitan area or poorly integrated into efficient transport networks. Coastal territories are often subject to significant constraints—topography, environmental protection requirements, and infrastructure saturation—which limit opportunities to strengthen existing connections. The result may be the creation of car-dependent urban enclaves, running counter to contemporary environmental objectives.
In countries of the Global South, where demographic growth remains strong, the question of new towns and their location raises very different challenges. Coastal new towns remain relatively rare, with examples such as Eko Atlantic City, adjacent to Lagos, or Batam in Indonesia. These developments are generally intended to support economic, industrial, port, or tourism activities.
Far more common are inland new towns, sometimes built in desert environments. Examples include the new towns surrounding Cairo—10th of Ramadan City, Sadat City, 6th of October City, 15th of May City, Al-Obour, and Badr City—which were designed to relieve pressure on an overcrowded capital. Elsewhere, new towns have served strategic or nation-building objectives, as illustrated by Yamoussoukro, Brasília, Islamabad, Putrajaya, Abuja, and Astana.
The Illusion of Long-Term Planning
New towns were generally conceived over time horizons of 30 to 50 years. Yet their history demonstrates how fragile forecasting can be—offering a second important lesson.
A range of factors profoundly altered their trajectories, including economic crises (particularly the oil shocks of the 1970s), lower-than-anticipated population growth, changing lifestyles, and evolving real-estate markets.
In many cases, the growth projections that justified these projects proved overly optimistic. For example, the new towns of the Paris region were planned on the assumption that Greater Paris would reach 14 million inhabitants by the year 2000, whereas its actual population was closer to 11 million.
More importantly, within metropolitan regions, new towns generally captured only a fraction of the anticipated growth, often between 10 and 20 percent. Creating a new town does not mean it will absorb 100 percent of future demand—unless all other opportunities for urban development are effectively frozen.
For coastal territories, this calls for prudence. Current trends—including tourism growth, retiree migration, and remote working—are real, but they may not prove permanent. Large-scale and irreversible investments should therefore be assessed against uncertain future scenarios. An overly rigid strategy can quickly become obsolete. European examples such as Lelystad in the Netherlands and Shannon in Ireland demonstrate that a coastal location alone is not sufficient to generate strong residential attractiveness.
Moreover, slower-than-expected growth tends to extend both construction timelines and property marketing periods, which is rarely conducive to attracting future residents.
Density, Urban Forms, and Social Acceptance
New towns experimented with a wide range of innovative urban forms. These included multifunctional town centers—sometimes built on elevated platforms, as in Évry and Cergy-Pontoise—car-free pedestrian districts, and hybrid housing models combining individual homes with relatively dense collective housing, often accompanied by ambitious architectural designs.
While some of these innovations were widely praised when first introduced, many encountered difficulties over time: technical complexity and high maintenance costs (particularly in deck-based urbanism), a mismatch with residents’ expectations, and recurring management and security issues.
In several European new towns, these innovative urban forms and facilities were eventually transformed (such as the Meerpaal complex in Dronten, the Netherlands) or even demolished, as was the case in Cwmbran in Wales and Cumbernauld in Scotland.
In coastal areas, where landscape quality and social acceptance are particularly important, these lessons are highly relevant. The pursuit of innovation should not come at the expense of robustness and simplicity. Urban forms must be capable of adapting over time to changing needs and circumstances. Ultimately, however, the key determinant of success remains the extent to which residents embrace and appropriate their urban environment.
The Mobility Paradox: Between Ambition and Automobile Dependence
New towns were pioneers in the development of public transport systems, introducing high-performance infrastructure such as the Paris Regional Express Network (RER), the Lille–Villeneuve d’Ascq metro, and dedicated bus rapid transit corridors. They also promoted pedestrian-friendly and bicycle-oriented neighborhoods.
Yet at the same time, they encouraged automobile use through extensive road networks, abundant parking provision, and planning models that supported low-density suburban housing often poorly served by public transport. This dual approach ultimately resulted in a high degree of car dependency, contradicting many of the original objectives and offering another important lesson.
In coastal territories, this issue is even more acute:
Seasonal road congestion is already a major challenge;
Environmental constraints limit opportunities to expand transport infrastructure;
Dependence on private cars exacerbates inequalities in access to services and opportunities;
Decarbonization objectives and the need to reduce energy consumption call for the widest possible range of alternatives to private automobile use.
Urban development projects must therefore place mobility considerations at the forefront from the outset, avoiding the contradictions observed in many new towns. Without compact, mixed-use urban development, supported by efficient public transport connections to nearby metropolitan areas, there can be no truly sustainable new town.
New Towns as Stages in Residential Trajectories
Another important lesson concerns the actual role that new towns have played in residents’ life trajectories.
Rather than serving as final destinations, new towns have often functioned as intermediate stages in residential mobility: attracting households leaving central urban areas, only for many of them to move later to even more peripheral locations. While this process helped slow urban sprawl, it did not prevent it from continuing beyond the boundaries of the new towns themselves.
This raises several important issues for coastal territories:
The risk of triggering a cascading pattern of urbanization into previously undeveloped areas, often at the expense of more central housing opportunities that consume less land and energy;
The difficulty of maintaining a stable year-round population;
The challenge of attracting and accommodating the specific population groups moving to coastal areas, particularly retirees;
The difficulty of limiting real-estate investment primarily intended for short-term tourist rentals;
The tension between second-home development and the provision of primary residences for permanent residents.
Land Consumption and Land-Use Efficiency: Adapting Rather Than Creating
The legacy of new towns is inseparable from their substantial consumption of agricultural and natural land. Today, this development model conflicts with contemporary objectives of land-use efficiency and land preservation, particularly France’s policy goal of achieving Net Zero Land Take (Zéro Artificialisation Nette – ZAN).
Coastal areas are especially sensitive in this regard. They often contain fragile ecosystems, are exposed to environmental risks such as flooding and coastal erosion, and, in many locations, have already undergone significant levels of artificialization.
In this context, the creation of entirely new cities on previously undeveloped land appears increasingly difficult to reconcile with current policies aimed at protecting natural and agricultural spaces.
The new towns built during the 1960s are now entering what might be described as a “second life,” characterized by densification, the restructuring of town centers, and the simplification of urban forms. This evolution reflects a broader shift in planning philosophy: the challenge is no longer to build new cities, but to transform and improve existing ones.
For coastal territories, this approach appears particularly relevant. Significant existing building stock can be better utilized, including second homes and under-occupied dwellings. Many seaside resorts have now reached an age where large-scale regeneration is justified, while opportunities for densification remain substantial, both within historic centers and in peri-urban areas.
Trends Increasingly Unfavorable to New Town Development
Several structural trends are calling into question the relevance of the new town model as a response to contemporary coastal challenges.
One such trend is the slowdown in national population growth. Declining birth rates are likely to affect the current demographic momentum observed in many coastal regions. Budgetary constraints facing both the State and local authorities also reduce the feasibility of large-scale public investment required to create entirely new towns. At the same time, the private sector is unlikely to fully compensate for this shortfall, given the long investment horizons involved, often spanning several decades.
In addition, growing public opposition to large-scale development projects and increasingly stringent environmental requirements make the prospect of major new urbanization schemes more difficult to pursue. These factors are particularly pronounced in coastal areas, where competing land uses and local mobilization against development projects are common.
Conclusion: What Lessons for Coastal Areas?
Overall, the experience of new towns does not support the replication of this model along the French coast. Instead, it points toward a more flexible, incremental, and adaptive approach to urban development.
Several key lessons emerge:
Prioritize territorial integration rather than creating entirely new settlements from scratch;
Explore the development of sustainable neighborhoods integrated into existing urban areas;
Embrace uncertainty and avoid overly rigid planning frameworks;
Promote urban forms that are adaptable and can be appropriated by residents over time;
Place mobility at the heart of development strategies;
Minimize land consumption and make better use of existing urban assets.
In coastal contexts characterized by land scarcity, environmental risks, and competing demands on space, the central question is probably no longer where to build new towns, but rather how to better inhabit, regenerate, and transform territories that are already urbanized.
In countries of the Global South experiencing rapid demographic growth, the lessons of the French new-town experience must naturally be interpreted within their own specific contexts. Nevertheless, the legacy of new towns—both their successes and their shortcomings—remains a valuable source of insight for rethinking coastal development in the twenty-first century.
Sources
FOUCHIER, Vincent, « Un terreau exceptionnel de pensée urbaine », in : Urbanisme, n°430, mars-avril 2023, pp.71-72.
FOUCHIER, Vincent, « Les densités de la ville nouvelle d’Evry : du projet au concret », Paris : Economica-Anthropos (coll. Villes), 2000, 320 p.
FOUCHIER, Vincent, et LAROCHE, Nadine, « Les villes nouvelles moins attractives », in : I.N.S.E.E. « Ile-de-France à la page », n°181, avril 2000, 6p.
FOUCHIER, Vincent, « Les villes nouvelles franciliennes et le polycentrisme. Un bilan chiffré », in : Association Française des Villes Nouvelles, « Les villes nouvelles et la politique de la ville », janvier 2000, pp.89-103.
FOUCHIER, Vincent, et PAQUOT, Thierry, (sous la dir.) « Dossier : Villes “Nouvelles” », in : Urbanisme, n°301, juillet 1998, pp.44-93.
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