The ultimate political act in town planning is the building of a New Town. Governments, developers and planners conspire to create a brand new community on a tabula rasa, based on the latest models of social and economic behavior.

Or is the idea to build a New Town from scratch just proof of a fatal misunderstanding of what makes a city a city? Is it a sign of a gross ignorance on the part of politicians, planners and all those involved in this process of the complexity and the unpredictability of the urban? Whatever the situation might be, New Towns and Politics are closely related, even condemned to each other.