Lakes for new communities

Towns require lakes and ponds

Water-based recreation has become extremely popular. If the demand can be met in new towns it helps them to compete with older urban areas. Opinion polls in France have shown that the proximity of facilities for swimming, water sports and other leisure activities is the reason given by most families for moving to the new towns in the Paris region (Rubenstein 1978: 139). Cergyï¾­Pontoise and Saintï¾­Quentinï¾­enï¾­Yvelines are the sites of new towns and of regional leisure centres. Their planners were inspired by Tapiola and Stockholm to find town sites where it would be possible to create good facilities for outdoor water and woodland recreation. Tapiola means 'the realm of the kingdom of the woods'. At Cergyï¾­Pontoise and le Vaudreuil the water bodies are the result of sand and gravel extraction. At Melunï¾­Senart and Evry the lakes have central positions and function as bassins regulateurs. They are estimated to have produced a 60% saving when compared with a conventional storm water disposal system using culverts and canalised streams (Secretariat General du Groupe Central des Villes Nouvelles 1977: 24). Lakes have also been used as a focus for new towns in other countries. One of the most important examples is Canberra. Australia's new capital was planned by Walter Burley Griffen, an American who admired Olmsted and Howard. Griffen won an international competition for the capital in 1911 with a radial plan. It has some resemblance to the plan for Letchworth Garden City, but the grand avenues span an artificial lake. One of Canberra's satellite new towns, at Belconnen is also centred on a lake which is retained by a road embankment (National Capital Development Commission 1970). Lake Havasu City is a leisure and retirement town in Arizona which owes its existence to the reservoir known as Lake Havasu. A peninsula which once projected into the lake has been made into an island and linked to the mainland by the old London Bridge (Bailey 1973: 93). At Reston in Virginia there are seven artificial lakes which serve for erosion control, storm water management, and recreation. The developers estimate that lake front property commands a 300% premium over other categories of residential land (Robbins 1981). In Britain, water engineers have opposed residential development beside supply reservoirs, on health grounds, and have usually designed storm detention basins in an austere utilitarian manner. The lakes at Peterborough [Fig 11.18] and Milton Keynes are pleasant features but are not fronted by urban development.