How public communication changed since the 1940s and why it matters for new towns now
As the government's new towns programme progresses, and with clients involved in several of the locations impacted, I am interested to consider the role of communication in a bit more detail.
To start with, I've looked at how communications have changed over those 80 years.
A shared national story
In the 1940s, most people received information through a narrow set of mass channels: national newspapers, cinema newsreels and radio and, a little later, a single BBC television service. Communication largely ran one way. Institutions could set the frame and repeat it, and the public had few routes to challenge it quickly or widely. Wartime messaging worked partly because the media environment was unified and trust in official sources was comparatively high.
That does not mean people were passive or that dissent did not exist. But the mechanics mattered: if you disagreed, you had to write a letter, attend a meeting or organise a local protest. Scaling up the opposition took time.
The end of the gatekeepers
Over the following decades, the number of channels multiplied and the authority of a single official voice weakened. Broadcast became competitive. The media proliferated including everyone from hyperlocal to international and an ever-expansive list of specialist titles. The frequency of news went from just six news bulletins on average per day (with Radio 4 listeners' favourite, the Today Programme, going back to 1957 — it's as old as Harlow New Town!) to eventually, rolling news.
Public expectations of news have changed too, with people using the media for scrutiny rather than reassurance, often with a degree of scepticism.
When everyone became a publisher
Today digital platforms have changed not just the number of voices but the direction of travel. Information spreads through public social networks — Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube — and, just as importantly, through private spaces such as WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal. Audiences are fragmented, algorithmically organised around identity or geography.
Trust now has to be earned in public
Alongside fragmentation comes a different idea of credibility. People expect transparency and they can fact-check in real time. Anything that looks like 'spin' is not simply ignored; it can be clipped, mocked and recirculated — a PR consultant's worst nightmare.
AI changes the volume dial
The newest shift is of course generative AI. In terms of planning, its greatest impact is its ability to create apparently fluent objections — letters, reports, even speeches — at speed and at scale. The concern is not simply more responses to process and verify but the risk of systems being flooded with wholly inaccurate AI-generated material.
What this means for new towns communication
All this demonstrates why, in the early days of a new town proposal, communication matters so much. A single rumour, screenshot or misleading graphic can travel further than a carefully drafted statement, simply because it fits the way people now share information.
For the planning and development sector, the task is not louder messaging but clearer and more effective messaging. For government and promoters, that means showing workings: what is fixed, what is genuinely up for discussion, what trade-offs are being made and why.
Success in promoting new towns effectively will depend on whether government can build confidence in a noisy environment: explaining early, using formats people actually consume, addressing misinformation at pace and treating residents as participants in shaping outcomes rather than an audience to be persuaded: better public legitimacy by design.