The UK government built a bunch of &quot;new towns&quot; in England in the &#x27;50s and &#x27;60s, to take pressure off the housing situation in London at the time. The biggest is Milton Keynes, near Bletchley Park. It&#x27;s a bit soulless in the same way as US suburbs, being built for the age of the car (roundabouts as far as the eye can see!), but it&#x27;s 45 minutes from central London on the train, and was affordable for regular people to buy houses there. The new towns schemes seem largely successful 50 years later, and I can only imagine the reason we&#x27;ve not continued is because of the change in political taste for large infrastructure projects since then.