stevenage town centre

Stevenage’s town centre was England’s first traffic-free shopping zone, borrowed partly from Rotterdam’s Lijnbaan. Now, a scheme as radical as this will always divide opinion, but more than 70 years later it’s an important artefact of mid-20th-century urban planning, around a plaza with an iconic Modernist clock tower. The layout may not be idyllic, but it works, as the shops here have one of the highest occupancy rates in the country. The town centre has shown signs of wear, and from 2019 will undergo a complete eight-year overhaul with new shops, bars, a council building, park and 600 homes.