by Oliver Rimmer @youngollie94 One wouldn’t generally associate Basildon with the term “utopia”. Having once worked there myself, I didn’t then consider it a place to be . Getting off the train I’d go straight to the bus station and get a bus to the Burnt Mills industrial estate, bypassing as much of the town as possible. Never once did I consider that bus station to be part of architectural history, or the industrial estate to perhaps be part of the reason the town was originally built without a train station. Basildon was one in the first wave of post-war New Towns. Instigated by the New Towns Act of 1946 and dubbed “an essay in civilisation” by the chair of the commission, Lord Reith, the New Towns were a major part of British post-war redevelopment. They sought to rehouse many of the displaced and urban poor by providing modern, rationally-planned urban spaces complete with houses, jobs and all a community needed to flourish. Being there today one can only ask: w