Talk:New Towns Acts

Unrelated material
I'm removing Queenstown, Singapore from the list of towns, and changing the Millennium Communities Programme to a 'see also' section, as they don't relate directly to the 1946 act. Meesher (talk) 17:18, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

Proposal to rename article as "New Towns Acts 1946–1981" or even just "New Towns Acts" (and merge the other two New Towns Act articles with it)
I have just created New Towns Act 1965 to resolve a red link. But standing back a little, I wonder if that is just a band-aid solution. There were New Towns Acts in 1948, 1959, 1963, 1965 and 1981. This (the current 1946 article) already has most of what needs to be said about the legislation side of things – including a lot of material that was not governed by the 1946 Act.

I think it useful to keep the legislation article separate from the more general New towns in the United Kingdom article, but could be persuaded otherwise.

Comments? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 21:30, 13 November 2021 (UTC)


 * I'd merge the three articles, there is a lot of overlap of the purposes of the acts after all. Murgatroyd49 (talk) 21:56, 13 November 2021 (UTC)


 * I agree with merging the articles on the legislation.  Ghmyrtle (talk) 22:43, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

✅ --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 00:49, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Hours of fun ahead
According to Hansard, there are 30 New Towns Acts (or variants thereof). Almost all are red links. Didn't they use SIs?

[...] (moved, see next)

Help welcome! --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 00:49, 16 November 2021 (UTC)


 * There were also Northern Irish acts - most of the above did not extend to Northern Ireland. DuncanHill (talk) 01:02, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Moved to my sandbox
To avoid clogging everyone's watchlist with my frequent save points, I have moved the list to my sandbox so I can work on them. If anybody wants to help, drop a note on my talk page, please. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:00, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

All done
I believe that I have completed the list, though New Towns Acts is a bit of a cheat. If anyone has access to the actual Public General Acts books for these years, please fill in the gaps. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 21:45, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Infobox UK legislation
There isn't an obvious right or wrong answer to this one but let me state the problem. Maybe someone has a solution.

The infoboxes are collapsed for desktop interface but not for mobile. When the article is about a single Act, this is not too great an imposition. But in an article like this, about a series of highly inter-related Acts, it seems to me to be just disruptive (NB not as in WP:DISRUPTIVE). It makes the narrative thread very difficult to read. For the same reason, it would be extremely user-hostile to split the article twenty ways.

Could we put all the infoboxes in a row at the end? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 15:18, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
 * And divorce them from the sections they are relevant to? The problem is with the mobile interface, not the article. DuncanHill (talk) 15:39, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
 * As I said, no obvious right or wrong answer. Yes, technically you are correct but it doesn't change the reality for mobile users any time soon. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:04, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
 * When such features are used, take care that the content will still be accessible on devices that do not support JavaScript or CSS, and to the greater than 60% of Wikipedia readers who use the mobile version of the site, which has a limited set of features and does not support collapsing (any collapsible templates will either be automatically uncollapsed or hidden entirely). – MOS:COLLAPSE. So not going to change any time soon. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:11, 28 March 2023 (UTC)