Whatever Happened to Eco-Towns..?

Gordon Brown tries to revive his moribund fortunes with a big announcement on "British homes for British workers" (or somesuch words). This - as with much of the New Labour approach to news - restyles and remodels a lot of what has gone before and quietly lays to rest any knottier issues.
No-one could doubt the need for social housing and affordable homes. And no irony is detected in the voice of a former Chancellor who rode the wave of houseprice inflation until it crashed on the beach of the economic downturn. But this should not be 'The Big Idea' of any government. It should - as we begin to see in Scotland - be the day-to-day bread-and-butter of local services, provided and regulated democratically by local corporations.
The centralizing agenda of successive Conservative and Labour administrations threw out the trust of local authority and replaced it with the bland economics of 'cheapest service provider'. And what the concept of eco-towns did was to replace sensible, organic growth of community by community with the over-development in any place at any cost. That is an idea whose time was up long ago.
See also: John Healey: Green light given on eco-town sites plus tougher standards for future homes, Communities and Local Government, July 16th, 2009