The Scottish architect planner Sandy Bannerman, who has died aged 94, devoted almost all his long career to the UK’s new towns. His most important role was as chief architect planner to the Craigavon Development Commission, charged with creating a new city in Northern Ireland in the mid-1960s.
Great Britain was transformed in the 50s by new housing, schools and even new towns, yet little had changed in Northern Ireland. Terence O’Neill, the moderate unionist prime minister appointed in 1963, saw modern planning as a means of levelling up the disparate community and introducing new industries.
