It definitely was the last gasp of civic optimism or utopianism. I've worked in both Glenrothes and Livingston, east Scotland's two new towns. Both represent attempts to build better places, but both are very flawed. They could be nice places with good locations, countryside nearby, but are built around cars, have railway stations miles from anywhere, far too many roundabouts, and while there are jobs, there's a lack of leisure options and anything individual or characterful. People don't really care about them: creative or ambitious people leave, and everything is run by chains seeking to sap the last penny out of a captive bored hopeless population.
Livingston is notable for having no town centre, but shops people still went to (till March 2020). Nice situation, trees, river, the architecture is crappy but not actively Stalinist. But the railway stations are on the outskirts, and there's a total lack of anything cultural, not even a generic council-run theatre or arts centre. There are 2 railway stations, but Livingston North, which has good services to Edinburgh and Glasgow (at least in daytime), is a long way from the shops and most of the houses, and the town's layout makes it impossible to provide good bus services.
Glenrothes was originally built in the 1960s as a new town for miners when they thought the coal industry had a future, but now it has two employers, the evil defence/electronics/bomb company Raytheon, and a company that does fancy secure paper/printing (essentially the last surviving paper mill in Scotland which is astonishing considering all the fucking trees). Raytheon looks like a prison camp although there was a decent gastro-pub to cater to visiting American merchants of death (drink-drive after). There is nothing to do. You can feel all life being sucked out of the town to Kirkcaldy a few miles away (which is also fairly grim but has nice cafes, a museum/gallery, and a small arts scene around people like James Yorkston), or Dundee, Dunfermline, Edinburgh. The official Glenrothes With Thornton railway station is about 5 miles out of town, ha ha ha, and Markinch station is actually closer. There's also a waste incinerator that powers the paper plant if the traffic fumes aren't enough.
I'll second (third?) the recommendation of the documentary
New Town Utopia. John Grindrod's book
Concretopia is very good too, although it isn't all about new towns, but covers more generally thinking around the 1951 Festival of Britain, redevelopment, etc. (And semi-related the
Glasgow Motorway Archive touches on a lot of similar issues). There's a lot of interest in this kind of thing lately, as the thread has already shown.
