After a series of well publicized growing pains, the British new towns program has come of age. The towns have been successful administratively, socially, and financially. Despite opportunities for design innovation, however, the residential areas are generally undistinguished in appearance; town centers, on the other hand, utilize many features of shopping-center design in well-conceived clusters of civic activity. Recent plans have experimented with high density, compact development— an approach likely to have greater influence in the future. Preparations for another wave of new towns are now under way, backed by widespread political support.