The UK government built a bunch of "new towns" in England in the '50s and '60s, to take pressure off the housing situation in London at the time. The biggest is

The UK government built a bunch of "new towns" in England in the '50s and '60s, to take pressure off the housing situation in London at the time. The biggest is Milton Keynes, near Bletchley Park. It's a bit soulless in the same way as US suburbs, being built for the age of the car (roundabouts as far as the eye can see!), but it's 45 minutes from central London on the train, and was affordable for regular people to buy houses there. The new towns schemes seem largely successful 50 years later, and I can only imagine the reason we've not continued is because of the change in political taste for large infrastructure projects since then.