The Lost City of Craigavon

Here's a great documentary from 2007 by Newton Emerson for the BBC: The Lost City of Craigavon. One of the mid-sixties second wave new towns, it blossomed so briefly, the idea of being a city for 200,000 people had its development corporation wound up in record time, by 1973, and before it had even really begun it was all over. What was left was half-finished infrastructure, few jobs and isolated neighbourhoods.

It's a town or roundabouts, a ski slope and cycle paths, like Milton Keynes, and estates reminiscent of Cumbernauld. The original planner was Geoffrey Copcutt, the mad visionary hipster behind Cumbernauld's megastructure, who again flouce deleted himself from the project in a short space of time, just as he had in Scotland.

This could have been a small-minded, cheap shot of a documentary. Instead Emerson does a great job of encapsulating the positives and optimism, while also being astounded by how little came off. And there's a sense of a slowly realised future emerging from the empty shell of Craigavon, which leaves it feeling unexpectedly hopeful.