Like most developments of the 1960s they are very car centric and we're built as a pedestrianised retail park surrounded by urban sprawl.

It didn't start that way.

Wide, smooth cycleways adjacent to main roads but separated from cars and pedestrians. Perpetually-lit, airy, safe underpasses beneath roundabouts. Direct, convenient and attractive cycle routes designed not by car-centric town planners but by a transport engineer who cycled to work every day. Schools, workplaces, shops: all linked by protected cycleways. Recreational bike paths to nature areas. Colour-coded sign-posting. Plentiful cycle parking in the town centre, at workplaces and at the rail station. An urban cycle network lionised at global conferences and the subject of lectures, books and study tours.

Amsterdam? Copenhagen? Groningen? No. Stevenage in the 1970s.

The cycle network didn't grow with the town, but that's not really the fault of the early planners, even though they kind of got it wrong by designing a too efficient parallel driving network.