Stevenage

Stevenage reads as a New Town through and through: roundabouts, segregated cycleways, a pedestrianised town centre built for a different era of shopping, and terraced estates radiating out in orderly loops rather than organic streets. It's a practical, unpretentious place, and it looks like one.

The essentials line up in a fairly coherent way. There's a single rail station serving the town, Stevenage Railway Station, which is the reason a fair number of residents can work in London while living somewhere considerably cheaper — the median age here, 38, sits below both the regional and national norms, suggesting a working-age, commuting population rather than a retirement or heavily-studentified one. Schooling is respectable rather than exceptional: Bedwell Primary and Saint Vincent de Paul Catholic Primary both carry Good ratings, and if you want Outstanding you're looking toward Letchmore Infants' and Nursery School. Housing is where the terraced streetscape earns its keep — this is a Freehold-dominated, Terraced-led market, and a median price around £340,000 is slightly below what you'd pay across the wider Stevenage district and comfortably under the regional average, though right on the national median. Detached and semi-detached homes here actually sell for well above the national going rate, so the value story is really about the terraces and flats pulling the town average down, not universal cheapness.

Green space is genuinely abundant for the population size — 196 pieces of it across 327 hectares gives more breathing room per head than the national average, which softens the density of a town packed at nearly 3,440 people per square kilometre, well above both regional and national norms. That density shows up in day-to-day texture: full-fibre broadband has reached a solid majority of homes, connectivity and transport both grade well, and there's enough retail and school choice (37 schools) that daily life doesn't require much improvising. Where the picture turns is safety, and it's the one grade that breaks the pattern against an otherwise solid B-band town. Violence and sexual offences make up close to four in ten recorded crimes, anti-social behaviour is the clear second category, and the trend line is marked worsening rather than stable — a genuine outlier against grades of B or better for housing, environment, health, transport and schools.