Moving to Poundbury.

Hey guys! Let me introduce myself first: my name is Sebastian and I´m from Bremen in Germany (English is not my mother tongue, so please forgive the mistakes and misspellings - but don´t bother to correct me!). I have friends living at the Jurassic Coast, a very nice couple in the mid-60ies and I try to visit them at least once a year. Poundbury actually became a part of my B.A. thesis (I studied Cultural Sciences and what can be summarized as "Theories of Art") and so I think, I can provide an answer to the question above.
The man who draw the first master-plan for the development of Poundbury was Leon Krier, an architect (well, and more) following the principles of New Urbanism. New Urbanism itself has its roots in the Gardencity-Movement, which goes back to Sir Ebenezer Howard. How ever.
No doubt, that Leon Krier is aware of the fact, that "real" Towns in most cases grew around a spiritual building, churches in this part of the world.
But in his opinion, it is not the architect´s duty to provide something like that. His task is just to create an environment that enables the inhabitants to discover truth on their own. Putting a church in the middle would equal putting a ready-made ideology in the heart of a society.
I hope that the things I just wrote are more or less understandable. Writing English is much more difficult for me than speaking it.

Best, the beaver (always gives a dam)