Crawley

Crawley has been the place people pass through on the way to Brighton since the stagecoach days, and it has never quite got over it. The postwar planners answered by building a town so organised that every neighbourhood's street signs carry their own colour, in case anyone loses track of which shopping parade is theirs. Then an airport arrived on the doorstep, so most of the country now knows Crawley only as the view from a departure lounge. It is the sensible choice people refuse to admit they made, right up until they price everything else within reach of the M23.