In the UK, housing estates have become prevalent since World War II, as a more affluent population demanded larger and more widely spaced houses coupled with the increase of car usage for which terraced streets were unsuitable. Housing estates were produced by either local corporations or by private developers. The former tended to be a means of producing public housing leading to estates full of council houses and therefore known as "council estates". In the UK the post war new towns were constructed en masse from housing estates rather than as organic growth from a population centre.