Geographer Susan Hegarty discovers how the success of the Shannon Airport Free Trade Zone sparked the building of Ireland’s first new town in 300 years. Emerging as a response to rural decline and de-population in the 1950s, new industrial jobs prompted the construction of a new community on a green field site, built to the latest ideas in urban planning. Shannon Newtown became a multi-cultural oasis in rural Ireland and provided a model of socio-economic development that was exported to places like China and changed the lives of millions.