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Model villages were created in the United Kingdom by some of the first industrialists. Eighteenth-century industrialists such as Arkwright and Wedgwood built housing for their workers, but fully developed settlements are more typical of the nineteenth century and continue into the twentieth.

Model villages tended to be built by philanthropist industrialists such as Titus Salt and George Cadbury to house their workers as well as provide social amenities. Architects associated with the movement include the designer of Woodlands Model Village and Creswell Model Village, Percy B. Houfton.

• Saltaire, England (1853)
• Ackroyden, England (1859)
• Copley, England (1874)
• Bournville, England (1879)
• Port Sunlight, England (1888)
• Creswell, Derbyshire, England (1895)
• New Earswick, England (1901)
• Woodlands, England (1905).
• Stewartby, Bedfordshire, England (1926)

• Portlaw, Ireland (1825)
• Bessbrook, Ireland (1845)

• New Lanark, Scotland (1786)

There are also some agricultural villages which can be seen as model villages. Examples are seen when a medieval settlement has been rebuilt by a rural landowner, as at Chatsworth.

Model villages were also built in the United States along the same lines as planned industrial communities, for example at Gwinn, Michigan. There were also such agricultural communities as the 18th century Davis Bend, Mississippi.

Some villages were built up around coal mines. In Yorkshire, the villages of Grimethorpe, Goldthorpe, Woodlands and Fitzwilliam were all built to house workers at the colliery, around which the houses were built. Following the mass pit closures of 1984-94, many of these villages suffered from huge losses in population.

Most controversially and newsworthy of recent years has been the establishment of Poundbury, a model village in rural Dorset guided under the auspices of HRH the Prince of Wales.