Richard Rogers has a Plan for You, Martin Crookston
Calling Suburbia: Richard Rogers has a Plan for You...
Martin Crookston examines how the principles of the Urban Task Force report can be applied equally to developments in suburban locations
The 'Urban Task Force' set up by John Prescott under architect Richard Rogers put its report in to the Deputy Prime Minister during June 1999. The focus of press attention was very much on the messages for the declining industrial cities, the brownfield land, and the signs of revival in city centres like Manchester, Leeds and London Docklands.
But it's very important to recognise that a debate about British cities can't simply be about the inner areas. The approach of the Urban Task Force isn't just a way of looking at existing and older towns even though some commentators have suggested that a missing element in the Rogers approach has been in relation to that very important part of Britain in which so many of us live: the Suburbs.
It's fundamental that the principles (see table right) of good urban design, set out in the Task Force report, shouldn't just apply in Ancoats, or Limehouse, or even Chelsea. They should also apply to thinking about the suburbs. If they are the principles that we need for a quality environment, then suburban development too should aim at similar objectives.
A Suburban People
About half the population of Britain lives in 'the suburbs', as defined by Paul Oliver in his delightful book 'Dunroamin: the Suburban Semi and its Enemies. So what goes on there matters: to the people who live there, of course; but also to issues like how much new 'greenfield' land we are going to build on, and indeed to the wider future of our urban life. That means that John Prescott's 'Urban Renaissance' should be trying to get the best out of the existing suburbs too. We should certainly stop treating the suburbs as 'A Bad Thing'. This has been a recurrent theme of Britain's discussion of housing and town planning for a hundred years, lan Davis in Dunroamin recalls: '....On my first day in a school of architecture I handed my tutor the usual form indicating name, age and home address: Hillside Drive, Edgware, Middlesex. He read my form and gave me a probing stare, followed by:' I take it that you live in one of Edgware's semi-detached houses?' My affirmative prompted the observation that I should make early plans to move to a more civilised address, such as Camden Town....'
Wrapped up in genuine concerns (loss of farmland, longer travel, and so on) there has been a lot of architectural and social snobbery about suburbia, which makes it hard to reassess with an open mind. Paul Oliver again, '....Professional designers found it impossible to accept the reality that Dunroamin represents not escape but arrival, not status-seeking so much as achievement, not anomie but neighbourliness, not isolation but identification, not anonymity but individuality. They, and the majority of their successors today, have not been prepared to consider that the buildings in their original form, and the ways in which they were extended and modified, have been expressive of the changing values within Dunroamin - but seldom of dissatisfaction with it.'
Celebrate the strengths, repair the weaknesses
Well, we should indeed celebrate, enjoy and renew the Suburbs. Many British suburbs are amongst the country's most popular and successful urban forms. They exist in dozens of varieties, and they have adapted and changed over time. Houses have sprouted porches, or garages with granny-flats above, or conservatories; streets and gardens have softened with maturing trees and shrubs; sometimes subdivision has allowed the same stock to meet new markets, such as starter flats or student housing. But some parts of suburbia have not adapted. They have slipped gently from being 'places of choice' to 'places of rejection'. Areas all over the country - London examples might be Southall, or Acton, maybe even Stanmore - were built as the desirable new suburb for one generation, yet have shown a tendency to be rejected by the next. An indefinable feeling of decline sets in, and the area is soon 'not what it was'
This rejection isn't just a problem for the particular area. We are too short of
urban land to treat places like paper tissues: use once and then throw away. Suburbs that are on the slide - and those that might be starting to slip-will benefit, socially and environmentally, from being analysed and rethought against urban design principles. There are a number of ways that we think this can be done.
'Retrofitting'
The first approach is what we might call 'retrofitting': looking at some of the existing suburbs (sometimes the fading 20s ones, but possibly also postwar examples), and redesigning their local shopping parades to provide them with the better local services that they never quite got. They would be retrofitted at these focal points, around improving public transport, places where housing densities might be increased, and new sorts of residents (younger people, singles, flat-sharers) attracted. The aim would not be major reconstruction or 'building in back gardens' - it would be looking for extra potential where it would help breathe new life into areas. The Government Office for the South East commissioned the Llewelyn-Davies planning consultancy to apply their 'Sustainable Residential Quality' approach illustratively to three towns in the region. Their study shows how an existing local centre could be strengthened in just this way.
Restructuring
The 'retrofit' thinking points to another thing that some of the suburbs need -which is restructuring. They aren't necessarily life-expired yet: though some of them may soon be. Sir Peter Hall, one of the Urban Task Force members, wrote in 1989 that; '.... the suburbs will not last for ever. In the late 1980s, they are between 50 and 70 years old. Not all were well built; not all have been well maintained. The cost of maintaining them will surely rise, and their owners may not be able to meet it. Some may well degenerate into new slums, and the question of clearance and rebuilding will then loom large...' (London 2001)
Even if things aren't as serious as that, in many cases, the issue is often one of outdated structure. One of the things suburbia is often criticised for is its formlessness, its endless monotony, its lack of a 'sense of place'. This can be overdone - but it does reflect one of the truths, which is that quite a few of our
suburbs were laid out without any 'hierarchy' of place: so there is no real local centre, and the places that are not just housing are little more than feeble shopping parades. A major outer suburban area like North Sheffield, for instance, contains some 20,000 houses - say 40,000 people; but it has no focus where those 40,000 people might meet or spend money and time, just a series (over 20) of depressing and failing strips of shops, dotted about. For anything other than chips or a hairdo, it's the city centre or Meadowhall. Yet a 'real' town of 40,000 people would have a core of shops, services, and leisure; plus a few viable local parades; plus a recognisable clustering of activity and intensity around these central places. Their re-planning needs to 'start at the centre': not mimicking what Central Sheffield offers, but creating reasonably attractive centres at each level, and then thinking out what the rest of the area's structure will be as change comes to these areas in future - as it will.
Relearning (from Dunroamin?)
Another vital concern for the Rogers Task Force has been the waste of land - and thus the unnecessary use of new 'greenfield' land. Suburbia's image is of unmitigated wasteful sprawl. But even here, we can do better than present practice without being at all radical. Look at what the housing density figures tell us. Dunroamin's classic inter-war 'Semi-D' suburbs were built at around 10-12 houses per acre (25-30 per hectare). This contrasted with perhaps 30 to the acre (75 per hectare) in the towns people were leaving, and perhaps 50-60 houses to the acre in the little terraces of Hulme or Stepney. So people were getting a very different product, without doubt. But look at the postwar suburbs:
Government figures record that 60% of recent British housing (early 90s) was built at less than 8 houses per acre (20 per hectare). So even a return to pre-war suburban practice would save us land on a big scale. And we can do better than that, by intelligent use of good urban design, by less clumsy highway requirements on our estate roads, and by throwing away the town planners' density standards.
'Rethinking' within the plot
Britain's suburbs are very varied, and very adaptable. Some of the older suburbs are now so far embedded In the towns and cities that we've forgotten they ever were suburbs. But Holloway, in North London was a suburb once (it's why Mr. Pooter - in the 'Diary of a Nobody' - lived there). It shows an interesting variant on the 'suburban' form, that we might also learn from.
Each biggish house occupies a lot of its plot, leaving a small back garden and an even smaller front one. The density looks quite low -12 to 15 houses per acre, not very different from 30's Dunroamin. But the feel is very different - much more 'urban'. And so is the potential: these are big houses, with a lot of space, and a lot of rooms. With 7 or 8 habitable rooms each, they contain twice the number of rooms, and so in a busy city probably twice the number of people, that an inter-war semi street will house. (They had to - think of the servants the Pooters needed). What this suggests is that as suburbia changes, it can draw on these models too: so that in places where transport and services are good (like in Holloway, like near the local centres and transport nodes of outer suburbia)- we can build in this slightly more urban, but still very English, way. This will help to create activity and intensity of use, at the same time as saving land and energy.
'Recycling'
So far, the problems and solutions that we have been discussing are about the physical nature and form of suburbia. We also need to think about 'recycling' the suburbs, in the sense of their ability to look after themselves. For many suburban areas, especially the comfortably-off districts, this isn't an issue. But the care and maintenance of many suburban areas, before they approach the threshold of rejection, definitely fs an issue for urban policy and management, as shown by a recent study (by the Civic Trust and Arup) for the Joseph Rowntree housing research charity. The study observed 'significant stress, with deteriorating community facilities, declining local centres, car domination and monotone housing that does not reflect population and social change'. They argue for careful intervention, working with local communities, and their suggestions included:
- local authorities to develop positive community-based programmes for their suburban areas;
- suburban 'parish councils' with local fund-raising powers for community development purposes; and
- close involvement of the voluntary sector, in helping communities build up creative thinking about suburban renewal.
The Rowntree study emphasises the need for gradualism rather than any sort of 'big bang' approach. Suburbia may not generally be in a state of crisis like parts of the Inner City, but that doesn't mean that all is well; or, just as important, that we shouldn't be acting carefully and thoughtfully now to head off incipient problems. We may be able to spot the problems, but we haven't necessarily got the tools (the organisations) to solve them at local level.
'Resurrection'
Some of the most difficult problems in the suburbs - and the most complex mix of physical and social problems - are emerging in what Dr. Richard Turkington of UCE has called 'Corporation suburbia'. He has looked in great detail at Liverpool's leafy inter-war estate at Morris Green. Similar things are happening in Manchester's Wythenshawe (designed by one of the country's then most eminent architect-planners)- North Sheffield, and indeed all over the big Council estates put up outside the industrial towns before and just after the war. For the first time ever, there is a surplus of social housing.
Tenants can pick and choose, where once they needed to wait on 'The List' and accumulate 'points' for years. Individual houses stay unlet ('voids') for months; certain streets start to show clusters of empty boarded homes; a spiral of decay sets in, and only the desperate, or the anti-social, accept offers in such streets; Councils start to consider demolitions; a litter of vacant sites adds to the impression of decline. All familiar from the inner city; all now starting to affect suburbia. These are areas which, only a generation ago, were home to the respectable and upwardly-mobile working-class; now, older tenants shake their heads and would gladly support the Council in no matter how severe a behaviour and eviction policy. Drastic solutions are now being canvassed: over 50% clearance and rebuild in Edinburgh's Craigmillar; a mixture of demolition and transfer of stock to Housing Associations and private developers in Morris Green; major restructuring in Sheffield. Some lessons are clear - a mixture of tenures is essential, at all but the most local level, and never again must we build in a way that allows the sort of area stigma to emerge that is affecting some of these areas. Others less so: what is social housing now for? who is it to house? how have we ended in this almost-American position of the 'housing of last resort', where only losers rent, despite a long tradition of decent and well-built estates for 'ordinary families'? Dr. Turkington's conclusion for Norris Green is that '....only radical physical and social restructuring can prevent it from further decline and an uncertain future....'. The need is indeed for a resurrection in many of these cases - coming back from the very nearly dead.
And finally...
So the Rogers Task Force is full of messages for the half of Britain that is suburban. Making them more structured, more like towns, yes; but doing it in a way that reflects the peculiar balance between Town and Country that the English so like about their best suburbia. Going with the grain wherever we can; but being prepared too to accept the need for major change in some cases: provided always that the next 'solution' doesn't just contain the seeds of another failure, and that it is based on thoughtful application of urban design principles, and on community involvement. Our suburbs really do matter to our 'urban' debate, and we cannot go on just taking them for granted or regarding them as the boring bits that will look after themselves.
This will take real attention and skill, pointedly put in this last word from Paul Oliver: '....Dunroamin is not a bran-tub offering easy prizes for any designer who dips into it. The lessons that are to be found there are not so casually learned....'. #
Martin Crookston
