RUDI quick links guide: rethinking sub-urban areas: design and density and place
RUDI quick links guide: Rethinking sub-urban areas: design and density and place
As Lord Rogers recently noted of many sub-urban areas: ‘If you travel just a few blocks from revitalised city centres you can see shoddy housing and wasted land, which shows how many problems remain. Most worrying are the signs that the government is losing its nerve: that it is beginning to focus on quantity at the expense of quality...’
- In the UK, 86 per cent live in sub-urban areas
- recent initiatives are increasing the number of new homes being built on brownfield and greenfield sites, as well as in Growth Areas
- A significant proportion of homebuyers, especially families, continue to choose a suburban lifestyle. How can we make initiatives aimed at promoting higher densities, for example PPG32, more attractive to a majority of the population?
Following the publication in July 2007 of the Housing Green Paper, with its plans for 3 million new homes, there has never been a better time to tackle these issues.
See below for overviews and quick links to some of RUDI's relevant content.
Click here to browse all RUDI content relating to 'suburbs'
Click here to browse all RUDI content relating to 'housing'
Personalised cities: sustaining suburbia
No longer can the simplistic idea of 9-5 commuting to the city centre and role of the local shop define suburbia. Increasingly suburbia presents the perfect location for personalised cities built on a modern day mantra of choice and personal mobility. This shift in behaviour has significant impact on the nature of how we understand suburbs; classify suburbs and how we comprehend the infrastructures which support suburbia.
In reality the polycentric nature of suburban life is best understood and defined by the network connectivity capacity of suburbs, in other
words the location of its labour markets, retail and social centres which support the divergent networked lifestyles of today’s suburbanites. In
affect it is not just the transport mode by which a suburb is connected, or when they were constructed, but rather what they connect to and the subsequent flows and transactions that characterise these environs.
Learning from new Dutch towns (URBED)
As part of the work of developing the Business Plan for Harlow Renaissance, a high level team visited a range of new developments in the Netherlands and met planners and members of the community. This short report sets out the aims and issues we wanted to explore, and the main findings as far as both the product and processes are concerned.
Aims and issues for Harlow
Another important goal was to allow the members of the Board to get to know each other, and to explore areas of common interest. An intensive visit to other places is one of the best ways of doing this.
A number of issues for exploration were identified, including:
- Organising and funding infrastructure
- Integrating new and old developments and the people in them
- Reviewing the management of public spaces
- Transforming the town centre
- Raising aspirations and skill levels
- Identifying potentially transferable lessons
State of the suburbs (report, September 2007)
For decades, a move to the suburbs has meant an escape from the annoyances of urban life – graffiti, menacing gangs and potholed streets.Or has it? Gordon Brown is being accused of starving the suburbs of more than £1 billion a year so that problems that blight inner cities are beginning to invade the outskirts.
Council leaders - led by Leo Boland, chief executive of the London borough of Barnet, have published a report warning of deprivation in the suburbs. An Ipsos Mori poll of residents in 30 English suburbs shows they are less satisfied than city dwellers with the quality of parks and the cleanliness of streets. They are more afraid of vandalism, graffiti and gangs of teenagers and suffer more burglaries than the national average.
Sustainable suburbia (on RUDI)
Redefining suburbia (on RUDI)
Both studies by MacCormac Jamieson Prichard Architects (pdf file)
- Existing research into consumer choice suggests that these homebuyers choose suburban neighbourhoods because they are relatively affordable and they represent a desirable lifestyle - the 'suburban dream'. We postulate that while this lifestyle is often associated with lower densities, it can be achieved at much higher densities than is currently the norm.
- The various benefits of increased density collectively improve the sustainability of a development.
- Five hypothetical design studies of housing and block configurations demonstrate this, achieving densities of 57 – 120 net (1) dph (dwellings per hectare) or 285 – 528 net bph (bedspaces per hectare)
- A sixth study, of a hypothetical community of 5,000 people, shows that significant positive trade-offs for the community as a whole begin to occur if the average net density is above 50 dph.
- The study establishes a range of density at which many of the benefits of higher density living can be achieved without sacrificing what remains the aspiration of most British homebuyers – their own house and garden with its own front door in a safe, quiet, and leafy street.
- These proposals depend on the efficiency of road systems sustaining density across a community and suggest how land use and infrastructure costs for housing can be significantly reduced.
Urban Design and Conservation: Historical Assessment of Suburbs
By John Bold and Peter Guillery: We see what we know. Without historical understanding buildings and their relationships are reduced to superficial form and immediate function. Good urban design demands historical understanding, not to copy the past, but to provide a foundation for both preservation and informed innovation. Indeed a confident grasp of history should rescue design from the slide into a trite and tokenistic approach to ‘heritage’. The continuity that is implicit in the word regeneration is not provided by the ritual deposit of artefacts. It is deeper and more difficult. It depends on the understanding and valuing of place.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.
One planet living in the suburbs report (Bioregional)
This study has revealed that there are significant opportunities to reduce the Ecological Footprint of existing
suburban communities. Suburbia poses particular challenges in relation to One Planet Living; the reasons for this are fourfold:
- Affluent areas of suburbia are generally perceived to be financially and socially stable and successful and the environmental impact of suburban life is therefore frequently overlooked by policy makers and awareness is consequently low.
- Fundamental aspects of car-based suburbs are inherently unsustainable: they are low density, with high energy use, high car use and a dependence on external inputs. Resistance to change such as redensification may also be strong.
- Opportunities for change are primarily determined by the awareness and keenness of the individual suburban resident, opportunities for community wide initiatives are more limited than in social housing or new developments.
- Suburban culture may be a barrier; high incomes may result in higher levels of consumption
Tomorrow's suburbs toolkit: Groundwork London/URBED/GLA
As part of the preparation for the London Plan (the Mayor’s Spatial Development Strategy) the GLA commissioned URBED to prepare a report on London’s suburbs, A City of Villages, which formed one of the Plan’s background documents. Subsequently URBED was commissioned by a consortium of the GLA, LDA, ALG and TfL to develop Tools for Making London’s Suburbs More Sustainable.
The Toolkit has been designed as a source of practical information on ways of making London’s suburbs more sustainable, in line with the Mayor of London’s strategies. It could also be described as a handbook, a resource, a gateway, or a new approach to planning; but its aim is to provide ready access to information on a wide range of practical actions specifically relevant to suburbs. It does not deal with issues that would only be relevant to the whole of London or non-suburban situations, (although some of the tools could be used in other parts of the capital).
The key to designing successful places is change management
Aspiration is key to where people want to live, says Chris Brown of Igloo Regeneration, and change needs to be noted and properly managed. Developers should only get to develop when they’ve shown themselves capable of delivering social environmental and economic objectives in addition to their own profit, says Brown
How to (successfully) engage the private sector in physical regeneration
Chris Brown, chief executive of Igloo Regeneration, explains what local authorities, designers and community groups can do to build a better relationship with property developers – and to get what they need from projects
