Blending new with old

Community integration and the wish to avoid a potential ‘us and them’ situation were key drivers behind an urban extension at Merton Rise, Popley, says Hilary Satchwell

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Project background and context

The idea for an urban extension to the north of Basingstoke first came up in the mid-1990s. In early 2001, Hampshire County Council’s Development and Projects Group appointed Tibbalds Planning & Urban Design, together with HED Landscape Architects, Transport Consultancy MVA, engineers Campbell Reith and members of their own in-house development and engineering teams, to develop a masterplan that would go on to form an outline planning application for the site. The wider urban extension proposal was further extended in 2003 with significant areas of land being allocated for the development of up to 3,250 homes across a range of sites as part of the North West Basingstoke Action Plan.

The 50-hectare Merton Rise site is within the eastern half of the Action Plan area. It is a south-facing greenfield site to the east of the busy A340, directly to the north of Popley, a 1970s London overspill estate of around 3,500 homes. As well as a typical Radburn separation of vehicle and pedestrian movement, there are few pavements on primary routes. Challenges included a poorly performing secondary school, where numbers were in decline due, in part, to an aging population. As the landowner of the Merton Rise site, Hampshire County Council set about creating a high quality new place in accordance with best practice.


Tibbalds Planning & Urban Design’s creation of a compelling vision for a sustainable, urban town centre extension at Merton Rise, Popley, north of Basingstoke, was a stimulating challenge for its team.

	From the outset, landowner Hampshire County Council emphasised the need for a flagship development; an exemplary urban extension that that seamlessly blended new developments with the existing area, and that was accessible to all community members. Key design principles underlying the masterplan included the creation of a contemporary character for Merton Rise that aligned well with the existing Popley Estate, the delivery of a coherent and unfolding townscape, and a materials strategy that responded to nearby towns and villages. The plan opened up opportunities for close partnerships to be forged with members of the Hampshire County Council’s award-winning internal architectural team, which was responsible for designing a new replacement secondary school for 700-900 students. Strategically locating the school in the urban extension and using routes, streets and spaces to maximise the school’s relationship with both the existing and new areas has enabled better community integration and the avoidance of a potential ‘us and them’ situation. Providing a central area where local communities could meet and spend time was a key focus of the Merton Rise masterplan. A new supermarket, shops, offices, a nursery, family pub and other facilities are located along key routes. Three new squares each have different characters and functions; the prominent civic square accommodates commercial activity, a triangular parking space to the south connects the existing estate with the new centre, and a third square to the north creates a pleasant setting for a new secondary school. Merton Rise is characterised by contemporary urban and suburban housing that will aligns well with adjacent area. The soft red brick and render used in the new buildings is similar to that of older housing in the area, and the mix of homes and two-to-five story apartments adds variety. Key sustainability targets include an integrated, sustainable urban drainage strategy and the reuse of existing materials in main roads and other key infrastructure. All new housing is required to reach the Eco-Homes ‘very good’ standard as a minimum. Developers are currently being sought for an exemplary eco-development next to the neighbourhood centre, with prospective developers required to meet a minimum level five of the Code for Sustainable Homes, and ideally, level six (zero carbon). The challenge of using the Merton Rise site’s considerable constraints to shape and form the masterplan has worked out well and the realisation of Tibbalds “townscape” led vision on site is fantastic to see. We found working collaboratively with Hampshire County Council and the project team fundamental to the success of the project, and the innovative procurement methods and positive working relationships we have with developers has really contributed to the success of the scheme. Solving the problem of connectivity A sense of connectedness between old and new areas is a key issue in urban extension developments. Tibbalds worked closely with Hampshire County Council to identify a number of innovative solutions to ensure a visual and physical relationship was created between Merton Rise and Popley. Tibbalds focused on the linear nature of the site, organising the new development as a string of open spaces, squares and parks along an enclosed, spine road that winds through the site, resulting in a strong sense of continuity and enclosure. This route carefully negotiates the contours of the sloping site, using natural deflections to help reduce traffic speed and to create several areas of bus priority. Adjacent developments connect to form a convenient and direct public transport corridor. Cutting across the spine road are a number of lateral routes that connect the site with surrounding neighbourhoods, providing direct links between key spaces and facilities and making it possible to improve connections to Popley. Unpopular underpasses have been replaced with street level pedestrian crossings.
Sketch illustrating the development character and townscape qualities
Merton Rise – the concept for connecting with the wider surroundings
The Urban Design Framework, setting out design principles for key components and their need to relate to each other
Sketch setting out design principles for key elevation

Ensuring quality and consistency
Hampshire County Council takes the role of master developer for its large development sites. In the case of Merton Rise, the council was responsible for the replacement school, the strategic infrastructure and much of the public realm. ‘ The replacement school and some of the strategic infrastructure and public realm, with residential and mixed-use developments, are being marketed through a phased, coordinated site-disposal process.

With considerable experience of marketing sites to residential developers, the council has developed a ‘design and offer’ approach to land disposal. Finding a way to secure high quality contemporary design was critical to the success of Merton Rise as a flagship development.

Tibbalds and the council team worked collaboratively on the development of a series of detailed masterplans and briefs that set out design rules for the development phase. These documents are approved by the local planning authority and are used to assess the quality of tenders and for development control purposes.

In addition, Hampshire County Council took positive steps to promote high quality design from the outset by:

• Rebranding the development and actively marketing the sites to high profile architects and developers, and
• Developing a two stage tender process, where designs only are assessed at the first stage and only teams demonstrating high quality design are invited to proceed to stage two, where financial bids are required.

Once a preferred developer is selected, the team works closely with the developer and the Local Planning Authority to ensure that the Reserved Matters application is in line with the vision for Merton Rise. The masterplanning team is now undertaking a rolling programme of producing more detailed masterplans and design briefs for individual phases of the development.

Determining the character
An important element of Tibbalds’ involvement with Merton Rise was to analyse the character of the location and its context. Results informed the masterplan and helped fine-tune the parameters of the key design.

The character of a broad selection of surrounding towns and villages was assessed, including built form, landscape, development boundaries, materials and townscape approaches. For each of these aspects, the team developed an appropriate contemporary response – for example, a distinctive feature of North Hampshire is the use of soft red brick as the predominant building material, highlighted with render or timber cladding. Design principles for the site included these features, proposing that these base materials are used on all buildings and as boundary treatments.

Many of the best local places have a gently unfolding townscape character that follows site contours and use small spaces to indicate changes in direction or point of arrival. This has been reinterpreted and incorporated within the spine road layout for Merton Rise, as a way of creating squares and green spaces with strong but varied character.

The delivery
In June 2004, outline planning approval was granted for 950 homes in five phases along with the neighbourhood centre, replacement school and employment uses. Today, implementation of the masterplan is well underway.

The new state-of-the-art Everest Community College opened in September 2007, and press and locals have praised the school’s design and context. Two parcels of phase one are now on site, while phase two and the neighbourhood centre are currently going through the reserved matters process. Phase three and the eco parcel are being marketed, and the spine road is due for completion in 2008.
The work undertaken by HCC and its team of consultants to protect design quality has been rewarded by the positive results of first two phases. Merton Rise has attracted major house builders who have teamed up with award winning architects to achieve the desired design quality.

The success of the Merton Rise masterplan has informed work on other development sites currently being undertaken by HCC. It has provided a model of best practice for planning and procurement processes on other large sites, showing how to achieve a high level of certainty and, through cooperative working, to secure buy-in from all those involved in the planning and development process.

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