|  | About a century ago, Parker and Unwin, the masterplanners of the garden city of Letchworth and its London offshoot Hampstead Garden Suburb, advocated building 12 houses per acre, equivalent to 30 homes per hectare, to achieve places where greenery predominated. They attacked the rows of uniform ‘ bylaw housing’ which blanketed our industrial cities in the name of providing adequate day-lighting. They argued that the same densities could achieve much more attractive results through winding roads and vistas, or street pictures, and small groups of houses with setbacks.
However the real trick, in my experience from living in Hampstead Garden Suburb, was the clever way they connected the new housing to the Heath Extension, and used courts of apartments, often designed for single people, off closes set within perimeter blocks. Wide but shallow houses with low roofs behind hedges maximised light and have made it relatively easy to park outside, until recently. Unfortunately the imitations, including their own scheme for Benchill in Wythenshaw, suffered from bastardisation, and from being largely developed as council housing on the edge of cities away from amenities and jobs. At the turn of the 21st century the first results of PPG3 (housing) could be glimpsed, and this time the government set 30 homes to the hectare as a baseline rather than an average target. With car use rising and a requirement that each home should have its own spaces, new developments are dominated by tarmac, not greenery. The front garden, which characterises the typical British suburb, has virtually disappeared, and courtyards are given over to parking, with cars often spreading onto the pavements. The results look boring, even though they include a proportion of three-storey homes, usually built to look like Georgian or Victorian terraces, and every house is slightly different. The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) has been highly critical of these later schemes, which have reinforced community opposition to new housing, particularly on greenfield sites, led by the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE). We are still coming up with policies and masterplans that seem unable to anticipate how places and communities actually behave
In the central areas of all our cities, new forms of apartment blocks have sprung up, often at much higher densities than we have been used to, as developers have packed in relatively small units (Britain has the lowest space standards in Europe) to make redevelopment of old industrial sites profitable. While the results may look impressive, they are not designed to accommodate family living. Nor, given complaints about noise in particular, do they always meet modern requirements. A new generation of super dense schemes could well be vulnerable to property downturns and the collapse of private demand, as happened only 20 years ago in places like London Docklands.
Higher densities can work, particularly in popular places such as Notting Hill, or in historic cities like Edinburgh or York. They also work where people are prepared to conform to different standards of behaviour, for example in China or Holland. The big question is whether they can be made to work in the average British situation and for the kinds of households most likely to move into a newly built home.
Challenges for higher density housing
Research URBED undertook with MORI, and published as Attitudes to Higher Density Housing in the South East in 2004 highlighted the conflicts between government intentions and the reality of what house builders were willing to do. Earlier work for the Urban Task Force used focus groups to explore what would cause attitudes to change. Our report showed that higher densities could be made to work if the product was truly different, and well marketed, as set out in But Would You Live There? However, with few notable exceptions such as Hulme in Manchester, new housing has been put up without complementary action to create communities, or to build what we called Sustainable Urban Neighbourhoods (Building the 21st Century Home, David Rudlin and Nicholas Falk, Architectural Press, 1999).
Though housing was the top priority for most councillors, and higher density housing was thought to offer environmental benefits, the planning process was not delivering what people wanted. The main complaints were extra traffic and parking (62 per cent of respondents), opposition from local residents (51 per cent), out of character (44 per cent), and impact on local services (39 per cent). Mixed use developments were thought appropriate for cities and town centres, but not for the average suburb. Unless ways could be found of securing mutual benefit and sharing good practice, for example through a ‘toolkit’, progress would remain slow and painful.
Mixed communities
Subsequent work has revealed three more deep-seated challenges where new approaches are badly needed. The first problem stems from the requirement not only to build at much higher densities, but to include a wider social mix, including a significant proportion of affordable housing. Without careful design and management, this is a formula for conflict – particularly when, as is likely, the development ends up with a high proportion of children of the same age. There are ongoing management tasks at the domestic, communal and neighbourhood levels to be organised and resourced. Our new report for English Partnerships and the Housing Corporation points out that very different approaches are required in neighbourhood and estate renewal, area regeneration, brownfield development and greenfield development or urban extensions. Yet we are still coming up with policies and masterplans that seem unable to anticipate how places and communities actually behave.
Eco neighbourhoods
The second problem arises from the need to reduce demands on energy, water and waste, and to apply the kinds of objectives being set for Eco Towns to a much wider range of situations if we are to cope with the effects of climate change. The natural trend is for the population to shift to the edge, given most people’s declared preference for living in a village in the countryside. However this is incompatible with the over-riding priority to reduce congestion and travel to work times. The costs of achieving carbon reduction in new buildings make it essential to integrate the new and the old, and to share infrastructure more effectively, as this is what really determines what is feasible. We are hoping that new research into Ecotowns in Europe will help reveal how to afford better homes through a more efficient use of land and infrastructure.
Building to last
Finally, as Ruskin said: ‘When we build, let us build as if it would last for ever’. The best places endure and hold their value because their location and form is essentially robust. It is therefore vital to rethink where we locate housing growth, as well as what patterns of development are likely to meet changing needs. Simply calling for mixed uses or permeable layouts will not be enough. Instead, in my view, we have to promote what I call ‘Smarter Growth’, drawing on the US Congress for New Urbanism and the concept of Transit Oriented Development. However as US cities generally offer a warning of what not to do rather than models to be followed, and far more can be gained from looking to Europe for inspiration. Three countries lead the way – the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden. There are two key themes: making water your friend and taming the car; both part of a wider philosophy of designing with nature rather than, as we tend to do, keeping town and country apart.
Make water your friend: learning from Dutch cities and new settlements
The Dutch are even more crowded than the British, and have had to create most of the land on which they live by reclaiming it from the sea. They have succeeded in achieving higher living standards, while at the same time securing a much fairer way of life, reflected for example in providing the best living environment for children, according to a recent UNICEF report while the UK (and the USA) provide among the worst. Children walk and cycle freely, and travel free on public transport.
Their Vinex programme has built some 450,000 new homes in ten years, increasing the stock by a further 7.6 per cent. Most of them have been in 90 new settlements, typically around a couple of thousand homes but with a few of 10,000, similar to Northstowe (see page 14). We have run a number of study tours, and rereading our reports brings out the way the Dutch have opened up canals and water areas to make the new housing more distinctive, as well as to hold rainwater on site. Schemes like Vathorst and the new towns of Almere and Zoetermeer look quite different from English suburbs because of the number of ecohomes, and the way neighbourhoods were designed to be distinctive or ‘branded’. CHP and underground waste storage is common.
Tame the car: learning from German new settlements
Germany is particularly advanced in using renewable power, and in reducing car use, even though car ownership is higher than in the UK. Their success is due to a very high quality public transport system, which is seamlessly integrated into community life. The south west city of Freiburg has led the way, though similar principles can be seen in other places, such as a new settlement on the edge of Potsdam, which again was linked up by tram from the very start.
Another key principle of the urban extensions of Vauban and Rieselfeld has been to park cars at the edge of the site or under buildings, so that the open spaces between the buildings can be fully greened and given over to children. As a result families like to move into apartments because they offer such a good environment for bringing up children, who play in the streets without the need for adult supervision. Cycling has grown rapidly, making Freiburg well-known as one of the best places to live in Germany because the car has effectively been tamed.
The DNA of successful places
If Britain is to catch up, it is essential we learn from experience, and to avoid relying on centrally set policies that fail to reflect local conditions. In Cambridgeshire, a group of senior politicians has been working with developers and landowners, as well as professionals, to develop a charter for quality growth that will apply lessons from leading edge examples. Using the themes of connectivity, community, climate and character, the Cambridgeshire Quality Growth Charter articulates a series of principles that try to embody the DNA of successful places. They show that density does not have to be dense! The costs of achieving carbon reduction in new buildings make it essential to integrate the new and the old, and to share infrastructure more effectively, as this is what really determines what is feasible |
