November: From Poundbury to Cranbrook – delivering sustainable communities

2014 marks the centenary of town planning as a profession in the UK. As Chair of the SW branch of the RTPI (Royal Town Planning Institute) this year, one of my key aims has been to try and elevate the debate above the rhetoric which passes for political debate to a serious discussion about the role of planning in shaping the world we live in.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the debate which surrounds the provision of new homes to meet the needs of an ever growing population.  Our persistent failure to build enough new homes has been a clear contributor to rising house prices.   Every Government promises to increase the supply of new homes by changing the planning system, releasing public sector land, and underwriting mortgage lending (Help to Buy).  Yet the numbers of new homes being built is only now recovering to pre-crisis level and remains well below what is needed.

Why is that?  Well Government has effectively curtailed public sector house building as it seeks to tackle fiscal deficits.  Housing associations are forced to raise money on the private market and local authorities have neither the budgets nor the capacity to restart building Council housing in any meaningful way.  So we have become ever more dependent on private house builders as the main source of new homes.

The difficulty is that their business model, which seeks to maximise return on capital employed commensurate with risk, appears unable to deliver either more or better quality housing at a price which people can afford.

So there is a lot of interest at the moment in Cranbrook, a new settlement to the east of Exeter.  Planned as a sustainable community, which will shortly have its own railway station, Cranbrook aims to be a sustainable community providing a mix of affordable and market homes all linked to a district heating system and served by a new railway station and cycle links.  Based on construction rates and sales (one new home is being completed every day) Cranbrook looks like a success for the private house builder model.  But dig more deeply and you will find out that it has been underwritten by some £90 million of public expenditure on infrastructure as well as social housing grant.  And with strategic land companies and speculative house builders in control the opportunity to create a place of enduring quality is being lost.

Contrast this with Poundbury, Prince Charles’ much derided new community to the west of Dorchester. Here the pace of development has been much slower but, even if you don’t like neo classical and pastiche architecture, few could argue with the quality of the place which is emerging.  This extends to creating work spaces for small businesses within the urban fabric and creating a pedestrian friendly environment by rejecting standard highway engineering solutions.  All this has been achieved using an approach to development which is controlled by the land owner and not the developer.

So what conclusions can we draw from this?

1. We know how to plan, design and build sustainable communities.  The UK planning profession pioneered garden cities and new towns and developed the tools to deliver them.
2. The private sector is capable of producing new houses in both quantity and quality. However depending entirely upon the market is unlikely to produce the optimum result in terms of sustainable development.
3. Adopting the right delivery model is key.  Allowing developers to extract profit from both land value increase and housing development is unlikely to deliver either the infrastructure or facilities which communities require to be truly sustainable. 

The essential difference between Cranbrook and Poundbury is between maximising development profit in the short term (inelegantly termed ‘build it and bugger off') and long term value creation and stewardship.  It is to be hoped that Plymouth’s new community at Sherford will combine the best of both approaches.

Professor Chris Balch is Professor of Planning and Chair of the ISSR Management Team

November 2012: City Sustainability – can we learn from other European Cities?

With 50% of the world’s population now classified as urban (approx. 3.5bn) and, according to the Hard Rain’s Tour exhibition some 6 to 7bn urban dwellers expected by 2050, life on Earth depends upon achieving sustainable towns and cities.

For the past 7 years I have led the Academy of Urbanism’s assessment of cities which have been shortlisted for its European City of the Year Award and last week I attended a ceremony in which Antwerp was announced as this year’s winner having seen off strong competition from Hamburg and Lyon.

The Academy’s award process seeks to identify and share learning from successful places ranging in scale from individual streets and neighbourhoods to towns and major cities. There is no standard formula for success. Indeed in our increasingly global world places need to remain true to their history and culture and promote their distinctiveness as a means of attracting and retaining human and financial capital – think Amsterdam and Barcelona.

What European cities do face however is a common set of challenges, such as:

• preventing the continued outward spread of population; the land area of many European cities has doubled in the past 50 years driven by a desire to consume more space and increased mobility.
• reducing the dominant use of the car in urban environments; the installation of mass public transit (trams and metro systems) emerges a key tool of urban transformation, although increasingly cycling is being promoted as a key means of urban mobility - Copenhagen shows what can be done –with more than one third of all journeys to work taking place by bike.
• reusing former industrial and waterfront land to create new sustainable communities which mix housing and employment - Hafen City, Hamburg, Le Confluence in Lyon, and the former shipyards in Gothenburg are just some examples of how our cities are restructuring.
• accommodating a growing number of immigrants from less prosperous parts of Europe and indeed further afield. Successful cities are increasingly multi-cultural cities with London as the prime example. It has to be recognised, as a visit to Oslo last year demonstrated, that in some societies achieving this is not without its challenges.
• mitigating and adapting to the challenge of climate change. Membership of the EU is driving concerted efforts to reduce carbon emissions and develop renewable sources. Combined Heat and Power is standard in Helsinki, and other Scandinavian cities and Freiburg has built an exemplar ‘green economy’ around the development and use of solar power. Flood management is now a key consideration in urban planning and cities such as Amsterdam, Hamburg and Valencia are having to find ways of living with a higher level of risk.

I am inspired by the enthusiasm and commitment with which European cities are addressing the challenge of making our cities sustainable for the 21st Century and the evident signs of progress. More than anything I am impressed by the quality of both political and technical leadership which is driving change under difficult economic circumstances.

I am convinced that the UK and the rapidly urbanising world can learn from successful European cities. However we face a real challenge in practical delivery as a result of weak city governance and over reliance on market based solutions. We know what to do…but can we do it?

Professor Chris Balch – Professor of Planning and Chair of ISSR Management Team