Meeting the housing challenge of the 21 st Century

1. Meeting the housing challenge of the 21st Century

2. ... getting the housing ‘offer’ right is crucial to the success of eco-towns and their role in inspiring and raising aspirations for the planning of all new development.

3. Influences

4. Influences

5. Influences • ‘Howard’s prime contribution was to outline the nature of a balanced community and show what steps were necessary, in an ill-organised and disorientated society, to bring it into existence.’ • Lewis Mumford (1946) The Garden City Idea and Modern Planning, introduction to Ebeneezer Howard, Garden Cities of Tomorrow, Faber and Faber http://epi.univ-paris1.fr/servlet/com.univ.collaboratif.utils.LectureFichiergw?CODE_FICHIER=1225524766034&ID_FICHE=10938

6. Influences ‘Sustainable communities meet the diverse needs of existing and future residents, their children and other users, contribute to a high quality of life and provide opportunity and choice. They achieve this in ways that make effective use of natural resources, enhance the environment, promote social cohesion and inclusion and strengthen economic prosperity.’

7. Influences • Well run • Well connected • Well served • Environmentally sensitive • Thriving • Well designed & built • Fair for everyone • Active, inclusive and safe

8. ‘ … communities that will stand the test of time, where people want to live, and which will enable people to meet their aspirations and potential.’ Influences

9. Influences

10. Space and accessibility • Choice and flexibility • Quality and inspiration • Affordability • Safety, security, and a sense of community • Healthy living • Having a stake – and a say – in the future • Addressing climate change

11. Space and accessibility • Space to develop, space to work, space to grow, space to have friends to stay, space to look out on, and green space to look after. • Accessibility around the home – whatever residents’ abilities are, whatever their age, and whether or not they have children. • Accessibility for local people around their neighbourhood, accessibility to facilities such as shops and leisure, accessibility to services such as doctors, and accessibility to work.

12. Choice and flexibility • A choice of how to live, a choice of types of housing, and a choice of facilities and services. Housing should deliver flexibility in living space and flexibility in tenures. • Security for residents in the knowledge that this flexibility ensures that profound life-changes will not always require them to move from their house and away from their neighbourhood.

13. Quality and inspiration • Homes and surroundings that have a quality that pleases residents, and allows them to be proud of where they live and of the fact that it has its own unique identity. • Inspiring surroundings and facilities.

14. Affordability • At least 30 per cent of housing to be affordable, including social rented and intermediate housing. • Affordability in access to housing and in housing costs – not just affordability of the rent or the mortgage, but of bills, the upkeep of the home, and service charges. • The real costs to residents of how they live should be made transparent through the use of technology such as smart meters.

15. Safety, security, and a sense of community • A feeling of belonging for local people, opportunities to join in community activities if they want to, opportunities to take responsibility if wanted, and feeling and being safe both at home and outdoors.

16. Healthy living • Housing that helps to deliver good health in the community, including through air and noise quality, allotments, and recreation space.

17. Having a stake – and a say – in the future • Full information about, and the opportunity to be involved in, decisions about the future – whether through formal arrangements such as parish councils or through inclusive approaches such as community planning events. • Community-based assets, owned through organisations such as a Community Land Trust, so that the community itself benefits from positive developments in the area.

18. Addressing climate change • Housing that minimises the development impact on the environment and which contributes to achieving the goal of a zero carbon community. • Residents should know that they are making a contribution to addressing climate change but should not feel that they are being used guinea pigs in this issue. They should be assured that the innovations built into the community work – and are not simply ‘eco window dressing’.

19. Housing space standards in eco-towns

20. Housing space standards in eco-towns the TCPA suggests that eco-towns should adopt the same approach as the London Plan – namely that 10 per cent of all new housing should be designed to be of wheelchair standard or easily adaptable Crown Copyright 2008. Illustration produced by PRP Architects. Diagram indicative only

21. Space and Accessibility -Density • This Worksheet does not set down standards for housing density. The TCPA believes that developers should be given the freedom to innovate and to demonstrate how different densities can contribute to the achievement of zero carbon communities. • Forty per cent of the eco-town should be open space. • Homes should be within ten minutes’ walk of (a) frequent public transport and (b) neighbourhood services. • There should be a maximum walking distance of 800 metres from homes to the nearest school for children aged under 11.

22. Space and Accessibility -Density • it needs to be borne in mind that high density does not necessarily mean high rise. Some low-rise schemes recognised for their sense of community are high density. For example, Darbourne and Darke’s 45-year-old scheme in Lillington Gardens in Westminster has a density of 195 dwellings per hectare, and the 2008 Stirling Prize winning Accordia scheme in Cambridge, designed by Feilden Clegg Bradley, MaccreanorLavington and Alison Brooks Architects at 47 homes to the hectare (65 discounting amenity spaces)

23. Space and Accessibility -Density Housing for a Compact City. Greater London Assembly, 2003

24. Space and Accessibility - Green/open space ‘green infrastructure cannot simply be assembled from parcels of marginal land not needed or wanted for housing’ (see http://www.tcpa.org.uk/pages/green-infrastructure.html). The planning of green space around housing should therefore embody the principle that the layout itself should provide for the needs of residents. This means planning for children’s play, sport and recreation alongside features providing a sense of belonging and community, rather than developing segregated areas for different types of activity.

25. Space and Accessibility - accessible neighbourhoods • Inclusive Design for Getting Outdoors www.idgo.ac.uk/index.htm • Widths of footways and footpaths. • Adjacent & shared use of footways & footpaths. • Materials for footways and footpaths. • Changes in the level of footways and footpaths. • Kerbs, including tactile dropped kerbs for footways & footpaths. • Pedestrian crossings. • Signage. • Bus stops and shelters. • Seating. • Street art. • Street greenery. • Public toilets.

26. Choice and Flexibility: Choice of tenure The starting point for the design and allocation of housing is that it needs to be tenure blind. This can be achieved through removing design distinctions and mixing different tenures within a scheme – a practice sometimes known as ‘pepper potting’. However, eco-towns need to show ways of moving beyond current practice. One clear and progressive way of achieving this is to blur – or abandon – the distinctions between tenures for any particular dwelling.

27. Choice and Flexibility: Access to housing Accessahome is an online housing lettings system for disabled people. It is designed to offer disabled people more housing options and increased choice about where they live. It provides an online database of adapted and accessible homes in the affordable sector. It provides a service to housing applicants and landlords by enabling a better match of applicants to accessible homes.

28. Choice and Flexibility: Choice in provision • self-build • co-housing • co-operative housing • Offsite production coupled with high environmental standards • non-standard approaches to construction • private renting

29. Choice and Flexibility: Choice in provision Two model houses designed by Henry Roberts that the Society for Improving the Condition of the Labouring Classes erected in Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition in 1851, to the Home World Exhibition and the Future Home Exhibition in Milton Keynes in 1981 and 1994

30. Inspiration: quality

31. Quality and Inspiration: quality Eco-towns provide the opportunity to extend the very real challenge posed by these criteria. For example, criterion 5 is already too timid for an eco-town development, while, for example, criterion 11 could be turned on its head for eco-towns, with neither the building layout nor the highways dominating but both being subservient to the green framework. It would be valuable if all schemes could aspire to the Building for Life Gold Standard – meeting 16 of the 20 criteria – so that eco-towns can truly be exemplar developments.

32. Quality and Inspiration: quality The BedZED development in the London Borough of Sutton demonstrates that it is technically and financially possible to produce a building that does not degrade the environment, but improves and enhances it. BedZED addresses a multitude of physical issues, among them maximising water re-use and reducing waste and energy consumption, and offers a myriad of energy-saving measures to residents. Integrated social provisions include a nursery, after-school clubs, a medical centre, an organic café, a bar, shops, internet access, and workspaces. http://www.buildingforlife.org/case-studies/bedzed/ introduction

33. Quality and Inspiration: layout • The key priorities to be considered are: • Communities – understanding social dynamics can help developments to reinforce local communities. • Place – drawing inspiration from indigenous character can strengthen local identity. • Natural resources – maximising use of the site’s intrinsic resources can create more sustainable developments. • Connections – understanding existing street and road linkages can help in developing an effective and integrated movement framework. • Feasibility – ensuring schemes are economically viable and deliverable. • Vision – understanding the aspirations for the site. • Urban Design Compendium

34. Quality and Inspiration: layout As part of the redevelopment of Borneo Sporenburg, 60 ‘free parcels’ of land were made available on which private individuals were able to build their own homes under the guidelines provided by the design codes. These individuals consulted with the architects in organised workshops, challenging them to meet their needs by responding creatively to the design code. The experience of Borneo Sporenburg has had a significant impact on Dutch urban planning, and free parcels are now often integrated into new planned neighbourhoods in the Netherlands.

35. Quality and Inspiration: layout Layout is also important in determining the ways in which an ecotown can be developed. For example, in Vauban in Freiburg, Germany , one of the attributes of the inclusive masterplanning process was the division of land into small lots and a preferential allocation to private builders and co-operative building projects.

36. Quality and inspiration: types of housing http://www.passivhaus.org.uk/

37. Affordability: funding models Unlike individual homeownership, where residents have a personal mortgage loan to buy a home, the homes are financed by a corporate loan borrowed by a co-operative. The value of the buildings is divided into shares, and when members leave the co-operative they are entitled to take the equity that they have built up with them. The net value of the shares is calculated by reference to a fair valuation formula set out in the departing member’s occupancy agreement or lease, which is the same for all members.

38. Affordability: funding models Resident members of the co-operative also finance the management, maintenance, estate services and mortgage costs through the rents they pay to the co-operative, as well as controlling its budget. The rent is geared to be affordable at 35 per cent of net household income, so the more you earn the more you pay, and the more equity shares you own and finance.

39. Affordability: reducing energy costs ‘The Government has committed to mandating smart meters and has set out an indicative timetable for getting smart metering to all homes by the end of 2020.’ The Government’s plans, and therefore the sustainability and affordability of all housing, would be supported if all homes in eco-towns were fitted with smart metering and energy management systems from the outset – instead of this simply being considered, as the PPS requires.

40. Secured by Design Recent research conservatively estimates the carbon cost of crime within the UK to be in the region of 6,000,000 tonnes of CO2. This is roughly equivalent to the total CO2 output of 6 million UK homes. The environmental benefits of Secured by Design are fully supported by independent research proving that SBD housing developments suffer at least 50% less burglary, 25% less vehicle crime and 25% less criminal damage.

41. Healthy living: Active Design Active Design is an innovative set of design guidelines to promote opportunities for sport and physical activity in the design and layout of development. The guidance promotes sport and activity through three key Active Design principles of improving accessibility, enhancing amenity and increasing awareness.

42. having a stake - and a say – in the future ... the Graylingwell housing development near Chichester has involved the creation of a Community Development Trust which will be endowed with the completed community buildings, to be run by local people for local people.

43. Community involvement in strategies The Eldonian Community Based Housing Association Ltd was set up as a housing cooperative in 1983 by tenants from Eldon Street and Burlington Street in Liverpool. The homes of these residents were scheduled for demolition: this would have meant that the community would have been broken up and the people scattered to different parts of Merseyside. In 1990, the co-operative became a Community Based Housing Association, held directly accountable to its customers through consultation and customer participation. It is legally owned by its nominal shareholders (who have £1 holding each). Anyone over the age of 18 years who lives in an association property is entitled to apply to become a shareholder. Shareholders receive no profit.

44. Addressing climate change the ‘Hammarby model’ of considering a settlement as a living organism, and thus looking at waste, energy, movement and accessibility as an integrated whole.

45. It can be done .... • The 680 dwellings in the housing development within the Nieuw-Terbregge neighbourhood of Rotterdam are being built by a single developer, Proper-Stok, who worked closely with the municipality of Rotterdam. Each group of around 80 to 120 houses has its own structure, identity and energy strategy. The objective at Nieuw-Terbregge is to demonstrate energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies on a large scale as an integrated element of an urban housing area.

46. It can be done .... • The Natural House has been designed to reach Code for Sustainable Homes Level 4. Walls are formed from a single skin of aerated clay blocks familiar in Germany and which are proven to have high levels of thermal insulation but lower embodied energy than traditional bricks. • Additional insulation is provided by an insulating lime-based render externally and woodfibre board internally. Timber joists, floors and roof structure, sheepswool insulation and clay roof tiles contribute to a responsible resourcing strategy.

47. It can be done .... • Barratt’s development of Hanham Hall aims to be one of the first large-scale zero carbon communities in England and the first development by a major housebuilder to meet Code for Sustainable Homes Level 6. It will meet demanding targets to reduce energy and water use and will reduce other impacts on the environment. will save water.

48. Influences • ‘Forget the damned motor car and build the cities for lovers and friends.’ http://epi.univ-paris1.fr/servlet/com.univ.collaboratif.utils.LectureFichiergw?CODE_FICHIER=1225524766034&ID_FICHE=10938

49. kelvin@spatialeffects.co.uk