Finding space for major schemes

Sometimes the demand for new housing is met by allocating areas of countryside for development. Generally these areas are on the edge of existing settlements, so the new community will be able to make use of existing services and facilities, but these sites can be remote and poorly connected, problems which the design should seek to overcome. In other cases redundant docks and buildings, end-of-life factories, former railway land and areas with low-value uses are given priority for development under policies favouring the development of brownfield sites.

Many social housing estates have serious structural problems and buildings of poor quality, and some have unused and uncared-for empty space. Some have poor movement networks, and are isolated from neighbouring areas and facilities. They are sometimes redeveloped to provide more homes, which helps to fund improvements. This may involve total or partial demolition, or infilling new buildings alongside the old. Schemes that involve changing an existing estate need to be carefully phased and managed. Figure 17.5 shows how the old, new and future homes can work together within an area that continues to house people throughout the process.

Connections and links

These major site allocation criteria are sensible in terms of planning, land use and service provision, but they bring design problems with them. An urban edge or neglected estate will often be poorly connected with its surroundings, while available brownfield sites might be landlocked, separated from neighbouring communities by railways, motorways and waterways. One of the keys to successful large-scale design is to create effective new connections into surrounding neighbourhoods. It is a matter not just of connecting up streets, but of ensuring capacity, comfort and legibility of movement across the wider area by all modes. Figure 17.6 shows different types of movement opportunities to be provided in a scheme, from the most strategic routes that link the area to its surroundings (shown in red) to parkland paths (shown in dotted green). It is difficult to link the scheme into the surrounding area, but every opportunity has been taken, creating new through routes, and routes for walking and cycling. The wider movement network should go to and through the development area, linking to its surroundings by both primary and secondary routes. Having just one or two entrance roads can make the whole area into a large culde-sac, an inefficient structure that can create congestion bottlenecks and make the whole area feel dead for much of the time. It is often appropriate to accommodate through traffic in the site, taking pressure off surrounding areas and ensuring that the new neighbourhood can become a properly functioning part of the wider area.

Figure 17.6 The network of routes in a new development’.

Walking, cycling and even, in some cases, bridle paths should connect into and though the site. Even if it feels as though nobody will use such routes because there is nowhere to go, the design should be robust enough to work in 30 years or more, when both the site and its surroundings should have changed greatly in terms of land uses and activities.

Figure 17.7 Enough development is happening around the outskirts of Cambridge to pay for a new guided bus route, which in turn knits these new areas back into the city.

Large schemes can bring with them enough funding and new users to justify and pay for improvements to existing rail and bus services, new tunnels and bridges or improved junctions. Figure 17.7 shows the view from a new guided bus serving an urban extension. Such improvements can benefit existing residents in the wider area, helping to counterbalance objections to any loss of green space or skyview, competition for local services and years of disruption. In these cases the masterplan will need to ensure that the development creates enough value to pay for the improvements. The changes also need to provide sufficient users to justify services. For example, it has been estimated that it requires a net residential density of at least 100 people per hectare to sustain a bus route.

As well as ensuring that the movement network is well knitted into the surroundings, schemes should respond positively to their visual context. This might mean carrying forward certain building types, materials or details, but it could also involve ensuring that important views to and from surrounding areas are respected and enhanced. Being on an edge of a settlement or within an industrial area might present challenges, but it can also create opportunities for wonderful views, which will help to give the scheme character and distinctiveness. Such views can also help to orient people. For example, retaining a view of a church spire in the neighbouring settlement can help residents to feel part of the wider community.

Finally, the site might include or sit next to some unattractive features, such as back-garden boundaries next to open spaces. Large schemes provide the opportunity to improve edges and remediate eyesores, helping not only the new scheme but also surrounding areas.

Form and structure

A place that is planned, rather than growing organically, can look contrived. This is particularly true if it is designed to have its own centre, closely surrounded by compact development and becoming increasingly loose towards a defined edge. Gradually decreasing density away from a hub generally works, but it depends on significant changes in accessibility. For example, some schemes might propose six-storey buildings next to the bus station, and three storeys just a couple of minutes’ walk down the road, but the difference in accessibility might not warrant such a significant change in form.

Character

Town extensions and large-scale development schemes involve creating a place or places with distinct character, or changing the character of an existing place. Some large schemes include many different character areas, each with its own name and perhaps its own palette of materials, but often all the areas are in essence much the same. There is

Figure 17.9 This new settlement includes different types of open space, from green wedges to pocket parks.

Figure 17.10 Using existing landscape elements, such as an avenue of trees, can help to make new schemes feel rooted and relevant.

some variety but the ‘characters’ are not really distinctive or authentic.

Figure 17.11 A street in a large urban extension that supports walking, cycling and structures.

Some schemes have a variety of approaches to the appearance of elevations, which end up looking discordant. Using local building types, materials and types of detailing can help. A more successful approach can be to ensure that any visual variation reflects different types of occupant or use, and that the scheme will be able to adapt over time after it is built, allowing its character to evolve.

Architectural detailing can help to form a development’s character, but the scheme’s basic structure may be more important in achieving this. For example, the tightness of street corners, the curve of the streets, how buildings turn corners and close views, how mature planting is used, and the presence or absence of parked cars will all affect the character of the place.

Phasing

One of the most challenging aspects of a large-scale development scheme is to ensure that it works well even before it is completed. The first residents and surrounding communities may have to live with building works, and an incomplete neighbourhood, for many years. Young families may spend whole childhoods living with a building site.

Each phase should work well before the next is completed, and disruption should be kept to a minimum.

Some building forms and layouts are easier to phase than others. Individual houses can be finished and used one by one, while a block of flats must be fully completed before any of the units can be occupied. With estate regeneration schemes, existing tenants may need to move out of their homes to allow a block to be demolished and a new one built for them to move into. This can be highly disruptive, damaging communities and causing upheaval for individuals. To minimise the amount of decanting, new homes might have to be built on open spaces or other open sites before anything is demolished. The design of both the layout and the buildings may be strongly influenced by the need to minimise decanting.

Movement

The structure of a major development should be based on providing efficient and attractive ways for people to move around. The position and shape of the building blocks should follow this. The design should seek to minimise the need to use a car within the development: facilities such as parks and schools should be located so that as many people as possible will be within a ten-minute walk of them. Ideally bus stops should not be more than five minutes’ walk away.

Figure 17.12 People generally like to park close to their front doors. Front parking courts can allow for this.

Some masterplans specify appropriate movement structures and set out design requirements for buildings, but fail to design the streets well. They may rely too much on heavy engineering solutions, seeking to separate modes and different types of journeys, creating a hierarchical system that appears to be dominated by traffic even if flows are low. A choice of routes provided by a rich and well-integrated web of streets, with crossroads and bisecting streets, is likely to work better.

Where it is likely that the local authority will adopt the new highway, the authority’s requirements should be discussed at the masterplanning stage. For example, the masterplan should take into account the particular requirements of waste-collection vehicles, rather than leaving excessively wide junctions and turning heads to accommodate unknown requirements. The local highway authority’s management and maintenance needs, and the appropriateness of any standard requirements they are asking for (on carriageway widths and turning radiuses, for example) should be discussed, and challenged if necessary. Figure 17.11 shows a quiet street that is not visually dominated by the needs of the few motor vehicles that will use it. Instead it is designed so that drivers will feel that they are guests in the area, and act accordingly.

Whatever level of car use is planned for must be carefully accommodated. Few issues are more important than parking: it must be designed so that parking blight (double parking and parking on pavements, for example) is avoided both within the site and in the surrounding areas. Standard street-design approaches, such as constructing a raised table at every junction, should be avoided. Every street element should be chosen because it is right for that particular location. Unallocated on-street parking (as shown in Figure 17.12) is often the most popular with residents, and it is generally less space-hungry than parking courts. Rear parking courts often do not work well, and they are not popular with residents unless they want to use their back doors as their main entrances. The urban design principle of keeping the public face and activity (such as arriving at a building) to the front, and the private face quietly at the back of buildings, tends to work.