The value of housing design and layout

INTRODUCTION
were taken on board earlier by mainstream, commercial developers. In the USA, for
example, the New Urbanist movement has rapidly gained acceptance and
credibility. The design, community, sustainability and urban form principles have
been adopted and endorsed in the commercial real estate world on that side of the
Atlantic for some years now. August bodies such as the Urban Land Institute
publicise and promulgate such principles. In the UK, it could be argued that these
principles have been taken up on a smaller scale and have not yet found such
widespread acceptance in the commercial world of housing development. While the
Urban Villages Forum, CABE and other bodies have subscribed to some, but not
all, of the New Urbanist design principles, these principles have been taken up by
relatively few developers. Many of the developers who have employed new design
principles have tended to be in the social housing or non-commercial sector, rather
than mainstream housebuilders.
New Urbanism is not synonymous with the best practice, innovative design now
advocated by CABE and other interested British bodies. Specifically, planned
communities do not really fit the UK context, nor does the insistence on traditional
architecture. The reference here to New Urbanism is made to highlight the contrast
with the US experience, where commercial organisations have adopted new and
different design methods on a wider scale than has hitherto been the case in the UK.
However, the situation is changing. During the period of this research project, the
authors have noted a shift in the number of development schemes where
developers have adopted at least some of the design principles of higher density,
mixed tenure, contemporary architecture and layout. An increasing number of
schemes appear to have adopted higher densities, mixed tenure and permeable,
walkable road layouts and connections.
Much of this shift is largely attributable to the increasing adoption of PPG3 at the
local planning level, forcing developers to build designs and layouts that, in most
cases, they would not otherwise have considered. One area where this new
approach is particularly noticeable is in Essex where the authors found widespread
conformity to the progressive Essex Design Guide in many new developments.
Another county where the authors noted a widespread adoption of new design
principles was in Dorset, home of the now famous New Urbanist village scheme of
Poundbury.
The increase in PPG3-compliant schemes around the country means that it is
becoming difficult in certain areas to find the more familiar, homogenous housing
estates that most people associate with modern housebuilding. It was noticeable
that in areas where ‘best practice schemes’ are to be found, planning requirements
have created a spate of similar examples and a corresponding reduction in the
development of lower density, ‘feeder road and cul-de-sac’ type layouts. However,
this was found to be a localised phenomenon. Across the country as a whole, the
authors could still identify a plethora of housing development schemes built as
single tenure, similar sized, standard housing types, arranged in cul-de-sacs, off
feeder roads adjacent to bypasses on the edge of town, built at densities of less
than 25 units per hectare.
T H E V A L U E O F H O U S I N G D E S I G N A N D L A Y O U T 13