How Are "locally Led" Garden Cities Different?

By Author: Bradley Weiss
Total Articles: 272
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Localism in land use planning is the new mantra for address the UK housing shortage. But smaller scale, investor-driven projects get more done for now.


The housing shortage in the UK is generating a revisiting of the "garden city" concept first proposed by Ebenezer Howard in the late 19th century. Some of the most aggressive, large-scale building in England after the Second World War (Basildon, Central Lancashire, Letchworth, Milton Keynes, et al.) are in retrospect considered successful. Now, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and the coalition government are proposing that garden cities be developed in Buckinghamshire, Warwickshire and Oxfordshire.


There are many reasons that garden cities - with 15,000 to 30,000 homes each, along with the infrastructure that enable these to be largely self-contained - may not succeed. Neighbouring towns fear the loss of Greenfields and an inevitable increased burden on highways. And an "eco-towns" version of garden cities proposed ten years ago was largely perceived as a means of overriding local planning authorities and their agendas.

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... br /> In the interim, private development on a smaller scale has been responsible for much homebuilding in the UK. Real asset investing groups have largely and independently obtained planning changes that turn disused land into new communities.


The Cameron government, through the Department for Communities and Local Government, proposes a new iteration on this approach called "Locally-led garden cities." In an April 2014 publication, Deputy Prime Minister Clegg and Eric Pickles, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, state the following: "Local people know what is best for their areas...people want to be ambitious and innovative in their approach to delivering the homes they need...new development at new settlement scale can offer a great opportunity to build in quality from the state in terms of design, open space, homes and jobs that make places great to live in."


The publication goes on to note the department is investing more than £1 billion to bring about "locally-supported housing schemes capable of delivering up to 250,000 new homes." Calling it the 2015-2020 Large Sites Infrastructure Programme, Clegg and Pickles are emphatic about how local authorities should express how they want their garden cities to develop. Rather than the imposition from Whitehall on unwilling communities, the Localism Act-era approach is to allow local planners to devise their own new, large-scale towns.


Still, opposing voices cite reasons why even locally led garden cities will be challenged. One is that the 20 to 30 year time frame to build these places means they must transcend the shifts in governments over those decades - in addition to the fact that delivery of homes will take a while as well. Another question: just what characteristics of design, transportation and affordability will best serve the interests of occupants, neighbours and local economies?


Offering some answers might be Saffron Woodcraft, a social anthropologist with the community consultancy Social Life. Woodcraft presented her work on garden cities, which she observes have had successful applications for decades in disparate places around the globe - including Soviet Russia and modern China (in skyscraper villages), as well as some developments in England - for various reasons. She urges the following questions be addressed in garden city planning:

Will development favourably affect the physical and economic wellbeing of existing towns, cities and neighbourhoods?

Can the garden city deliver the full range of community facilities and services?

Is it still the right way forward for urbanism and development in the new century?

While government support for development of garden cities will likely be necessary in all cases, private investment will ultimately be required as well. Whether working through property fund partners, a real estate investment trust or homebuilders, investors should consult an independent financial advisor to identify their most strategic, risk-balanced approach to garden city or other types of housing development.