Design Research and the Neighbourhood Design is present throughout the thesis as a propositional research method whereby the process of making and altering proposals is monitored to garner knowledge about the issues in play. This is supplemented throughout by a more ethnographical and historical set of research methods. In this way the thesis contributes to the existing literature on New Towns and housing for older people in the UK to demonstrate what the field of architecture can offer within cross-disciplinary research. For, as Sheila Peace has remarked about the field of gerontology: “There is a tendency in scholarly work to ‘de-contextualise’ human ageing from the environment, the day-to-day surroundings in which a person’s growing older really takes place.”19
By spatialising proposals for more inclusive, integrated forms of housing for older people, architectural design clearly has a role to play in furthering the research of gerontologists. Indeed, this has already begun to happen in other parts of the world, as publications emerging in the last twelve months demonstrate.20 But the attention of the thesis to the Mark--1 New Towns and Harlow in particular has another dimension as research. As Hugh Barton, Professor of Planning, Health and Sustainability at the University of the West of England has suggested:
The principle of the neighbourhood planning was a major force in British post-war town planning and when it came to putting the theory into practice, the New Towns, and Harlow in particular, were the testing ground for its application. From the standpoint of today, as Barton has also highlighted; “theories about neighbourhoods have progressed little since the era of new town plans, and any skills developed then have been forgotten or sidelined.”22 This thesis is also about re-engaging with this legacy. In the context of current legislation such as the Localism Act and the neighbourhood plans it wishes to promote, the thesis might also be used to assess the potential of making small scale interventions that have a broader impact at the scale of the town. To be sure, in its masterplan, the thesis does not pretend to have the scope to take on the whole of a New Town, and in using Harlow as a case study, it acknowledges the specificities of each of the six settlements. Although, as Barton describes, the neighbourhood does hold answers to the problems perceived by many to be found in a place like Harlow.
“Neighbourhoods can be cast as a pivotal spatial scale for change. Neighbourhoods have a special role in a transition to sustainable settlements. Their unique scale in human habitation makes them small enough to reflect the personal lifestyles, social networks and quality of life, yet they are also of sufficient size for their nature to affect the environmental impacts and economic functions of districts, towns and cities.”21 19 Peace, Sheila; Wahl, Hans-Werner; Mollenkopf, Heidrun; & Oswald, Frank; ‘Environment & Ageing’, Op. Cit., p. 210. 20 Two particularly good examples are: Cisneros, Henry, Dyer-Chamberlain, Margaret and Hickie, Jane, Eds. Independent for Life; Homes and Neighbourhoods for an Aging America, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2012) and within a New Town context in Japan; Andrew Scott & Eran Ben-Joseph, ReNew Town: Adaptive Urbanism and the Low Carbon Community, (London & New York: Routeledge, 2012) 21 Hugh Barton, Marcus grant and Richard Guise, Shaping Neighbourhoods; for local health and global sustainability, 2nd Edition, (London & New York: Routeledge, 2010), p. 5.
22 Hugh Barton, ed., Sustainable Communities: the potential for eco-neighbourhoods, (London: Earthscan, 2000), p. 4.
Out and about in Harlow’s Mark Hall/Netteswell neighbourhood
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