V i ta l C i t i e s n ot G a r d e n C i t i e s
A F r a m e w o r k f o r S u cc e s s
Creating vital places in the heart of towns and cities where people can live and work The Foundation’s ultimate ambition is to create vital places in the heart of towns and cities where people can live and work and which deliver economically and environmentally sustainable urban spaces, offering residents access to employment, public services and shopping. Higher density settlements are also more effective in generating mixed communities, social integration and safety and this is what we should aspire to. Thus, our core objective should be to work on maintaining or increasing densities in suburban areas where it is possible to achieve the types of housing in which people wish to live, and where, if densities continue to decline, the costs of transportation and local services will increase. As part of this, we need to address our recurring failure to build homes in the heart of cities which cater for families and allow them to live there for the long term. In addition, the private rented sector is currently geared towards short-term tenancies, which do not offer an attractive alternative to home ownership. Over the longer term, as home ownership rates decline, the private rented sector will need to fill the void. This offers an opportunity, which we must seize, to change perceptions of apartment living while at the same time offering families an alternative to long distance commuting. Of course, in some instances it will be necessary to resort to urban extensions and in these case we should maximise the development of brownfield sites wherever possible. As part of this, Government agencies, such as the HCA, should be given more funding to assist in the costs of reclamation of former industrial sites within towns and cities. New Towns are only justifiable in exceptional circumstances. They were a sticking plaster to the housing crisis during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s and had enormous unforeseen consequences, as outlined earlier in this report. Building New Towns is a quick fix to shortcut the supposedly intractable problems of building more housing in existing places. However, the VINEX programme has shown this can be done without New Towns, if the focus is on eliminating the constraints and it can be a cheaper alternative that yields greater benefits.
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We have shown that there are sufficient sites to meet housing demand, even in the regions that have the most serious housing shortages. What is required is to take a serious look at what is holding back development in existing places, how we can encourage more co-operation at a sub-regional level between councils and other solutions such as urban intensification which have yet to be properly explored.