A New Kind of Suburbia - The Takeaway

PROSPECTS #01 — A NEW KIND OF SUBURBIA Below, the Launch Event panel clockwise from top right: David Birbeck, Peter Freeman, Mark Latham and Gus Zogolovitch

Somewhere in suburbia, sometime in the future...

Foreword

A New Kind of Suburbia: Reflections for Future

4. RESPONSIVE TYPOLOGIES

Establishing new traditions for a new kind of suburbia

Practice and Thinking

Exploring possible responses to the initial topics we have identified, which aim to improve both design processes and outcomes, suggest a series of actions that will ensure that the new kinds of suburbia that result have a future that is as rich and diverse as their history. If a few of these recommendations feel oppositional (or at least difficult to reconcile) that’s a reflection of suburbia’s own contradictions. Suburbia is a place of inconsistencies and variety, of ‘both/and’. It’s this looseness and adaptability that makes suburbia desirable and provides opportunities for innovative design and to try out new ideas.

As well as reconnecting suburbs with their history, new approaches are needed to integrate suburbs with their surroundings and adjacent neighbourhoods. Jane Jacobs described suburbs as inherently parasitical3 both economically and socially, implying their reliance on other places was draining life out of the cities and smothering the countryside with sprawl. By remaking the relationship of local centres and adjoining residential or industrial or commercial areas, the periphery will remain popular. As the interplay of suburban and urban typologies increases, the formal distinctions blurs, the importance of designs that enhance suburban character and sense of belonging grows.

Words by Neil Deely Co-founding Partner, Metropolitan Workshop

1. SUBURBAN INTENSIFICATION

We cannot claim to be a successful society until better access to quality housing is available to all. Housing plays a central role in providing equality of opportunity and is part of levelling the playing field for all aspects of life. However, the twentieth century model of suburbia no longer serves the socio-economic and cultural challenges confronting people, in terms of type, tenure and environmental impact. There is a need for A New Kind of Suburbia, one that better supports community and promotes new forms of tenure, is affordable, durable and provides for diversity.

3. INCLUSIVE NEIGHBOURHOODS

The thinking for A New Kind of Suburbia builds on the legacy of some fine thinking from leaders in the field, our friends and mentors; most notably David Prichard and the late Sir Richard MacCormac.

Lifelong interest in designing convivial housing from Milton Keynes to Brixton and their proposals for Sustainable Suburbia informed our response to the interplay between density and community evidenced in our competition winning dial-a-density proposal for the RIBA/ Wates 2013 ideas competition. Thoughtful responses to suburbia are in our DNA. Our recent projects, including Oakfield in Swindon for the Nationwide Building Society, address what sociable, socially equitable models of suburbia might be like. There are a growing number of good examples of suburban housing models to learn from.

But there are not enough of these to see the innovation required for suburbia to realise its full social potential. Now is the time to review and update the concept that the UK first invented.

The challenge of discovering a new suburbia will be in developing a stronger, more symbiotic relationship with their surroundings, and even more, that the neighbourhoods and people within them are encouraged to form mutually beneficial relationships.

2. SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORT

6. MODERN METHODS OF CONSTRUCTION

5. CHOICE AND DIVERSITY References 1. Dhruv Sookhoo and Mark Latham, New suburbia, now: The possibilities of modular construction, arq: Architectural Research Quarterly, Volume 23, Issue 2 (June 2019), pp. 195–200.

2. Dhruv Sookhoo and David Prichard, Recalling Milton Keynes: Visions of suburbia, arq: Architectural Research Quarterly, Volume 23, Issue 3 (September 2019), pp. 288–295.

3. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Auchincloss and Lynch, 1962).

4. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, National Design Guide, (London: October 2019).

5. Urban Splash. Townhouse. https://www.housebyurbansplash.co.uk/configurator/ 6. Unboxed Self Build Homes.https://www.unboxedhomes.com/ 7. Heartlands is in the Cornish village of Pool, part of the Camborne, Pool and Redruth conurbation. The development will include 54 Custom Build house plots. It will offer people from across Cornwall the chance to select a Home Manufacturer and customise their own home.

8. Walter Segal (1907–1985) was an architect who developed a system of self-build housing in the 1980s, the Segal self-build method. Based on traditional timber frame methods modified

to use standard modern materials, his method eliminated the need for wet trades such as bricklaying and plastering, resulting in a light-weight system with minimal foundations, relying on the geometry of their construction.

9. SWAN Housing Associations’ Nu Build project uses CLT modular to a basic layout with bespoke customisation. Their Beechwood website https://www.beechwood-nuliving.co.uk offers potential customers a range of choices of fittings and façade materials and even between a fourth bedroom or a roof terrace. Yet “More choice for consumers” was located towards the bottom of the list of dozen or so benefits on select committee report on modern methods. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmcomloc/1831/1831.pdf.

10. Paul Hunter Towards an suburban renaissance: an agenda for our city suburbs (Smith Institute, 2016).

THE TAKEAWAY

Our A New Kind of Suburbia exhibition and event series launched on the 16 May 2019 and was attended by over 100 practitioners, with many more members of the public visiting the exhibition during Clerkenwell Design Week (21-23 May) and Studio Lates in the London Festival of Architecture (07 June 2019). Our initial thoughts and those of collaborators were captured within the accompanying Prospects #01 Paper including literature and case studies on suburbia with contributions by practitioners, including Jo MacCafferty (Director, Levitt Bernstein); Dinah Bornat (Director, ZCD Architects); Richard Partington (Director, Studio Partington); Toby Carr (Associate, Sarah Wigglesworth Architects) and Stephen Proctor

(Director, Proctor Matthews Architects).

Contributions by colleagues, included reflections on past and ongoing suburban projects and their formative experiences of suburbia.

Professor of Architecture, Liverpool University), Dr Elanor Warwick (Head of Strategic Policy and Research, Clarion Housing Group) and Sarah Wigglesworth RDI MBE (Director, SWA).

At our launch event we invited Peter Freeman (Argent), David Birkbeck (Design for Homes), Mark Latham (Urban Splash) and Gus Zogolovitch (Unboxed Homes) to present their own propositions on suburbia and to initiate the wider conversation.

Dhruv Sookhoo (Head of Research and Practice Innovation, Metropolitan Workshop) and Neil Deely (Partner, Metropolitan Workshop) helped drive the discussion to respond to these emerging themes. Gareth Bansor (Senior Associate) and Kruti Patel (Associate) worked hard to coordinate and contribute to the debate.

Exemplar projects on suburban development grounded provocations set within the paper and by practitioners during the exhibition launch, as well as stimulating questions from architects, developers, planners, community advocates and housing practitioners.

The resultant rich material provided prompts for a collective conversation to draw out key themes and dig deeper into areas of consensus or conflict. A subsequent roundtable (11 June 2019) sought to develop a new thinking on suburban design, development, construction and management practices, by capturing perspectives of contemporary practitioners in architecture, housing and community participation.

The discussion aimed to enrich ours and others’ practice by generating productive trajectories for practice development and ideas for design research.

Participants, included: Andy von Bradsky (Head of Architecture, MHCLG), Keith Brown (Community Organiser, Nationwide Building Society), Graham Cherry (Ex. Chief Executive, Countryside), Vincent Lacovara (Head of Planning, Enfield Council), Chris Langdon (Development and Investment Director, ENGIE), Prof. Stephen Proctor (Founding Director, Proctor Matthews Architects), Prof. Mark Swenarton (Emeritus

Reflections for Future Practice and Thinking concludes on the challenges identified and provides an agenda for further exploration into the future design, development, construction and use of suburban places.

Expert perspectives relating to past and future visions also reached new audiences with the publication of two interviews in arq: Architectural Research Quarterly; A Modular Future-New Thinking, New Suburbia1 and Recalling Milton Keynes: Visions of suburbia2.

A New Kind of Suburbia has also been reconsidered by our Dublin Studio for Ireland. This was led by Denise Murray (Senior Architect) and Jonny McKenna (Director, Dublin Studio), and was launched on the 10 October 2019 and featured in the Irish Architecture Foundation’s 2019 Open House Dublin (Friday 11 October to Sunday 13 October).

Read all about it!

Prospects #01 can be found online here: https://metwork.co.uk/category/prospects/

PROSPECTS #01 — A NEW KIND OF SUBURBIA Conclusion

Recommendations for Future Practice (and Research) for Suburban Development

...

Words by Dhruv Sookhoo, Elanor Warwick and Neil Deely

SEVERAL RECURRENT themes emerged from the critical discussion that followed the A New Kind of Suburbia Launch. Some problems are more relevant to remaking existing places, some impact the planning of new suburbs and some, common to both, require multiple solutions. We have drawn a series of questions for consideration by practitioners who have spoken to us so thoughtfully and fondly about their suburban experiences and hopes for the future. These may lead to recommendations for further practice orientated research by architects, suggestions for policy formation by planners and ideas for new forms of collaboration between the commissioners and builders of suburbs and those who live there.

The recommendations recognise on the historical drivers that shaped suburbia, and their changing function and context. They address six key areas; how future suburbs might look and feel, what are the most effective ways to move around them, what activities they need to contain, how socially interactive communities might be encouraged and perhaps most importantly, who will engage in the decision-making and delivery of these new places?

1. Suburban Intensification

2. Sustainable Transport

3. Inclusive Neighbourhoods

4. Responsive Typologies

5. Choice and Diversity

6. The role of the builder

Much of suburban policy debate is overly focused on identifying where housing is needed and where there might be a mismatch between the housing targets set, the homes required and what is being built. There is less discussion of the processes of intensification and how gradual growth might achieve a more organic transition to desirable suburbs.

The London Plan’s replacement of a standardised density matrix with design-led assessments has rendered prescriptive suburban densities irrelevant, allowing nuanced interpretation of localised form (increasing density transepts centred on transportation or activity hubs).

The anticipated London-wide adoption of design codes will support locally-based approaches to suburban intensification.

Good suburban transport links once meant a short walk to a good bus service or local station for commuting, shopping or to explore the intensity of the city. Core car-dependency has diluted this advantage, but suburbs will be such enticing, self-contained places that future transport demand will come from moving about, within or between adjacent neighbourhoods. To achieve this, improved transport infrastructure will include integrated cycle ways, local buses, trains and trams, to ensure connectivity and inclusivity of suburban places.

Sharing in all of its forms (the common use of shared spaces, sharing a cup of sugar, lending BBQs or gardening equipment, through to shared responsibility for maintenance of shared space) are all ways of building community. As a society we are growing increasingly comfortable with the idea of the sharing economy but are still a long way from continuously relying on one another. One appealing suburban quality is having private space to retreat into. So, suburbanite sharing and interactive functions along a spectrum from collective co-living to occasionally taking in a neighbour’s parcel, should be carefully considered. Designs and layouts need to respond to this varied scale of social interaction, while considering forms of long-term maintenance, with governance approaches allowing for adjustable community commitment.

Further exploration is required to examine the idea of the suburban home and neighbourhood as a site of production as well as consumption.

Layouts and typologies that incorporate flexible homeworking, spaces for self-employment, study or small-scale social enterprise need to be incorporated into new designs. Flexible design proposals should consider new digital technologies and changing patterns of use throughout the day. A new suburban model should provide opportunities to integrate social functions, such as creches and spaces for social enterprise and consideration.

By considering how to improve the decision-making processes for planning and building suburban places, we have the opportunity to create more inclusive and participatory suburbs. New suburban housing typologies will have to challenge assumptions about gender and how space is used by men and women. By considering ways interior and exterior space, playable landscapes, or furniture layouts may be used differently and complementarily by women and men beyond their assumed gender roles, designs can be adjusted to be more inclusive.

Suburbs have historically provided the freedom to build how you like,with idiosyncratic DIY and ad hoc extensions individualising and adapting what is often seen as familiar standardised architectural designs. New development models can tap into these traditions and extend their potential beyond small scale adaption of spaces or façades, to deliver wide-spread transformation though customisation and self-build, and more thoughtful use of modern methods of construction. Emergent models from Urban Splash (Prospects #01, pp. 36-41)5, Engie (Prospects #01, pp. 34-35) and Unboxed6 all offer enhanced occupant choice through modern methods of construction, customisation and digital technologies. This approach is increasingly endorsed by Homes England and the MHCLG (e.g. Heartlands, Trevenson Park)7. Modular construction experience first tested in more urban conditions could now unlock existing tight suburban sites as well as greenfield suburban extensions able to negotiate previous logistical and financial constraints.

How will future suburbs be shaped?

Suburban local authorities who are devising bespoke Special Planning Guidance for the design and infill of existing places, as well as new-build suburban town extensions, should consider how appropriate levels of densification are achieved and the possible alternative consequences (for example poor affordability can lead to either unplanned informal intensification or planned overdevelopment). Positive planning is needed to persuade suburbanites that increasing density of occupation can be a way of enhancing the enduring characteristics of suburbs (spacious homes with gardens and ample green spaces, on quiet streets), while careful design will encourage sufficient people to sustain amenities and need not erode their quality of life.

Finding better ways of moving in the suburbs.

Since the completion of our research project the UK Government and industry has announced major investments in electric vehicle production and gigafactories in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, and Ellsemere Port, Merseyside. We are enthusiastic that such developments and other investment in infrastructure that enable further innovation and production capacity in the North, Midlands and elsewhere offer the basis for a long anticipated sustainable transport revolution, supporting residents in existing, isolated suburban neighbourhoods maintain their quality of life and offering new employment opportunities in working class, suburban neighbourhoods as we transition to more sustainable modes of private and commercial transport. It is now incumbent on architects and urban designers to consider how best to integrate new sustainable technologies, such as electric cars, into the physical and social infrastructure of the home to help residents embrace new technologies to best effect.

The Takeaway

The Takeaway

New Designs should explore how a new suburban model can support incremental intensification and integration of communal facilities. Collaboration with housing associations would provide a valuable means of testing assumptions against development and asset management practice. The ten characteristics for welldesigned places described in MHCLG’s recent National Design Guidance 4 maps directly across to the ambitions described in this paper. Suburbia isn’t homogeneous, and more explorative work is needed to ensure the guidance and proposed national design code is varied and sensitive to suburban issues.

Designers and development clients should work together to discuss upfront investment in alternative transport infrastructure (where scale permits). Designers should also collaborate with transport engineers on integrated alternative transport plans, exploring and anticipating expected shifts in transport usages and modes.

Nevertheless, in regions with poorer public transport networks, car use will remain a reality, so mitigating strategies such as better integration of car parking and charging points into the public realm, or futureproofing conversion of current car parking space for other communal activities will be required.

What you share, and who with?

Activities that new suburbs need to cater for.

As we review our findings during the COVID-19 pandemic it has become apparent that our conversation failed to recognise the impact of the domestic environment of two specific groups that have been particularly adversely affected by lock down restrictions. First, children and young adults that needed additional space to undertake home schooling and purpose further and higher education. Second, older people and clinically vulnerable who are more reliant on the creation of domestic spaces that are adaptable to their more complex physical needs and due to extended periods indoors are more susceptible to inflexible, poorly designed internal spaces (e.g. when shielding). We feel this underscores the need for a commitment to the development of well-designed, adaptable internal spaces that can specifically support their needs.

The Takeaway

The Takeaway

There is social potential in the open, semi-public space offered by the Homestead (Prospects #01, pp. 8-27) and built projects such as Abode at Great Kneighton (Prospects #01, pp. 46-47) and Accordia in Cambridge. Yet, discussions revealed the challenges of avoiding prohibitive costs associated with service charges and also the potential for existing mechanisms of community-led volunteering being a burden. Developing a flexible model for community-led management and maintenance of communal land, based on the notional activities offered by the Homestead (a cost per sqm of communal land as approximate capital cost and maintenance fee to be offset by volunteer contributions) would provide an indicative set of principles to be tested. Collaboration with a developing housing association or institutional investor could test these assumptions and refine the model against their practice expertise.

Lower suburban land values used to imply an economic decision or trade off between more space (particularly external space) against longer commutes. But increasing costs and intensification risk reducing this available suburban slack space. Changing expectations for household space will shift the incentive to move further afield for additional rooms and space. Familiar semi-detached, or detached typologies can be designed to accommodate more varied accommodation to suit mixed households, intergenerational living, co-living arrangements and work space.

During the design process actively test internal layouts against the needs and aspirations of key life stages, with a specific focus on promoting health and wellbeing of children, younger adults, older people and those with complex medical conditions.

Who gets a say in how suburbia is developed?

New suburbs must not continue to reinforce other structural or cultural stereotypes but enable differences to coexist. By challenging assumptions that suburbs are homogeneous in class, ethnicity or economically, nuanced design can address inequalities which often overlap and reinforce each other; women, working class, ethnic minority and disabled groups often face multiple disadvantages. Design which is sensitive to this diversity and variety is needed to ensure equality of access and use.

The suburbs should provide diversity and opportunities to blend the whole housing market spectrum; homeowners with part equity or social housing alongside private renters. Policies, funding models and ownership approaches need to be developed to expand variety and choice. Understanding how land value, sales processes and housing market characteristics suppress or enhance consumer choice in suburban housing will be fundamental to successful consumer-led innovation in the housing market.

The Takeaway From the most-to-least planned places, increasing public engagement in design and planning has proven benefits for attractiveness and social sustainability. It is still worth exploring the extent to which the suburbs are designed for or by their inhabitants to a directed vision or are left to organically evolve within a loose framework of agreed rules. These guidelines must extend beyond the aesthetic and range in scale from neighbourhood plans to design codes.

Who will be building suburbia and how?

choice, efficient and low impact construction methods), so design and planning exploration should concentrate on using it to address the particular suburban issues identified in this report. With support from external collaborators, such as Engie, a targeted suburban model could be elaborated to incorporate energy and other in-use housing costs to provide a total cost to occupy; and perhaps further extended to incorporate local travel, and to assess the low impact advantages of suburban living.

Ensuring the simplicity and accessibility of these construction approaches offer commercial benefits and also provides considerable potential to increase consumer choice both at purchase and in use.

Custom build empowers occupants and community to actively engage in the design process.

A design project exploring enhanced consumer choice across the suburban range of homes might relate to these new suburban models.

By reviewing these and other existing models, a set of principles could be devised for integrated design information which facilitates occupant choice (e.g. BIM compatible specifications related to a set of suburban residential typologies). A dynamic model could be devised to consider notional capital costs, life cycles and costs of adaption in use, and propose a consumer pathway for potential adaptions using a range of construction technologies. This pathway could unlock many options from providing an initial pattern book of pre-set alternatives to open-ended Walter Segal-like DIY adaptation.8 But providing more easily customisable homes is seen as a marginal benefit of modern methods, requiring thinking to overcome restrictive constraints and ensure easier extensions and adaptations beyond merely customising within the standard module changing external cladding.9 As much work already exists on how modern methods can be employed to provide this (including providing a limited degree of variation and

The Takeaway An holistic approach to residential modelling will become more critical in the short term. As house prices rise, affordability tightens, the number of households in the suburbs grow, and negative trends in social mobility, deprivation and poverty are rapidly escalating, all challenging the long-term prospects of outer boroughs. Commentators have been long been calling for a suburban renaissance covering these economic, sustainability and social issues10 and if suburbs are not to become a problem, we need to apply preventative design thinking, including proactive responses to the climate emergency. Anticipating the energy performance and Net Zero emissions construction requirements of the Future Homes Standard, but also suburbia’s potential for low-impact lifestyles, design criteria can be developed for suburbs where it is easy and convenient to make sustainable choices.