3.GUIDANCE; Garden Communities

The Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) has published 6 practical guides to planning designing and sustaining new garden community settlements. This is largely in response to massive shortage of housing and an aspiration to create beautiful and sustainable places to live and work. It is a deliberate design response to avoid building soulless, unattractive, dormitory towns.(TCPA,20)

The guides are not just handbooks but offer The TCPA’s Practical Guides – on location and consent; finance and delivery; design and masterplanning; planning for energy and climate change; homes for all; planning for arts and culture; planning for green and prosperous places; creating health-promoting environments; and long-term stewardship – are not detailed handbooks but instead set out the scope of opportunities for ambitious councils who want to create high-quality, large-scale new developments, whether or not they are able to follow all the Garden City principles. The Garden city principles include;

· Land value capture for the benefit of the community. Strong vision, leadership and community engagement.

· Community ownership of land and long-term stewardship of assets. Mixed-tenure homes and housing types that are genuinely affordable.

· A wide range of local jobs in the Garden City within easy commuting distance of homes. Beautifully and imaginatively designed homes with gardens, combining the best of town and country to create healthy communities and including opportunities to grow food. Development that enhances the natural environment, providing a comprehensive green infrastructure network and net biodiversity gains, and that uses zero-carbon and energy-positive technology to ensure climate resilience.

· Strong cultural, recreational and shopping facilities in walkable, vibrant, sociable neighbourhoods. Integrated and accessible transport systems, with walking, cycling and public transport designed to be the most attractive forms of local transport.

(TCPA,2017)

The frame work refers to the philosophical beginnings of the concept and the precedent early examples of Garden city development at Welwyn and Letchworth but is clear that the framework is just that a framework and not a blue print for development. Some of the later precedent examples give insight into the process of masterplanning new garden towns and the way they are individual and defined by their context. In chapter 3.4, Character Distinctiveness and Harmony, the precedent of Lancaster Cohousing project at Forgebank is use d to illustrate opportunities for many innovative sustainable planning, design and technology interventions the development has a certified Passivhaus/Code for Sustainable Homes level 6 (carbon-neutral) and Lifetime, Homes-compliant, affordable, community housing scheme. It has provided private homes, community facilities, workshops and studios and shared outdoor space, and there is also a travel plan and car club, a co-operative food store, shared meals, and other shared resources. The ground breaking, exemplary owner-occupied (and car-free) eco-housing project benefits from renewable technologies (solar, biomass and hydroelectricity) and has evolved through a participatory design process with the 41 individual householders and Eco Arc architects.( TCPA,2017)

The Passivhaus Standards mentioned above are an informative and useful guide to achieving carbon zero development and creating carbon neutral communities for the future. Buildings are a significant culprit of carbon emissions – accountable for 35% of total global energy consumption. Backed with over 30 years of international evidence, Passivhaus states and they have over 30 years of precedent material to support their claims that it is is a tried & tested solution that gives a range of proven approaches to “deliver net-zero-ready new and existing buildings optimised for a decarbonised grid and augmented for occupant health and wellbeing.” (www.passivhaustrust.org) The Passivhaus standards will impact the design layout and spatial hierarchy of the development. Solar gain in a vital component of managing energy use across the settlement and consequently aspect and slope are vital considerations to the final location.

While the nature of the design of the development will depend on the exact location and context of the final location decision there are some fundamental guidelines that will steer the development.

· ease of movement and connectivity; walkable neighbourhoods;

· diversity of housing and employment opportunities; designing for art and culture;

· healthy and active communities; multi-functional green infrastructure;

· human scale; and designing for climate resilience. (TCPA,2017)

Some specific guidance will be adhered to from the outset in particular the guidance on connectivity. “A Garden City’s design must enable at least 50% of trips originating in the Garden City to be made by non-car means, with a goal to increase this over time to at least 60%; and the latest best practice in street and transport design should be used as a minimum standard. This in particular impacts on the proximity of the development of other settlements and employment centres and impacts on the use of the dwellings of the site to be multifunctional as in the garden town of Newhall, in Harlow, where design codes have been used to specify that housing on streets around the local centre must be designed so that businesses can be accommodated if required (rather than requiring live/work accommodation as part of the mix), and developers have been encouraged to deliver housing across the development that provides a good environment for homeworking. (TCPA,2017). In addition, response to climate change and building in climate resilience into the green infrastructure is paramount. This is outlined in the brief requiring 50% of the site to be green infrastructure and for it to be net zero carbon and energy positive.

Diagram No.1: The Three Magnets (Ebenezer Howard, Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform. (Howard, E. 1889)

Diagram No.7: (Ebenezer

Howard, To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform. (Howard, E. 1889)