A pale shade of green

One of the first initiatives to be announced by our new prime minister was a plan to build five eco-towns. Eco-towns are an attempt to make new places that can thrive and prosper, while helping to prepare the country for a carbon-constrained world. Although it is heartening to see the government promoting this type of scheme, it remains to be seen whether it will deliver the standard of development that is needed, let alone whether this scheme will be enough to galvanise an entire industry.

So far we have been told that that there will be five eco-towns of between 10,000 and 20,000 homes across the country. They will perform to high standards of resource efficiency; transport will be a priority, and there has also been mention of environmental businesses.

We are awaiting the full criteria for what constitutes an eco-town but what is certain is the location of the first one. This brings us to Oakington, a sleepy little village on the edge of the Fens, a few miles outside Cambridge, and just south of what will be the nation’s first eco-town. Northstowe, as it will be called, is being jointly promoted by Gallagher and English Partnerships, and the latest masterplan was unveiled for public consultation last month.

The new town will undoubtedly set impressive standards for energy efficiency, water use and renewable energy generation. But one would hope that the criteria for judging eco-towns will go well beyond specifying the stand-alone performance of new buildings. The real issues as to whether Northstowe can become Britain’s most sustainable place require one to look beyond the buildings that are built there, and even beyond the site as a whole.

Transport is compromised from the start

Transport is the first and most obvious issue. Cambridge is renowned for its congestion, and an eco-town should include transport solutions that benefit the wider surrounding area. Northstowe’s response will be to rely on a guided bus scheme which was already planned before the site was allocated, and was not designed to serve a new settlement. It will have to run at a higher capacity than was initially intended from the moment it first opens. Instead of trying to actively provide transport solutions, Northstowe will piggy-back off an existing scheme not originally intended to include it.

Moreover, current plans do not suggest a place that can be confident of ensuring that 30% of all journeys are made by bicycle – a level that has already been achieved elsewhere. There are no pedestrianised neighbourhoods. The assumption is still that every household will own, and regularly use, a car.

This is the first hint of a much wider issue. The original County Plan stated that “the main role of the new settlement will be as a small town closely linked to Cambridge”. It was always intended to feed growth in Cambridge, and not to become a self-supporting place in its own right. It will struggle to become a viable town which could then build an active, reciprocal relationship with its neighbouring city.

Northstowe does not look like it will easily become an autonomous, well-defined, vibrant and resilient place. If it does, it will reach its capacity almost immediately. Even if it does grow into a more coherent place, there is not currently any additional room allocated for it.

Sustainable development at Northstowe is in danger of meaning supplying housing to support growth, while minimising any negative impact as far as possible. But it could mean development which makes sense in its own right and actively helps solve problems in the wider area of which it is part, generating a positive impact.

Northstowe and the other eco-towns are the government’s only active intervention designed to deliver the kind of new development that is now essential. They need to trigger a step-change in standard practice rather than produce one-off examples of quite good practice.

It’s been done before

There are plenty of examples of developments that have already been built and that do what Northstowe promises to do. There are even those that already do what Northstowe won’t manage. Passive houses that require no energy for heating have been built since the 1970s. Bo01 in Malmö, Sweden, is an entirely pedestrianised site with 800 units meeting very high environmental standards while maintaining high levels of personal comfort.

Vauban in Freiburg, Germany, has been developed from the start to create a cohesive and participatory city district. The buildings aim to make an active ecological contribution, and the entire district works on the principles of car-free and parking-free living.

Hammarby Sjöstad in Sweden is a new district of Stockholm. As well as meeting high environmental standards, there are good transport links, and the district is itself a destination that attracts visitors, meaning it has an active relationship with the existing city centre and is not merely subsidiary to it.

Our aim should be to make these standards and innovations the norm in the UK, integrating the best thinking in urban design with the clever use of technology, to complement and enhance existing development. What we need to do is not impossible – it’s just different. No matter how many clever innovations are put in place at Northstowe, they will not overcome the fundamental difficulties with the site itself and the way it has been strategised.

We need a new development paradigm – creating places that work, rather than dormitory towns that do nothing but put huge strain on areas of existing growth, while causing new problems themselves.