Now we're all upwardly moblie

Yuppies out! Remember that? That was the slogan scrawled onto walls in London's Docklands in the early 1980s as young upwardly mobile professionals moved into their brand new apartments. Now the Docklands is packed with high-priced small apartments, and although the word yuppy is rarely heard these days, the question of who lives in cities, and how, remains no less contentious an issue.

Sheppard Robson’s proposed high-rise scheme would allow 65% of the Glengall Bridge site to be public open space

Over the past month we have had both the Centre for Cities' view that cities should be for singles, and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's argument for more family homes. In some quarters residential developers are facing criticism for creating new ghettoes of too many small apartments that stand apart from their surrounding communities, while the government's Planning Policy Statement 3 is proposing to push urban housing densities even higher.

Is there the potential to carry out urban residential development differently? There could be. In Manchester, there are proposals to masterplan one city centre site to incorporate family housing to counterbalance the city's surfeit of small apartments. In London Docklands, Rowan Asset Management, manager of property fund The Merrion Fund and owner of the Glengall Bridge development fronting Millwall Dock, has already come up with its own proposals. It has produced a scheme that would not only provide some much needed housing for families and create a better environment for the surrounding community, but even more crucially could prove to be the catalyst for making the whole Millwall Dock area a more civic-minded and family-friendly environment.

Perhaps paradoxically, the suggested means of making the Docklands area more family-friendly is not to develop more low-rise buildings, but to build high. Architect Sheppard Robson's proposed scheme comprises a 54-storey tower and an accompanying eight-storey building as an alternative to groundscraper-style development.

Building higher allows for developer profit levels to be maintained, while giving away space around the building for public use. Sheppard Robson estimates that only 35% of the E E 0.8 ha Glengall Bridge site would be taken up by buildings, leaving 65% of the site for the public realm. The scheme's lower block would have family homes, in what would effectively be townhouses, backing onto three floors of leisure and training space with private apartments above. The taller tower would have commercial and office space on the lower four levels, then five floors of affordable housing, a 200,000 ft2 hotel, private residential and, at the top, a public viewing gallery. In all the scheme would have 270 private homes and 145 affordable homes - a third of the affordable homes would have three bedrooms, and 15% of them four bedrooms.

The dockside space could have cafes, shops and education facilities for local people

Fifty affordable family homes may not make much of a dent in the list of families waiting for homes in Tower Hamlets, but the approach might not stop at one site. Rowan Asset Management has commissioned a study looking at how the principles could be extended. Around Millwall Dock a number of other sites could come forward for redevelopment over the next 15 years, and if the same approach were applied, there could be the potential for bigger change.

Urban Strategies, the North American urban designer, has been appointed to work on a framework study for the broader Millwall Dock area, alongside Sheppard Robson, planning consultant DP9, cost consultant EC Harris and building engineering and transportation consultant Arup. Urban Strategies partner Michel Trocme says of the area: "When you are working with cities, it is difficult go back and start afresh, but it is interesting to think of what you might have done with London Docklands when the docks closed. Millwall Dock provides a wonderful opportunity to create a waterfront amenity as the heart and soul of the island. Canary Wharf has an iconic presence, and is a success as a place because there was a vision. At Millwall Dock, because of a lack of vision in planning, each development has responded to the dock as a back edge. When you add the buildings up, you are left with something quite mediocre."

If other sites around the dock followed Glengall Bridge's principle, the dock's hostile pathways would be replaced by bigger open E E spaces, more pleasant pedestrian routes, a local shopping "high street" that would be more useful than the small-scale single shops or leisure clubs integrated into residential developments across the island and, it is hoped, more people.

"Instead of squat buildings, you get the developers to contribute portions of land to the creation of a continuous and contiguous park. It is simple, but it could be quite powerful," says Trocme. "Social sustainability is also a big issue. The weather-protected balconies to the apartments are the kind of private amenity space that, if properly designed, would be attractive to families. The detail of the physical design of a building is a key part in attracting families to apartment living. They need details such as wider hallways."

"The dock is geographically at the heart of the island so it makes sense for it to be the heart of the community," argues Claire Treanor, partner with planning consultant DP9. Alan Shingler, associate with Sheppard Robson, adds: "Once you have made the leap to allow taller buildings along the dock edge, then you can enliven the space between the buildings with facilities to suit the community's needs. Cafes, local shops, education and training facilities surround landscaped pockets of public open space promoting routes and views through to the water."

High quality landscaping would replace the dock’s hostile pathways

The view from the docks

Docklanders have strong views on the continuing change in their environment. Rita Bensley, chair of the Association of Island Communities, the umbrella group for community groups on the Isle of Dogs, has attended several presentations on the proposals and is largely complimentary about them. Bensley says: "The concept is right and it is well thought out. The tower is stunning, but the height will cause concern for people living very close to it."

Bensley, a fourth generation islander, says of the growing population of singles: "The trouble is that we now have a moving community. You don't know who your neighbours are." Ask what she would like to see at Millwall Dock, and Bensley answers firmly: "I'd like a basic high street with shops like a DIY store. When the plan for the area first evolved, it was going to have a high street of shops but it has never happened."

Whether Bensley will get her wish is uncertain. Tower Hamlets council has opted to adopt an earlier masterplan for the area for its Area Action Plan, which dictates lower rise buildings around Glengall Bridge. But Rowan Asset Management is setting out its case for this alternative style of development to the local authority. Shingler says: "The concept of creating open space for the public is the key to our representations to the AAP, because unless the height constraint along the dock is reconsidered, we will end up with more groundscraper buildings creating a barrier to the water."

You get developers to contribute land to create a contiguous park – it’s simple but could be powerful

Michel Trocme, Urban Strategies