The grass is always greener…

for the likes of Richard Rogers, the Thames Gateway provides an opportunity to create the UK’s first high-density Nirvana, a Shanghai on the Thames. But the former urban task force chairman and his followers are looking increasingly embattled these days as we grapple with the uglier side of high-density living.

Many, instead, now believe that the real opportunity presented by the gateway is the re-invention of suburbia. Housing Corporation chief executive Jon Rouse, who made his reputation as secretary of Rogers’ task force, became the latest to break ranks when he gave a speech last month celebrating the suburb (see Building, 27 October).

The reason for the renewed interest in the “burbs” is the dawning realisation that the small, high-density flats that have proliferated in Britain’s cities over the past decade have done little to solve the problems of homelessness and overcrowding faced by many families. In London alone, an estimated 70,000 families are on council housing waiting lists. Meanwhile, many existing suburbs are coming under pressure as a result of efforts to increase housing densities (see box below).

The policy shift away from suburbs to urban development was driven by concerns about environmental profligacy: acres of greenfield lost to housing and the over-reliance on private transport. Now that environmental pressures are increasing, the question remains: if the suburban model of living is to make a comeback, can it be made sustainable?

The suburbs have proved to be one of the 20th century’s more robust social experiments ever since Hampstead Garden Suburb was founded nearly 100 years ago. The vast majority of the population – 86% at the last count – live in the suburbs. And surveys show that although most people regard such neighbourhoods as a bit dull, they still want to live there. Dan Epstein, English Partnerships’ environmental policy manager, believes that the key to the suburbs’ continuing popularity can be summed up in two words: privacy and space. “You have to remember that you are not going to socially engineer people away from the suburbs,” he says.

Jonathan Smales, director of consultancy Beyond Green, says: “The level of the [suburban vs urban] debate is quite facile. They are both wrong. The much more interesting question is what do you do with the places where more than 80% of the people live? It’s a bit like globalisation, it’s a done deal, you are not going to knock it down and start again. The issue is how to make it sustainable.”

Town and Country Planning Association director Gideon Amos agrees. “If you can get E E the suburbs to work sustainably, then you are really on to something, which is why it is finding its way back on the agenda,” he says, arguing that suburbs and environmental sustainability can mix. It is the city centres that are potentially unsustainable, he contends, pointing to research showing that, with the acceleration of global warming, city centres will increasingly become heat islands that are uncomfortable to live and work in. “We will need lower densities and green cover elsewhere,” says Amos, pointing out that the zero carbon city that the Chinese are planning at Dongtan will be built at relatively low densities.

Richards Partington Architects’ proposals for Oxley Park

Former RIBA president Sir Richard MacCormac believes that it is possible to build relatively high-density neighbourhoods while providing the public parks and private gardens that suburban dwellers crave. Making better use of road space can free up a lot of land. And more can be saved by mixing houses with three- to four-storey blocks of flats. Taking an 80ha site, he calculates that it is possible to build 1,500 flats, 3,500 houses with their own gardens and have a fifth of the total area left over for public open space. His design solution is for the houses and gardens to be arranged in groups of 25 around central courtyards, providing both parking and extra safe-play space for the resident children.

While Sir Richard’s ideas have sparked interested at the DCLG, EP has been showing how a sustainable suburb can work in practice. The quango paid three teams, each led by a different firm of architects, to draw up proposals for a site that it owns at Oxley Park, on the outskirts of Milton Keynes. The site brief specified that the 270-home development would be built at a

PPG3-friendly density of 42 dwellings per hectare, offering a mix of house types, including semi-detached homes, terraces and apartments. But instead of green verges, the brief stipulates that left-over land will be earmarked for other purposes, such as allotments to encourage food self-sufficiency. It also stipulates that the development will generate 20% of its own energy and provide communal recycling and waste facilities. Now, EP is waiting for feedback from the development industry after putting the site out to tender last month.

Epstein, who led the project, points out that suburbs provide opportunities for renewable energy generation that inner urban areas can’t achieve. He says: “In urban areas, we are finding that combined heat and power (CHP) might be realistic, but in suburban areas on the edge of towns, there’s a real opportunity to use clusters of wind turbines because you have more space. You can also think about the contribution that biomass can make.”

In addition, suburban-style developments can provide less wasteful decentralised local generation systems that can be run by stand-alone energy services companies (ESCOs). “Unless you are doing big physical regeneration schemes, it will be hard to justify, but decentralised energy systems will work for urban extensions,” says Smales, who was managing director of Greenpeace before founding Beyond Green. He notes that, by contrast, London mayor Ken Livingstone’s requirement that developments should generate 20% of their energy needs from renewable sources on site will be hard to achieve in the capital’s cramped conditions.

MacCormac Jamieson Prichard shows it is possble to build high-density neighbourhoods while providing the gardens suburban dwellers need

Public transport needs critical mass

However, Milton Keynes makes an interesting location, to say the least, for a sustainability showcase. The boundary of the Oxley site, which is two miles from central Milton Keynes, is defined by the town’s famous grid roads, along which 90% of the town’s journeys are made by car. “Milton Keynes has lots of cycle routes, but because of the distances and high degree of boredom involved, they are not well used,” says Smales. “If everybody gets in their cars for everything and drives off, then the site will have a bigger carbon footprint than an older energy-inefficient building.”

MacCormac believes that the density and the scale of development he is proposing will get around these problems by providing a sufficient mass of people to support regular bus services. Similar ideas are being explored in Ashford, Kent, where the growth area town is planning to expand through a series of urban villages. Each will have a community hub with schools and shops located along a high street, 15 minutes by bus from Ashford town centre.

However, research conducted into US “new urbanist” developments shows that however well planned a place is, car use will not be curbed unless high-quality transport is put in place. And, as no bus operator wants to run an empty vehicle, mass transit solutions won’t take off before there are enough people to support such services. Where they have been provided recently, like in Kent Thames-side, it is because the developer has been willing to subsidise it. But few developers have pockets quite as deep as Land Securities.

Smales believes that true environmental sustainability can be best achieved on these large sites, like Harlow North, where his firm has been working on Ropemaker Properties’ plans to build a 25,000-home urban extension. Having such a large site enables the developer to invest in the transport and other infrastructure that is needed to achieve true sustainability.

Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands’ proposal for Oxley Park

You can be small and sustainable

But Epstein insists that environmental sustainability is financially feasible, even at the smaller scale that he is working at in Milton Keynes. “You can get down to 20% reduction in carbon with improvements to the home at pretty marginal costs,” he says, pointing out that features like water butts are cheap to install. And persuading people to adjust their lifestyles to use less energy will generate additional savings. However, other technological fixes remain expensive and impractical for the time being, he admits. “If you want grey water recycling, at the moment it costs £2,000 per unit, but there are issues of maintenance.”

Simon Wakefield of cost consultants KHK, which advised one of EP’s teams, estimates that to build the Oxley development to the high eco-standards demanded by EP would cost £106/ft2, around £5 more than a standard scheme. As long as demand is high, these extra costs can be accommodated. But, with new Savills research showing that build cost inflation is outstripping property price rises for the first time in many years, such calculations could prompt a rethink in less buoyant markets, such as the Thames Gateway. “Sustainability is something that consumers think is important, but they won’t pay for it,” says Yolande Barnes, Savills’ head of mixed-use research.

Smales argues that the answer in such areas is to establish a level playing field by drawing up an environmental charter stipulating that all development in the Gateway should have a low carbon footprint. “The costs are modest, provided you structure the finances over a whole life rather than instant sales. It’s much cheaper than the whole Cabe agenda of place making,” he says.

And Design for Homes director David Birkbeck reckons that once the extra environmental costs have been factored into land values, they will not present such a problem. Major developers like Berkeley and Crest Nicholson are already preparing for new sustainability standards. Maybe a fiver is a price worth paying to help stave off the extinction of the human race.