The curious case of the transit-led scheme that is missing the transit.
Tag: Design
Converting retail barns to housing
Conversion of large obsolete car dependent out-of-town retail barns to new uses looks good on paper.
New homes, wildflowers and a railway station: a visit to Kidbrooke Village
Kidbrooke Village is a large new development of some 4,700 homes in the borough of Greenwich, South East London. The development replaced the 1960s/ 1970s Ferrier Estate which was knocked down to build something completely different. The development is a partnership between local government, housing developers, and community stakeholders and consists of an interesting and unusual mix of high density development alongside new parkland and wildlife areas.
We walked to the development from the adjacent suburbs. The street-scape suddenly changed and there we were in Kidbrooke Village. It was a completely different place from the suburbs of the 1930s. Some of new homes were still in construction.
As we walked in, we noticed that there was a bus stop already in place in the area still being built. In Kidbrooke, public transport is an essential component. Parking is very limited for flats with many with no parking (although parking spaces can be paid for if needed). Town houses do have usually one space. It’s anticipated that people will use public transport, walking, cycling, scooters and car-clubs. And from what we could see, they do.
The number of affordable homes at Kidbrooke Village is planned at 35% (including 15% social rented). This is London and property has price tags to match. Town houses with allocated off-street parking and private gardens, offer luxury accommodation.
The accommodation in apartment blocks has the benefit of proximity and views of an extensive green area for walking, picnicking, playing, and enjoying wildlife right despite being in London. The idea is explained in the blog London Wildlife Trust: Bringing Kidbrooke alive with wildlife.
This area was popular with walkers and people sitting out. As explained in the London Wildlife Trust blog about Kidbrooke: ‘Developments don’t have to squeeze out wildlife. The benefits are clear: trees in urban areas improve the view, aid privacy, provide shade and help reduce pollution and flash flooding; community green spaces bring people together; and local parks and woods are valuable placeTs for people to walk, play and unwind in’.
The childrens’ playground has a reputation beyond Kidbrooke Village as a place to come to, with imaginative play equipment for different ages. You can walk to it easily from the new homes. But there are are other outdoor and indoor recreational facilities all within a short distance of the apartments. We found courts for tennis, football, basket ball and netball. There is also Artfix – a cafe, school, workspace and venue.
We saw parts of the development that looked almost European with parking hidden away beneath and streets that are freed more those on foot. There are modern bus stops right next to where people live, a big contrast to the fringe-of-town greenfield developments that we have visited where bus stops do not have a central position like this. There are number of bus routes serving Kidbrooke, including the 132, the 178, 286, 335 and B16.
When we visit new greenfield development we often get lost and there are no maps. But in Kidbrooke Village we found maps showing how far it was to walk to different places, and the location of bus stops and the railway station. The transport side of Kidbrooke village reflects its location in London and the importance that people living there place on sustainable travel.
Kidbrooke station is actually in the development with a square built next to its new entrance. Here we found a supermarket, street food sellers, cafe and a pub. Destinations by train include Blackheath, Lewisham (for the DLR), London Victoria, London Cannons Street and Charring Cross and going out of London, stations to Dartford and Gravesend
We also discovered a large wholefoods store by the station. With such a density development and with so many people living nearby a more specialist shop still thrives. It was interesting to contrast this situation with the very low density greenfield developments we have seen where the establishment of a local centre is difficult.
We caught the train back towards London, reflecting that all in all we found Kidbrooke Village to be an interesting and exciting development and were impressed at the combination of new town houses and apartments, greenery and trees, public transport and many local amenities that you could walk or cycle to. It was such a contrast to the enormous greenfield estates being built around our market towns which are car-based. Kidbrooke Village appeared to offer a different life style of local living and use of sustainable transport.
A very different model of development
Freiham is specifically designed as a green and pleasant place for walking and cycling and for using public transport.
New “cowpat” housing developments are adding to traffic congestion and locking communities into car-dependency
New research has found that greenfield housing estates are adding hundreds of thousands of new car journeys to our roads, increasing congestion, carbon emissions and air pollution.
Transport for New Homes: a story told in postcards
John and Jill have been house-hunting in some recently-built developments. They sent these postcards back to show what they found.
Since John and Jill don’t drive, they have been using trains and buses to get to the new housing areas, sometimes with adventures on the way. In the end they do find places to suit their needs and the variety of places they visit is an education in itself…
These postcards are of course fictitious and are generally composites of several new housing developments. However they serve to highlight some of the issues that Transport for New Homes sees as important to planning, namely walkability, living without a car, and good access to public transport and cycling networks.
To find out more about how new housing can be built so that residents don’t need cars for every journey, why not sign up for our e-newsletter or follow us on Twitter or Facebook?
Decarbonising transport: let’s get planning reform right
All over the country, local authorities are preparing local plans for the future, many of these spanning 15 or 20 years up to and beyond 2035. The manifestation of past local plans has now appeared in the form of new areas of housing, but these are far from green transport-wise. We have visited many large ‘bubbles’ of car-based estates where tarmac and parking take up nearly as much space in residential streets as houses, and where retail, employment and services are often pinned on new road systems, bypasses and larger motorway junctions. Car-based housing is coupled with car-based destinations and lifestyles soon follow.
The government publication Decarbonising Transport – A Better and Greener Britain indicates that this model of development must surely be set to change. It explains:
‘The Government wants walking, cycling or public transport to be the natural first choice for journeys. Where developments are located, how they are designed and how well public transport services are integrated has a huge impact on whether people’s natural first choice for short journeys is on foot or by cycle, by public transport or by private car. The planning system has an important role to play in encouraging development that promotes a shift towards sustainable transport networks and the achievement of net zero transport systems.’
Unless quick action is taken, thousands and thousands of new homes will be built in the wrong places and in the wrong way for ‘the decarbonisation of transport’, and we need to intervene fast as new local plans for the future are firming up.
Changes need to happen at national policy level – our National Planning Policy Framework and associated Planning policy Guidance needs to place sustainable transport right at the heart of planning, which it does not at the moment do.
The first big change will need to be strong guidance on where we build the homes of the future. At the moment many of the locations for enormous housing estates in the countryside are completely wrong for sustainable modes. This is explained in our two reports on visits to new housing and our analysis of ‘garden communities’. At the moment the location of development is largely developer-led. How power will be given to planners to choose where and how best to build will be important.
The second big change in central planning policy must surely be the coordination of many developments with sustainable transport across a wider area. Only when this happens can you plan new-build with a new or improved railway line and a series of stations, or build along a tram route or top quality bus service. Also, the funding of new local stations and mass transit needs to be made much easier and faster. The current barriers for local authorities and developers alike to making progress on these matters cannot be understated.
Cycleways, like public transport, need to link right across an area to multiple destinations. Rather than each developer individually deciding where cycle routes might go on a piecemeal basis, these will need designing and funding early on to link and mesh together a whole area. In the case of being able to walk to and from the development, the importance of continuous streets with adjacent towns is essential. A number of smaller developments may be much better in this respect than giant housing estates that are severed by main roads or several fields away from the edge of the nearest town.
Then comes the obvious change to the planning system which needs to be coupled with the provision of sustainable modes. This shift away from car use means less parking and less need to build new road capacity, giant roundabouts and all the other road paraphernalia which comes with modern ‘mini-America’ type development.
We have seen many residential areas dominated by tarmac: islands of homes in a sea of parking and roads with very little in the way of gardens. National Planning Guidance needs to be quite clear about the reduced emphasis on the car. This saves money and it saves land. It means more homes (with gardens), room for urban trees, and places designed around streets at a more human scale for walkable and local provision.
The government says very clearly that the planning system has an important role to play in the achievement of net zero transport systems. Whether there will be planning reforms to achieve a genuine shift to public transport, walking and cycling when it comes to expanding our town and cities and building new homes in general, remains to be seen.
Three changes we’d like to see to the plans for the planning system
By Steve Chambers and Jenny Raggett, Transport for New Homes
When the government consulted on proposed upcoming changes to the planning system in August 2020 we responded based on what we’d learned from our visits to new housing estates, which is summarised in our 2018 and 2020 reports.
We don’t think the current planning system is working, especially when it comes to transport, so we were excited to learn what the government planned. But we had some concerns about the policies proposed. In short, we didn’t think they would make things better.
The government has now suggested that proposals as consulted are far from the final outcome and the new planning system is as yet unwritten. With that in mind we thought we’d bring together the most important changes we think should be brought forward in upcoming planning reform.
1. Change how infrastructure is funded
When new buildings are proposed the planning system ensures any negative impacts are mitigated by planning obligations and contributions. This should ensure that new homes have pavements and other transport options available as soon as they are occupied. This is either provided by an obligation where the developer provides the infrastructure or a cash contribution that funds the work being carried out by or on behalf of the local authority.
The consultation suggested the replacement of planning obligations and contributions with a flat rate infrastructure levy. This change might have brought simplicity but it would also have created inequity. New communities or extensions of old ones would be built without the most basic infrastructure because of lack of contribution and mitigation from developers. For example we already see new homes built without pavements connecting up to nearby bus stops and shops. Further reducing planning obligations and contributions risks exacerbating this problem.
Whilst we do not think the infrastructure levy could ever be a complete replacement for existing systems of planning obligations and contributions, we do think transport provision at new homes must be properly funded. Local and combined authorities should be able to set appropriate local rates of levy in order to fund sustainable transport. Whereas the flat rate system would have ignored local context, the setting of infrastructure levies locally would ensure local needs are met.
And what do we mean by infrastructure? Many people take ‘infrastructure’ to mean ‘roads’ and indeed we have seen how new or wider roads are assumed to be essential to take the new traffic generated by large greenfield housing estates. This emphasis we think is associated with an outdated model of development and future investment needs to be different. This could be the basic things like connecting smaller urban extensions to town centres by safe and convenient end-to-end walking and cycling routes or more ambitious plans like rapid transit systems for significantly expanding towns and cities. When we looked at garden towns and villages these were the top two shortcomings of them. The money wasn’t there. Light rail and rapid transit are especially important to pull together newly built and existing urban areas. However substantial funding is needed. If central government cannot supply the funds, then a local level levy with contributions pooled from several large developments may be a way forward.
2. Give the chance to consider developments so that sustainable transport is not forgotten
One of the aims of the reformed planning system is to build more homes and quickly. Whilst this is a laudable approach in a housing crisis, we already know that lack of proper planning consideration is causing developments to be built in the wrong places far from basic amenities and without sustainable transport options.
Several mechanisms have been proposed to streamline planning. These include moving the decision-making part of planning to be much earlier in the process, at the local plan stage, or instructing local authorities to designate areas for growth where scrutiny will be reduced.
Typically under the current system a larger site is considered three times in the planning process: at the local plan stage, at outline planning permission and at final planning permission. Each stage operates at a different scale and provides opportunities to ensure the development integrates well with existing towns and villages. Removing any of these strategies entirely runs the risk of forgetting about sustainable transport. New roads and easy access are often top priority but the walking, cycling and public transport connections in and out of the estate are considered secondary or left out completely.
We propose that the future planning system continues to provide opportunities for consultation and deliberation of development at the local plan, outline and final permission stages in relation to frequent and modern public transport and safe overlooked walking and cycling routes in and out of the development, even if the principle of new housing on the site has already been agreed.
3. Improve the local plan making process
New technologies could make plan making better, but proposed changes to the plan making process could jeopardise the opportunity.
Planning new homes and other development is often done piecemeal with several large new housing estates proposed without consideration of the interactions between them, other kinds of development, and nearby urban areas.
Plans often stop at the local authority border rather than being genuinely coordinated with those of neighbouring authorities. The result may be several large new urban extensions or ‘garden villages’ in the countryside uncoordinated in terms of better public transport provision or cycling and walking routes.
Each development comes with a complex transport assessment which models the effect of that development on the road system, and to a very limited extent, sustainable transport. However, the way people will travel around the area as a whole without a car, is not considered.
This uncoordinated approach is something which our future planning system may correct by the use of technology.
One of the most promising parts of the planning proposals is the use of data and geographic information systems (GIS). This, the government suggests, should inform every part of the planning process. By using maps in combination with data, different scenarios can be tested and a proper perspective achieved on a whole area, with the maps working seamlessly across local authority boundaries and the ability to zoom in and out to understand the implications of new build, whether it is in the right place, and how to get the associated infrastructure right. In terms of sustainable transport, the coordination of land use with new stations and/ or rapid transit can then be examined and options for where to build logically decided. The cycle network needed for a whole area can be discussed and mapped out with clarity. The disadvantages of choosing the wrong parcel of land to build on become apparent and mistakes avoided. With GIS the process of planning can become much more accessible to ordinary people because a shared interactive map means discussions can take place in an open way.
GIS has the big advantage over paper in that it can bring into focus a number of datasets and overlay them graphically. In terms of building in the right place and in the right way, data from many sources can be taken into consideration and viewed together. These datasets might cover anything from wildlife records to sustainable transport, from landscape to favourite walking areas, from air quality to type and density of housing. Maps can test out different scenarios so that the knowledge and expertise of our planners can be put to good use and the public can genuinely participate. The availability of data and GIS gives the opportunity to make much better decisions about planning generally, and especially about sustainable transport.
But planning authorities will need adequate time and resources to take advantage of these new technologies. Otherwise the opportunity to make better local plans will be lost in the rush to comply with arbitrary deadlines.
The planning system is in need of reform and new housing is desperately needed. But speeding the process up won’t necessarily make things better. In order to get more equitable and sustainable outcomes from the planning system we need to see infrastructure properly funded, automatic permission tempered by realistic expectations about transport provision and a plan making process that has the power to guide the places that are created.
A tale of two developments: why new planning reforms threaten to entrench unsustainable lifestyles
This blog by Steve Chambers, sustainable transport campaigner at Transport for New Homes, was first published by as a guest blog by Green Alliance.
In 2018, Transport for New Homes produced an initial report that revealed the deep flaws in the planning system which leave new housing developments with inadequate walking, cycling and public transport connections to surrounding areas. With limited facilities locally, residents are, for the most part, forced into car dependency.
With lockdown starting to ease in England, we wanted to find out how some of the communities we featured in that report had been getting on over the past year. We visited two new developments in the west of England: Castlemead on the edge of Trowbridge and Bath Riverside in the centre of Bath. How had the developments influenced the lifestyles of residents? Were they delightful and sustainable places to live? And, if not, why not?
Castlemead, Trowbridge
Castlemead is part of large ongoing development on the edge of Trowbridge, Wiltshire, adjacent to the planned Ashton Park urban extension. The context is a series of large distributor roads and roundabouts. Castlemead has one of these roads going right through it: a developer funded bypass for Trowbridge.
Planning permission for both Castlemead and Ashton Park has been plagued by difficulties, including the need to ‘mitigate’ the impact on several bat species, such as the very rare Bechstein bat which has a maternity roost in woodland right next to the developments. In fact, some roads in Castlemead are named in memory of the bats affected, such as Bechstein Meadow and Pipistrelle Crescent.
Castlemead is too far from the centre of town to be walkable for some people. It is one and half miles to the main shopping district and two miles to the railway station. There is one pedestrian route into Trowbridge but this is not safe in the dark, without pavements for some stretches. Furthermore, once they reach the town, pedestrians need to negotiate a large dual carriageway inner ring road. Walking and cycling are not supported by ‘end-to-end’ infrastructure.
This development is designed around car use with no front gardens because space has been given over to parking. Some homes also have very small back gardens for the same reason. Car based living is necessary because, other than the primary school and a single convenience store, there is nowhere you can easily go without a car. Indeed, even the convenience store is just off a roundabout with a parking area encouraging even local shoppers to visit using their cars. Bus services are also infrequent and inconveniently timed which rules out using public transport for evenings and weekends out.
Our research found that residents’ cars are outgrowing the spots provided for them, which means they are encroaching on the pavements and further reducing space for walkers. Tellingly, we didn’t see anyone on foot on the residential roads which must have made it a very isolated place during the pandemic.
How might planning have improved this place? With more homes intended for the area, it is getting closer to the scale that might support a shop or other amenities. But upcoming planning reforms look like they will make it much harder for councils to designate land for general use class E, which covers most local services. Changes to permitted development rights could end up with estates of housing with nowhere at all to shop, work or play, also adding to the pressures on established schools, doctors’ surgeries and other facilities in the nearby town and necessitating car journeys to reach them.
Bath Riverside
Over the border in Somerset is Bath Riverside. This is another development that was in its early stages when we reported in 2018 and is now substantially complete. About half a mile from the shopping district at the centre of town and 0.8 miles from the railway station, it is immediately apparent that location is everything. It is well within walking distance of the centre.
But what is noticeably different about Bath Riverside is the provision of amenities within the development. What was once a restaurant will reopen post-lockdown as a shared workspace, charging by the day. We found cafes, outdoor gyms, good quality public space, public art and places to sit in the shade. Good sized trees and flower beds have been planted. Many amenities had been added since our last visit, transforming the place.
There were many people travelling on foot, with lots of places to go, even despite lockdown restrictions, both within the development and just beyond.
The development does have some shortcomings. An unnecessary amount of space has been given over to car parking, possibly due to parking standards. This means entrances to homes are being obstructed by cars. That said, thought has been given to minimising the impact of parking with several attempts to hide it away, including underground.
Bath Riverside is a world away from Castlemead. And many of its best public realm improvements, including integration with the existing city, have come about because of planning conditions and mitigations. Without those tools this development could have been very different.
Upcoming reforms threaten to jeopardise such important planning provisions. For instance, the recently released model design code will do little to prevent the car dominance we found at both these estates. The reforms don’t deal with anything as substantive.
Changes to permitted development rights of use class E could also risk the ability to include the cafes and coworking spaces we saw at Bath Riverside. We hope not. The density of Bath Riverside means there are enough people to support these types of businesses which benefit from it being a walkable place.
So, where, out of these two developments, would a family choose to live? The car dependent sprawl of Castlemead or the walkable liveability of Bath Riverside? Sadly, for reasons of affordability and the lack of suitable family sized units in Bath, car dependent Castlemead is a far more likely option.
Instead, we should be building housing in the most sustainable locations in existing towns, where walking and cycling are the natural choice to get around. It would be a grave mistake, both for liveability and our need to become a low carbon society, for planning reforms to make it easier to build car dependent sprawl, far from places of work and other facilities, than to aid sustainable living. From what we’ve seen of the government’s proposals so far, we are at risk of taking the wrong path.
Transport for New Homes supported the development of Green Alliance’s briefing ‘Ensuring investment in transport through the Infrastructure Levy‘.
For housing fit for the future, let’s get these policies right
The Government is consulting on changes to the National Model Design Code and National Planning Policy Framework. Together, these documents will set the direction for the housing that we build in the near future. With hundreds of thousands of new homes needed, it’s vital that these two documents take transport properly into account: we must do much better at building housing around local amenities and sustainable transport.
Transport for New Homes has responded to the Government’s consultation, which closes on 27 March. We’ve summed up our views below. If you have views on housing and transport, please respond to the consultation here.
National Model Design Code
Transport for New Homes Project Coordinator Jenny Raggett writes…
Transport for New Homes is much concerned with the quality of new housing developments. We were therefore interested to read the proposed National Design Code and associated Guidance and can see much good material with respect to the design and layout has been incorporated. However, we believe that unless the National Design Code goes further and addresses the wider issues of location of development and its orientation around sustainable transport modes, its intentions regarding good design will often fail ‘in real life’.
The draft National Design Code looks at new development in terms of different ‘contexts’: ‘town/city centre’, ‘urban neighbourhood’, ‘suburbs’, ‘outer suburbs’, ‘local centres’, ‘villages rural settlements’ and ‘industrial areas, business, science or retail parks’.
Once the context has been established, there follows a discussion for each regarding movement, nature, built form, identity, public space and so on as applied to that context. In terms of ‘movement’ the guidance has sections on subjects such as connected streets, junctions and crossings, car parking, cycle parking, density, gardens and balconies, meeting places, local services and so on.
So far, all well and good. But Transport for New Homes, has found an important omission in the Design Code. The ‘context’ most commonly chosen to accommodate housing targets in Local Plans, are the greenfield urban extension and the garden village. Yet these have been left out of the National Design Code completely. The Code does not cover the urban extension or the garden village as a ‘context’.
Does this omission matter? We think it does because it will mean that many developments being progressed in Local Plans are likely to fail most of the guidance straightaway, because of their location and their car dependency. The fine words describing green and well-designed places with pleasant local centres, meeting places, gardens and so on, and even good public transport links, are great. But if you are building (a) in a place that cannot be connected to existing streets to an existing town (b) around a new road system because you travel nearly everywhere by car, then the rest of the Guidance is hardly likely to be implemented.
The problem is ‘double trouble’. On one hand it is the excessive influence of the car and the sheer amount of space devoted to roads, parking and driveways in housing that we have seen in the places we have visited, in turn means less greenery, often tiny gardens and little space for urban trees. On the other hand it is the lack of modern public transport alternatives to enable people to avoid having to travel everywhere by car, and the lack of local shops and community provision to walk to. These also become univiable in a place where people are encouraged to just drive out.
In conclusion then:
- The National Design Code needs some kind of explanation about mistakes made in the past and how and why changes are needed.
- The Code needs to be better supported by the NPPF when it comes to sustainable transport provision, parking and the layout of estates.
- There needs to be more discussion about how the right location is important and that certain locations are unsuitable.
- Urban extensions and garden villages are two contexts that are omitted and these need their own sections in the National Design Code Guidance.
- There needs to be more made of the way that stations, busways, tramways and cycleways are key components in the section on movement, and need early consideration in terms of the overall and local layout and design of an area.
National Planning Policy Framework
Transport for New Homes Sustainable Transport Campaigner Steve Chambers writes…
Rather grandly the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) is now proposed to include the 17 Global Goals for Sustainable Development. We note Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities says “By 2030, provide access to safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable transport systems for all, improving road safety, notably by expanding public transport, with special attention to the needs of those in vulnerable situations, women, children, persons with disabilities and older persons”.
We know from our research that planning outcomes currently fall far short of these goals. In particular we have found that new housing developments are predominately car dependent and lacking in sustainable transport systems, such as good walk and cycle provision as well as public transport. The NPPF should give stronger weight to the necessity of these features to ensure that only development that is compliant with these goals receives consent.
We are concerned with what the proposed revision to the NPPF doesn’t say. It is a missed opportunity to bring land use and transport planning together at the local level. It emphasises “sustainable development” throughout, but nowhere is this defined. The UN goals are mentioned, but these cannot be readily interpreted at the local level.
It doesn’t acknowledge that transport is inextricable from spatial planning. Demand for travel is derived from the spatial arrangement of activities/facilities. It has no independent function. Transport must therefore be integrated with the land use planning process.
Chapter 9 (Sustainable Transport) has not been revised, and remains very weak. It is insufficient for transport issues to be merely “considered” (para 103). This section is therefore now inconsistent with the strengthened paragraph 11. The proposed revision does not include any requirement to prioritise development within the existing urban envelope, over and above greenfield sites or previously used sites that are remote from the urban envelope (for example, and especially, airfields, which are almost by definition remote from urban areas).
It does not explicitly require local planning authorities to designate land for development that is accessible by sustainable modes of travel, or to exclude land that is not. Most fundamentally, the absence of sustainable transport provision is not given as a reason for the refusal of planning applications.
The NPPF has been revised, it appears, mainly in response to the report from the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission. Around half of all the proposed new words are in chapter 12 “Achieving well-designed places”. It is to be hoped that NPPF will be further revised in the short term, specifically to address the issue of integrated transport and spatial planning.
It claims that “the planning system should be genuinely plan-led” (page 8, para 15). We agree that it should be. However, the present planning system is to a great extent led by, or at least heavily influenced by developers and landowners, not by plans that have been carefully devised to meet sustainable development objectives. In particular, development sites are selected from those offered by the private sector, not from those that can meet public (and other sustainable) transport accessibility criteria.
You can find our full response here.
If you would like to respond to the consultation you can do so here before 11:45pm on 27 March 2021.
Main photo © Stephen Craven (cc-by-sa/2.0)