The curious case of the transit-led scheme that is missing the transit.
Tag: Location
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.
Wichelstowe: a visit to Swindon’s new urban extension
In May 2024 Transport for New Homes visited a new part of Swindon called Wichelstowe, a large urban extension which has been slowly built up over the last 18 years since it was given planning permission in 2006. Swindon centre itself appears to be in bad need of regeneration with the Brunel Shopping centre having suffered the loss of many businesses. We started from Swindon Station.
Wichelstowe as an urban extension began as a collaboration between Swindon Borough Council and Taylor Wimpey in 2002 to jointly fund and provide infrastructure needed for housing on what was known as Swindon’s ‘front garden’ between the town and the M4 motorway. It has its own Wichelstowe wiki page.
The Wichelstowe development is large – 324 hectares and has a very long and complex planning history. The development will eventually have 4,500 homes. The planning history of the scheme involves complex decisions on every aspect of the estate and the original masterplan has altered over the years.
East Wichel has a walkable and village-like feel. The ‘Wichelstowe Design Code’ — imposed by the planning authority, requires most houses to have a different external appearance: no more than two houses in a row look identical. The restrictions also require most houses to be behind a small railed front garden, whilst each parcel of housing must contain some larger houses, some cottage-style houses, and a barn-style apartment building.
The cycle ride from Swindon station took about twenty minutes. The development is not meshed with the streets of the existing suburban area, but is separate. Luckily we found a way across the green strip between the edge of town and the new estate and before long a group of new homes were welcoming us.
However some parts of the development like the one shown here, lack greenery, perhaps seen as too expensive to provide and maintain.
There is a small local centre in East Wichel with a convenience store and a restaurant and these are primarily designed for arrival on foot although there is parking. The inclusion of a small green area (in the distance in the photo) makes this part of the development feel more friendly. It was great to see an independent business in the development – a restaurant right in the centre. There is a playground and the primary school is incorporated into the development in a traditional manner on-street with limited parking. The pub is equally walkable to and handy for a quick visit.
After stopping at the pub for refreshment we followed the road to the other part of the development area, Middle Wichelstowe which is quite different from East Wichel. Whereas East Wichel has been designed for walkability and on a human scale, the more recent parts of this urban extension appear to be more around the car, in terms of road and junction space, and the general language of the scale of the layout.
The cycle ride to Middlewichel was on a long stretch of distributor road, with pavement, and at the end of it you could an area still partly in construction. Parents with small children were making their way along the road, presumably coming from the primary school and walking home.
The approach to Middle Wichel gives a view of the new secondary school there. The architecture in this part of the development is generally quite different from East Wichel and includes town houses as well as low-rise apartments. Roads are wide although with a 20 mph limit, but rather than a cosy parade of shops and eateries, the place seems to be centred on a very large Waitrose supermarket. The place is used by shoppers from far afield, because of the easy motorway access and the ample car-parking provided. A bus looks almost out of place at this scale of car-based development and seemed almost empty.
Near to the giant Waitrose was the Wilts and Berks canal and on its banks was a modern and landscaped bar and restaurant, making the best use of its waterfront position. It had a large car-park and obviously attracted people from a long way around the area. However may could walk.
Nonetheless the development has a reasonably good bus service for those who don’t drive or cycle (10-30 minute during the day from East Wichel to the town centre) but travel across Swindon to for example, employment areas, leisure centers, or the hospital is much faster by car than bus, because of having the change bus one or more times, and because Swindon is a low density town designed around link roads, distributor roads and roundabouts for the purpose of easy driving. That said the Swindon Bus Company runs some good cross-Swindon service from the newer parts of the Wichelstowe development and stop at the large Nationwide Building Society campus nearby too. We noted a first floor flat in a new apartment block for 200,000.
There were also a number of open spaces and these are being developed for the combined purposes of wildlife habitat and the enjoyment of residents – and there is the Wichelstowe ponds area by the M4 for walks and looking at swans, herons and other wildlife. A new access road is being built for the development. The southern access road, which crosses the M4 motorway to the east of junction 16, provides the fourth access to the Wichelstowe development .
The cycling route back into town ran along the canal for at least some of the way. The cycle route was great except that when it ended it was a matter of negotiating the traffic as usual.
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.
Upside-down geography
Locations for new housing are not considered in terms of sustainable transport, access to services, employment or environmental impact.
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.
Decarbonising Transport: land use planning is key
Press release: 15 July 2021
Responding to the Government’s Decarbonising Transport plan published yesterday, 14 July 2021, Jenny Raggett from Transport for New Homes said:
“We welcome the positive language about getting people out of their cars onto public transport, walking and cycling. However, there is very little in the document that convinces us that this is going to happen. This is because this plan fails to analyse the mistakes that we are still making in terms of land use planning and the lack of resources to expand towns and cities around modern, integrated transport.
“From our many visits to new housing estates, we know that where these are built, how they are built, and what is financed in the way of infrastructure for an expanding area is critical to how people travel and use a place. At present we continue to see a worsening picture of car-dependency and of new road capacity to enable car-based lifestyles in the context of out-of-town development and sprawl. What is not clear from the Decarbonising Transport plan is how we will build something better in the future and therefore avoid our own car-based ‘mini America’ with the health and environmental issues that go with it. It’s vital that the Government’s upcoming planning reforms tackle this question.”
Ends
Notes to editors
Transport for New Homes believes that everyone should have access to attractive housing, located and designed to ensure that people do not need to use or own cars to live a full life. Transport for New Homes is a project funded by the Foundation for Integrated Transport, a registered charity (115 63 63).
The Government’s Decarbonising Transport plan can be read here.