Further to the theme of communities, you might like to see a concept design I did some years ago (just before I joined Futurework) for a builder who'd asked me for some ideas for a particular site (a dish-shaped hillside) next to a village near here. It was intended to be a community that was safe for children (from traffic) and contained some "parish" facilities and also, most importantly, facilities for a high degree of home-working.
If you go to the P-P website below, then --> Residential --> Page 2, you will see a concept village there (you can enlarge it by clicking). If you look at the red car at the bottom-centre, you will see that it is about to descend into an underground car park which goes all the way round the inner ring of houses (plus three apartment blocks) and you may just about be able to see another car (to the left of the red car) emerging from the exit. The inner ring road will have almost no traffic on it except for fire, ambulance and other services (a removal van is shown here). There is, in fact, a barrier under the arch of the large building (nursing home) in the foreground which excludes all domestic car traffic. The octagonal building to the left of the green contains a swimming pool with community rooms over the top and to the left of it is a children's playground. (There are also some children's stables at the extreme right-hand edge.)
The red car actually goes to circular underground car parking (and you may just about be able to see steps exiting from it onto the paths in front of the inner ring of houses), but this also contains fairly extensive underground workshops and offices -- which also caters for an outer ring of (150) houses (without underground facilities). I did some (fairly accurate) outline costs for this village and they worked out at about 25% more (per housing/family unit) than a conventional build, though I recovered part of this (bringing the house prices down to about 15% above the norm) by having rather smaller gardens than I thought desirable (although I've noticed that even in the short period since then gardens of new build houses are about the same size as mine). The outer ring of housing also contained a primary school and a couple of village shops (the viability of which actually determined the overall size of the village). I didn;t include a pub because the existing village (below the picture) had one.
This didn't get planning permission unfortunately because it was seen to be too much of an intrusion into the "green belt" policies in this country. Previously, I'd designed a much smaller community with a single administrative office block so that Internet-based home-workers could work from there there (even if they had different employers) and I rather think that this is going to be a more accurate concept for the longer-term future when fuel costs start to rise, but this was very futuristic for its time and planning permission was never applied for.
Since I retired from this business I have noticed with great interest the increase in gated communities in this country and America, and also much larger managed communities such as Celebration in America. I think it would be true to say that, if we imagine a future in which fuel costs will be very high -- high enough to reverse the type of suburban growth of the last century -- then more communities somewhat on the lines of my design will be built because a considerable number of jobs will be able to be done from home or from a local facility (for companionship while working). But, of course, these high-skill service job communties will also need quite a number of other manual skills so I see that this concept probably has a future for a reasonably balanced population. However, whether we (in Europe) will have enough economic invesment to spare for this sort of thing is debatable. It might occur in America, but I think it will almost certainly occur in China. The Chinese Politburo have already appointed a very high-level Traffic Commission which is taking evidence from all round the world as to car traffic and its effects. Although car-buying is going apace in China at the present time, they have already decided that traffic intensity will never be allowed to get to the point it has done in many cities in America and Europe. When the big migration from the countryside to the (mainly) coastal cities is over in about 15-20 years and when fuel costs will start to become very high then I am confident that something along the lines I have designed will start to be planned. In America, there might also be a great many of these types of communities by then.
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>, <www.handlo.com>, <www.property-portraits.co.uk>
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