Keith, you are a man of many talents. On
seeing the visual, my first impression was that it was very beautiful, an ideal
place to live. But on looking at it a little longer, I thought it might be
rather densely packed, much like some developments being built near where I
live, though not with underground parking. I wondered about
children. Would they all be out on that green space in the middle?
Would they make a lot of noise? Or, like some gated communities I've seen
in Canada, would children be allowed? I know that what you've done is a
concept, and a lot of things would still have to be worked out, but it's a very
aesthetically pleasing start.
As you know, we have a lot of space in Canada,
and suburbs do tend to spread. Not being able to do much about it, I can
live with that, but what really bothers me is the incredible underutilization of
public transit. Something I read recently suggests that only a relatively
small proportion of the public that commutes into and out of Ottawa daily uses
public transit. Obviously, this will have to change.
I can feel holier than thou on the matter.
Though I speak no Spanish, I'm considered a "Senior", and can buy a cheap bus
pass. We live not too far from a transitway, which gets me downtown in a
matter of minutes, and I don't have to worry about parking!
Ed
>
> 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>
>
