Chapter 3 - Getting the design right
Andrew Beharrell, Pollard Thomas Edwards
Before we talk about the potential for a different design approach to create better homes and places on post-war estates, let’s remember that these estates were often popular with their residents when first created. Older residents have fond memories of moving from a slum dwelling to their new centrally-heated home with indoor sanitation and a modern kitchen. They blame decline on poor management, physical deterioration and demographic changes -
not necessarily on the original design.
However, few would deny that the experimental nature of post-war housing design has failed to adapt successfully to the changing demands put upon it - in some cases leading to the prime minister’s bleak picture of “dark alleyways that are a gift to criminals and drug dealers”. It is notable that older estates have tended to adapt better - for example the brick-built neo-Georgian and free-style London County Council estates of the inter-war years.
It is also worth remembering an alternative model of social housing which emerged in the 1970s in reaction to the big post-war estates, and has been so successful that nobody notices it. This was the practice of local authorities or housing associations acquiring multiple street properties and improving them through a mix of refurbishment, conversion and infill development. For example, the Woodbridge Estate in Islington uses the word ‘estate’ in its traditional sense of a London neighbourhood substantially in one ownership, but seamlessly blending with adjoining areas. It is based entirely on a traditional street pattern with public realm, private gardens and no ambiguous shared space.
To read the full Chapter please download the report.
not necessarily on the original design.
However, few would deny that the experimental nature of post-war housing design has failed to adapt successfully to the changing demands put upon it - in some cases leading to the prime minister’s bleak picture of “dark alleyways that are a gift to criminals and drug dealers”. It is notable that older estates have tended to adapt better - for example the brick-built neo-Georgian and free-style London County Council estates of the inter-war years.
It is also worth remembering an alternative model of social housing which emerged in the 1970s in reaction to the big post-war estates, and has been so successful that nobody notices it. This was the practice of local authorities or housing associations acquiring multiple street properties and improving them through a mix of refurbishment, conversion and infill development. For example, the Woodbridge Estate in Islington uses the word ‘estate’ in its traditional sense of a London neighbourhood substantially in one ownership, but seamlessly blending with adjoining areas. It is based entirely on a traditional street pattern with public realm, private gardens and no ambiguous shared space.
To read the full Chapter please download the report.
What is the right degree of physical change?
We need to be more rigorous and holistic in assessing the options for improving or replacing our estates, comparing the physical, social and economic benefits of alternative strategies - as we used to do under the options appraisal process which prevailed in the 1990s. We set out in Chapter 1 the importance of an objective and methodical assessment of the options, which may range from ‘do nothing’ through ‘improve what’s there’ to ‘take it down and start again’ - plus hybrid solutions. Clearly, the degree of proposed physical change will determine how far the design outcomes recommended below can be accomplished. In Chapter 2 we emphasise the importance of engaging the community in the definition and consideration of options, with a view to obtaining buy-in to the preferred strategy. This, too, will have a profound influence on the design outcomes. Since one of the key objectives of estate regeneration is to promote balanced communities, the constituency for engagement should include neighbouring residents and businesses as well as those who live on the estate. Why not improve rather than replace? Efforts to correct the deficiencies of post-war estates began the moment the last ones were completed in the mid-1970s and have continued through a series of major funding programmes from Estates Action to Decent Homes. Some have been successful, but others now seem wasteful examples of treating the symptoms rather than cause, when more radical change was required. Those estates which combine failures in urban planning, poor building layout and physical deterioration ultimately need replacement – modernisation works can only delay the inevitable. Similarly, infill development can be a successful way to create more and better homes on existing estates, but sometimes it is a short-term pragmatic solution, which then prevents implementation of a bolder scheme for the next several decades. It’s even more difficult to demolish poor quality stock if it is closely hemmed about by newer homes filling every available gap. In some cases, a combination of improvement and infill will emerge from the options appraisal process as demonstrably the best solution. Bradwell Street in Tower Hamlets demonstrates the scope for small infill developments on housing estates, replacing under-used parking areas with affordable housing and public realm improvements. The 12 homes include wide-frontage houses with courtyard gardens. This is also illustrated in Dover Court, one of our case studies at the back of this report. How can we transform the design of post-war estates? Post-war housing estates are often very inefficiently planned by today’s standards. They can look big and forbidding, but they actually achieve quite modest densities. This is partly because the common typology of deck-access flats and maisonettes has a very shallow building section and poor ratio of common circulation space to private living space - and partly because of large areas of land given over to surface parking and degraded outdoor space. It is entirely possible to create better homes and places at significantly higher densities - and without resorting to tall buildings. Lefevre Walk was a largely mono-cultural traditional East End community. Older tenants remember moving from Victorian houses, demolished under a slum-clearance programme, into the brave new world of ‘Brutalist’ deck-access blocks often proclaiming “it was lovely when we moved in.” So, for them, the new development of terraced houses and four-storey walk-up apartment blocks on traditional streets and squares was a return to urban normality - but with infinitely better accommodation. The new low-rise neighbourhood, with 60% of the homes being houses, achieves almost the same density as its forbidding predecessor - such was the inefficient land-use of post-war planning for a depopulating city. It is easy to forget that today’s superdense and hyperdense developments are a very recent arrival in London: just 20 years ago the norm was two to four storeys. Post-war estates were designed to look to the future and turn their backs on the decaying urban fabric around them, often literally. They are mostly inward-looking, impenetrable and deliberately disconnected from their surroundings. In fact, the current canon of best practice in urban design, observed by most design and planning professionals, has evolved in precise reaction to the ‘modernist dogma’ of post-war estate planning and has re-embraced traditional place-making. Therefore, we begin with a process of ‘visible mending’ - that is to say, we look for the frayed edges of the pre-existing street pattern, which can often be discerned in the area surrounding an estate, and we supplement our observations with the study of historic maps and photographs. When we are replacing an estate we lay down a new network of streets - also parks and squares on larger projects - which connect up those frayed edges, so that the new blends seamlessly into its surroundings as demonstrated in the Packington neighbourhood.The spaces between buildings are as important as the buildings themselves and should provide a positive network of streets, squares and gardens, with clear differentiation between public, private and shared spaces. Development should create a legible neighbourhood or ‘piece of town’ and encourage pedestrian movement through the surrounding area. Transforming an estate into a connected neighbourhood is much more than a design process. It challenges the perception of the estate as a place apart and of its residents as different from their surrounding neighbours. This is a very sensitive issue: many residents of council estates are fearful of barriers being taken down and thus losing their identity as an estate. Going beyond generic design standards in estate regeneration There is a great deal of generic best practice, published design guidance and design regulation in circulation and most of it will be relevant to estate regeneration. For example, the contribution of urban design in the creation and mending of residential neighbourhoods will invariably consider placemaking, public realm and the creation of mixed neighbourhoods: most successful towns and cities are made up of mixed-use neighbourhoods, with workspace and local services integrated with housing and active public outdoor spaces. Recent reforms to national planning policy and building regulations have gone a long way towards rationalising design standards and reducing the confusion, contradiction and overlap which existed before. In the capital, the London Plan and related Housing Design Guide have raised the quality of housing and harmonised standards across the boroughs. However, it is a small step from harmonisation to homogeneity. What began as guidance has ossified into fixed rules, which tend to promote particular design solutions, when others may be more appropriate for a particular context. For example, the well-intentioned promotion of dual-aspect homes has become a witch-hunt against single aspect. This tends to make efficient ‘mansion block’ layouts ‘non-compliant’ and to encourage a revival of deck access. ‘Streets in the sky’ evoke particularly strong reactions on post-war housing estates, where they were often the prevailing typology. Some view them nostalgically but more remember complaints about leaking and slippery decks and anti-social behavior, including noise nuisance and petty crime. High-density living That said, high-density living can be more sustainable than other forms and provides the intensity of use to support local facilities and public transport. Relatively high densities can be achieved with mid-rise buildings and can include attractive family homes. This group’s earlier reports, Superdensity (2007) and Superdensity: the Sequel (2015), explain how to create successful neighbourhoods at high density, and also caution against what we call ’hyperdensity’ - very high densities above the top end of the London Plan guidance. A summary of our recommendations is included in the Appendix to this report. Superdensity: the Sequel focuses on the importance of street-based urban design in the creation of successful mixed communities and the advantages of mid-rise over high-rise development for integration of mixed-tenures and control of management costs. On previously mono-tenure social housing estates, the introduction of market and intermediate homes for sale and rent is particularly sensitive - and designing for their seamless integration and practical management is a very important challenge. We aim to mix different tenures within neighbourhoods and to minimise visible difference - this is sometimes called ‘tenure blind’ design. However, we are also realistic about the need for separate entrances, different management regimes and the affordability of shared facilities. Recent media coverage of so-called ‘poor doors’ is a simplistic reaction to a complex issue. A traditional London street of terraced houses or mansion blocks handles this effortlessly, with people across the income spectrum living side-by-side, but benefiting from separately managed common spaces to suit their very different requirements. In Superdensity: the Sequel we argue that with hyperdense developments, which require a predominance of high-rise buildings, it is very difficult to create the conditions which allow mixed communities to thrive. Therefore, we contend that hyperdensities are generally not suited to estate regeneration. If the financial model for a particular estate requires a massive increase in housing numbers, which in turn pushes the solution towards hyperdensity, with all the issues that this entails, then it may be better to do nothing for now, rather than risk unsustainable regeneration. |
Recommendations
Estate regeneration has the potential to transform whole neighbourhoods and, over time, to create a renewed piece of the city. Our recommendations focus on design guidance, which is especially important to successful estate regeneration, over and above generic best practice in urban design.
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