This is such an interesting concept - the development of the so-called garden cities. Looking at the winning entry of the Wolfson Economics Prize, this idea has a lot of appeal. Essentially, it involves taking some decent sized towns and expand them out to make them into large towns or small cities.
Many of these towns, such as Durham, Winchester, Salisbury, Bath, Exeter, Chester and Lincoln to list a few have a nice old market town type of feel about them now and so making them into garden cities could be a nice idea, reviving their high streets, whilst creating socially and environmentally responsible new districts.
My one nagging doubt is of economic sustainability and for me that has to come from jobs...will there be enough jobs to sustain the near doubling of size of some of these towns? I don’t know if the latent demand is there or not but I suspect that business and industry may need some persuasion to locate to these areas. Sure, there will be some economic infrastructure created by building and development in the garden cities in the first place and then some of the retail, leisure and public support services required to sustain them but more than that will be needed in employment terms I would expect.
I like the thinking and it is definitely a topical issue of one part of the housing shortage solution for sure. As an aside, I was wondering how this might affect or influence investors with interests in these towns today. I am leaning on it being a positive thing, as long as the jobs question is reconciled...but if I were to play it safe with a new investment, then I would go with the logical commuter towns – those within an hour of central London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds for example.
Definitely one worth keeping an eye on in terms of future housing policy.
Source: sustainablecities