On Sunday the Chancellor, George Osborne, announced that a new garden city of 15,000 homes would be built at Ebbsfleet in Kent.
Only two genuine garden cities have ever been built in Britain, at Welwyn and Letchworth in Hertfordshire, in the early twentieth century. Their creator Ebenezer Howard thought of them as combining the best of town and country; an antidote to crowded slums in smoky cities. A hundred years later there is renewed political interest in garden cities as a way of helping to solve rather different housing problems.
All major political parties support them, but building them in the right place, to the right design standards, with public support, is critical to building truly sustainable communities.
Ebbsfleet looks like a reasonable site: it’s mostly brownfield, there’s already permission for some development so the principle is well established, and it’s well served by existing infrastructure such as Ebbsfleet International Station on the HS1 line.
We haven’t seen the detailed plans, but although there are some nationally important sites nearby, it’s quite possible that any impacts could be satisfactorily dealt with by careful design and management.
That stands in stark contrast to another housing site, only 11 miles away. At Lodge Hill in Medway, the MoD is pursuing a scheme for 5,000 homes on a site which is mostly greenfield, where the principle of major development has already been rejected by a planning inspector, and the development would wreck a nationally important wildlife site which is one of the best places in the country for nightingales.
Howard’s vision was to bring the country into the town. Ebbsfleet lies within the Greater Thames Futurescape, where the RSPB is working with partners to create and manage large-scale green infrastructure for the benefit of nature and the growing communities of the Thames Estuary. To merit the garden city title, Ebbsfleet will need to be an exemplary development, both in managing the impacts on nearby wildlife sites and providing space for nature within the developed site. Let’s make the most of this opportunity to connect people, young and old, to nature on their doorstep.
Ahead of a major conference on trees and cities I've posted this on the institute of Chartered Foresters website:
'Do we really have the space for scattered development from the 1930s ? the high density of recent times has the advantage that it means everyone is nearer the edge: so why can't we, as Richard Rogers di with the Pompidou Centre, design some of our city's infrastructure around, not in, the city: low intensity, hard working land management that absorbs the downstream flood, soaks up surface runoff and cleans grey water through extensive, Bittern rich, reedbeds; at the same time providing green space for people, for health, for welfare, for quality of life, space for biodiversity and for green products - leisure land fuelling the nearby city with low carbon wood and reed energy; car free transport routes circling the urban area - and all of it far far cheaper - maybe 5-10 times less than green space within the city.
And, best of all, the models are already out there in the peri-urban work of the Forestry Commission - and the RSPB in places like Rainham marshes.