Building great communities for the future, not just homes for now

IN THE GOVERNMENT’S mission to deliver the 1.5 million new homes it believes the country urgently needs, the proposals just tabled by the New Towns Taskforce for a dozen new towns, or major urban extensions, are a very significant step. As well as identifying the most appropriate locations, the Taskforce has had much to say about the design and development processes that should be followed to create the best possible new neighbourhoods and local economies for the inhabitants of them. And on the way the lives of those in the new settlements can be most desirably supported with public services - with transport and mobility provision a key part of that.

The outcome will be literally character-building in several ways. Not just for the physical form of the newly created places and their buildings, but for the people who live there, and for the future look and shape of the nation as a whole. Previous generations of housing stock and public realm have, after all, helped define huge parts of the country – urban terraces in industrial landscapes, council housing blocks, garden villages, the inter war suburbs, metropolitan sprawl, ‘overspill’ towns, identikit private sector estates, and soulless gated communities to name just some of the iterations.

The creative process of every substantial new community in which people then live has brought its own character and culture, reflecting the era in which it was designed and built, and the prevailing social and economic order of the time.

Looking back on them, some seem dreadful mistakes, others still look delightful and appealing in terms of design and style, but out of time in terms of modern ways of living, shopping, working, and transport. Many are sadly just ‘average’ places to live.

No doubt the planners, designers and developers thought they were not only doing what was right for their time, but future-proofed against further evolution too. Though that rarely seems to have been the outurn reality. Transport change has proved particularly difficult to anticipate and cater for well.

Increasingly, the modern way of thinking about any new development of significant scale and involving both residential and other related activities, is to take the ‘master planning’ approach. This tends to embody what might be seen as an over-confidence in the formula to be used. Though maybe supposedly reflecting the unique locational and demographic circumstances of any development, all too often the outcome is effectively a standard ‘modern’ template, or at least one of just a very limited set of them.

Against this background, the current ambition of a set of a dozen or more substantial new communities, either brand new or extensions to existing urban areas, will hopefully be based upon a more thoughtful and fine-grained underpinning approach, rather than a cookie cutter one.

One of the core ingredients to get the design as far as possible right is the relatively new idea of ‘placemaking’. This can apply at different scales from whole areas to individual neighbourhoods or even micro-level streetscapes. It is a good concept, but not if it results in just another standard model applied in the same way to developments in different kinds of places, and not reflecting their different traditions, demographics, and local economies.

As well as local distinctiveness, another significant consideration in our consumer choice economy is creating places which appeal to different kinds of people wanting to pursue different types of lifestyle. Suitably created distinct communities might thus exist as either major parts of a particular new housing development, or as smaller elements of a number of them, to suit the variety of potential occupants and the way they wish to live.

Alongside placemaking, the other flavour of the month at the moment is ‘vision-led’ planning, i.e. determining a desired outcome, and then producing the applicable physical form, and supplying the relevant public services to make it a viable functional entity. This idea is all very well if there is both a philosophical and political consensus on what the ‘vision’ should be, and a suitable level of resource and long-term commitment to delivering it in practical terms. Even then, ambitious visions may be grounded more in aspirations than in achievable realities, especially where a diverse range of unknown prospective occupants, rather than current identifiable inhabitants, need to be in harmony over their vision and expectations.

Lifestyle-reflecting housing provision will need to include multiple options from family homes, individual apartments, supportive housing (sheltered, with care) for older or vulnerable individuals, to community-focused models (eg urban mixed-use and live-work areas), that each emphasise appropriate amenities, accessibility and connectivity to match their demographic. Available choices will likewise need to vary based on budget, desire for privacy or community, life stage, and access to health and welfare services, with modern options incorporating drop in wellness and technological amenities.

Various housing types to offer will include terraced, semi-detached, and detached houses, bungalows and flats, with and without gardens. These could reflect some of the common housing styles traditionally found around the UK, plus maybe some ideas for new ways of living.

An approach of this kind will simply mirror the varied and eclectic character of many established towns and urban neighbourhoods, and how they have evolved over time though extension, infill development and building conversion. Types of provision and tenure within or between different areas may meanwhile include social housing by local councils or housing associations, and privately owned or rented homes, catering to different needs and budgets. Alongside this there will likely these days be different groups of people looking to express their identities in other ways, like green and car free living in sharp contrast to car-based ‘motor normality’.

From the foregoing it should be apparent that the standard commercial model of any familiar volume house builder is not going to deliver all this richness and variety. So that must mean unlocking a more eclectic mix through a suitably flexible planning and development framework, and adopting a more open-minded way of looking at the creative process for these new places where new generations of people are going to live.

The standard commercial model of any familiar volume house builder is not going to deliver all the richness and variety of a flourishing town. To do that must mean unlocking a more eclectic mix, through a suitably flexible planning and development framework, and adopting a more open-minded way of looking at the creative process for these new places where new generations of people are going to base their lives.

It might mean that rather than commissioning a single neat and tidy masterplan or individual architect-delivered design for the whole of a new town or urban development, it would be better to provide for a variety of smaller development proposals of different kinds to sit within a less prescriptive vision? Of course there would need to be a basic overall schematic layout of the available space in any development area, and provision for elements of core community facilities and a high-quality public realm. But what goes on individual plots would not be delivered by a single developer and certainly not to a single style.

An essential element to such preliminary thinking and planning would be to conceptualise and specify a suitable sustainable transport system from the beginning, bringing together elements of public and private transport, provision for sustainable/active modes — walking and cycling — and even new modes such as e-bikes and scooters and shared transport offered by co-mobility providers.

To get such ‘shared transport’ into place, cost effectively from the outset, in these circumstances, need not mean a complete network of bus services or rapid transit system, which the timelines and costs would not simply allow. A much easier place to start would be bringing in the likes of car share providers or a regulated form of Uber, for example. Perhaps the first step in transport provision could usefully be a publicly organised smart booking and dispatch system, which would support individual mobility providers offering the fulfilment.

This kind of open and flexible development model is not an unheard of approach to new housing and transport. It has been adopted in part in some areas in the UK, and more generally in other countries including the Netherlands and Scandinavia. Its thinking is anchored in the idea that individual needs and approaches to new community development should productively vary,and that the diversity of buildings and their styles that generally emerges in any area over time can be seeded, nurtured and curated from the outset to more quickly bring into being a significant new community with its own unique structure and style. The key point is that it need not be, should not be, - and actually could not be- the work of a single developer, architect, or even public agency.

Everything, in this thinking, depends upon the way in which development is programmed and progressively provided for, allowing for early occupants to experience a good version of their part of the ultimate completed whole, rather than being left to fend for themselves as pioneers without community services and transport facilities adequate for their needs- or unrealistically expecting the finished product from day one.

We wouldn’t offer new homes without adequate water and energy supply and sewage, but for the transport element it is often the road system that is the only available initial offer, and other elements are in rudimentary form or non-existent for a considerable period, if ever arrive, as by then it will generally be too late.

To overcome this inbuilt disposition towards prioritising private transport, development should take place on a clear programme of phasing that reflects the parallel supporting community facilities necessary to accompany the housing, and how it is released for occupation with appropriate non private car options on hand.

Achieving this phased outcome must inevitably mean that either the core provision be put in the hands of a public rather than a private body, or that elements of private development be approved and managed as parts of a bigger plan. The need for this managed approach is, in fact, very much the core message that the New Towns Task Force has delivered — alongside asserting the strong requirement for significant and secure public funds to ensure it all works.

Set in this context development corporations of the kind created in the 1980s for private sector ‘regeneration’ in places like London Docklands and other locations that spawned shopping centres and business parks, do not at all seem an appropriate model for what is needed now. For a new era of housing-led development, much better to look to the models that were the driving force of the post-war new town building period. These were highly interventionist, and publicly resourced accordingly, to plan and create town centres, neighbourhoods, parks, hospitals, clinics, swimming pools, and other municipal facilities including transport networks.

If the next generation of new towns are to be genuine multi-dimensional, characterful, thriving sustainable communities, it will take a new kind of public investment in which the housing developers work in support of a wider framework plan, rather than simply being unleashed to do their own thing as a purely commercial exercise.

Peter Stonham is the Editorial Director of TAPAS Network

This article was first published in LTT magazine, LTT924, 15 October 2025.