Monday, 17 December 2007

Lifetime neighbourhoods

Glastonbury_garden_2 Many neighbourhoods fail their residents because important opportunities for development and regeneration go ahead with little consideration of age in their planning. The International Longevity Centre has published a paper arguing the case for lifetime neighbourhoods which 'involve the creation of multi-generational space where the needs of all ages are catered for with a considered, negotiated balance.'

Lifetime neighbourhoods should also constitute a preventative investment in good health for future generations... They provide both a built environment and an attitudinal environment in which people of all ages feel both comfortable and informed when taking part.

Towards lifetime neighbourhoods: designing sustainable communities for all.

17 Dec 2007 09:34:08 | Mobility and change, Neighbourhood relations, Space and place

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Community. Centre. Yorkshire in frost. The light fractures the trees, or is it the other way round. Ellie crunches across the estate part-seeing, sort-of knowing the unfinished scrawling on the walls, the mutterings in the corner shop, a charred tyreless car up against a house, the litter half-swept. Alone or not, people walk in an isolated way here. Nothing seems rendered. But there's a hope of garden outside these flats, and Merry Christmas being sadly insisted at the window. She said, before, most days I'd just go to Morrisons, every day, on the bus, with me little boy, getting out of the house, it were like prison, nobody to talk to, and go to Morrison's on t'bus, walk round, wander round aisles, have a cuppa tea and come back, at least you got out. I was walking dead most of the time, I just couldn't be bothered cooking. We'd come to the community cafe and we'd both eat well for a quid. I help out here now a lot of the time. There's a big women's social isolation problem in this area. The group that's here now, quite a few have found themselves single parents, they come here and find there's a few more in the same boat, and they support each other.
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The right to an impermeable front garden? One of the issues that comes up consistently in consultation and mediation at local level, is the rights of the householder vs wider impact. Noise remains the classic theme of course, but other issues emerge from time to time such as Christmas lighting, car parking, trampolines in the garden, smelly garbage and so on. My little theory is that the age when the rights of the householder seemed to trump most other rights could be coming to an end, because its ambiguities and contradictions are becoming more frequently exposed, and awareness of collective environmental impact is growing fast. Here's an instance now: Householders should no longer have the automatic right to lay impermeable surfaces in gardens or driveways according to an independent review of the summer's flooding. The measure is one of a number of proposals for mitigating surface flooding outlined by Sir Michael Pitt in his interim report on managing flood risk. The report said that in urban areas, permitted development rights allowing private property owners to carry out works such as paving driveways can prevent the drainage of surface water, which accounts for two-thirds of all flood waters. It concluded that in areas of high flood risk, this right should no longer be automatically assumed. (Planning resource). This could have heavy implications for urban and suburban streets, where improvised parking across pavements is already excessive, inconsiderate towards pedestrians and often dangerous. Which brings us round to the need to stop people buying more cars. Some households near me appear to occupy more carspace than floorspace. Paved tracks, with permeable surround, would seem a sensible solution in many cases. More in the RHS guide. Previously: Front gardens. More on front gardens.

Kevin Harris

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