Rethinking the Model: Tradition, Community and Sustainability in Housing

How can vernacular and community architecture offer sustainable solutions to the issues in the UK’s housing market?

The label ‘sustainable architecture’ implies a static condition, but sustainable building constitutes active involvement (Oliver, 2005, ed.): it is an ongoing act to be sustainable in all facets of life, including construction.

“Sustainable development is not a master-plan or blueprint [...] but a dynamic process.” (Lock, 2003, ed.: p.51)

In 2015, the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) estimated that the UK was building half as many houses as it needed to every year (TCPA, 2015), suggesting that the UK needs 220,000 additional new homes a year until 2031 to keep up with household growth (ibid.) in that time. Open House Oxford in 2019 argued that we need more new homes than this, especially social homes (Beswick & Down, 2019), of which we need up to 200,000 each year. In 2018, there were 8,000 new social homes nationally, a much lower figure than the estimated annual 200,000 social homes Beswick (2019) suggested.

According to the New Economics Foundation (NEF), the Government’s housing policies have been focused in the wrong place for affordable housing to benefit (Wheatley, 2019; Beswick & Down, 2019), leading to the money allocated being used for land acquisition at the highest bid, and subsequently for market housing rather than affordable housing (ibid.). A key issue of the British housing market is that homes are treated as entities with financial value over social value. Development is seen as an investment in capital as land prices in the UK are highly expensive (Beswick & Down, 2019).

Land ownership has long been a leading influence on the structure of settlements in Britain (Hammond & Hammond, 1911; Brown, 2004). Traditionally, villages were either closed or open settlements, depending on who controlled the land (Brown, 2004). A closed village meant that the land was owned by one person who would usually completely control the development, much like the modern housing estates where only a handful of developers create similar-style housing.

Much of the land in the UK is owned by the public sector, therefore councils will sell land for short-term financial gain, rather than long-term investment. (ibid.) Developers usually invest in settlements for the short run, not the long haul (Neal, 2003, ed.); however, programmes that seek to create and improve neighbourhoods & communities need considerable investment of finance and enthusiasm over a longer period. The development of Poundbury is one such case, in that it was built with funding from the Duchy of Cornwall. 35% of Poundbury is designed to be for affordable housing schemes (Poundbury, n.d.), which have been “pepper-potted” (Hardy, 2006) around the settlement (Figure 26) - but there is still a preconception that the urban extension is for a higher-end market than the average citizen: “Really lovely buildings, but I wouldn’t be able to afford to live here!” (anon., 2019)

Poundbury is in a very unique position as its benefactor Prince Charles has given the urban extension greater freedom and funding than standard developments would. The Prince’s vision has allowed the historic building styles of Dorset to be renewed, giving Poundbury a unique sense of place that standardised housing estates often lack.

The core ideas of Poundbury can be summed up thus: traditionally-adorned

domestic constructions are still sought-after places to work and live, and this new urban extension to Dorchester is not as much of a pastiche as it superficially appears to be. Poundbury, thanks to its high-profile patron, has drawn much criticism on being too traditional, and earlier phases of the project were built to a lower standard, but in later phases it has improved, showing that Poundbury itself is learning from its mistakes as it develops.

Poundbury has a thriving community, even if its streets aren’t well-frequented by pedestrians, and it is set to be an exemplar in mixed-use urban planning. It has been shown to respond well to the needs of its locality (Hardy, 2006; APSE & TCPA, 2017), without retracting key functions from its parent settlement of Dorchester.

Architect Leon Krier's vision of Poundbury

Tradition has always been a process that is constantly in the making (Bronner, 2005, ed.; Poppi, 2008, ed.), and, while often viewed as static points in the past, is as fluid and dynamic as change and innovation are. It is clear that by learning from precedents, and from what fore-bearers achieved before, we can create innovative, exciting new approaches to problems; and by collaborating in their creation and implementation, this can lead to bold new initiatives that in the future the next generations of planners and visionaries can learn from.

For more like this, check out my Issuu page, where you can find my dissertation in full.