Density and Urban Sprawl – new housing in South-east of England

I came across this article on the RICS (Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors) website on the subject of urban density – How to stop the urban sprawl, RICS website, 12 October 2004, Alan Dobie. This is very relevant to the current debate about increasing the rate of house building in the south-east of England.  Yesterday’s (28th August 2007) Financial Times had much about this.  In “Setback for Brown’s housing targets” by Jim Pickard wrote “Plans for 3m new homes in the UK will be dealt a blow on Wednesday by an official report recommending a lower rate of housebuilding growth for the south-east, the region at the heart of Gordon Brown’s plans to increase home ownership.  The prime minister is keen to see swaths of new estates, not only in “regeneration” areas such as the Thames Gateway and Milton Keynes, but right across the Home Counties.”

I’m concerned that the current system for achieving new dwellings will result in yet more characterless, low-quality, low-density housing already so common on the outskirts of most towns in the region. The RICS article reminds us that “Low-density housing is not just wasteful in terms of land use. It also poses other problems, such as the size of the local population being insufficient for local shops, transport and other services to be financially viable. This in turn leads to increased traffic and pollution as people become more dependent on using the car for short local trips.”  The article discusses the benefits of higher densities and why it has proved so hard to achieve them in the south of England.  One of the key problems is the perception of much of the British public, taken into account by developers when planning new dwellings, is that higher density means poor quality.  

In many cities on the continent relatively high densities are the norm and are associated with high quality, spacious living with excellent facilities around such as cafes, restaurants, shops and parks.  Good quality public transport is also the norm.  This photo shows a typical area in the south of Brussels, Belgium, about 4 km from the centre of the city: