Compare and contrast. Chelsea Barracks, 5.2 ha. Sold for £959 million to a housing development consortium in 2007. Site remains empty. Woolwich Arsenal, 13 ha. Parcelled up and the best plots sold, from 2003 onwards, to housing developers such as Berkeley Homes and Barratt Homes. Large parts of the site remain undeveloped; enough for 5,000 (masterplanned) homes. Vauban, Freiburg, 38 ha. Sold, via an NGO, to a mix of private developers and baugruppen. Site is fully developed.
All of these sites were government sites (all were formerly defence sites). And while it’s arguable that the Chelsea site sale was ‘good value for the taxpayer’, there are good reasons for preferring the Vauban model over the Woolwich Arsenal model. With Vauban, the resulting development:
• Is democratic, and reflective of community needs and aspirations;
• Is socially well integrated;
• Has excellent energy performance;
• Conserves the best natural features, such as trees;
• Is interestingly diverse, being designed by or in close consultation with residents;
• Has safe, car-free residential streets (but with car ownership);
• Is popular: the entire site is now lived in.
Generally, the features of the Vauban Quarter were argued for, rather than imposed:
It was … meticulous liaison work with prospective residents that contributed to, and eventually built the necessary popular support for, some of Vauban’s most conspicuous innovations – such as the parking-free and carfree models of mobility management, the emergence of owner cooperatives (Baugruppen) as self-governed, non-profit developers and the instigation of building energy concepts far exceeding the already stringent legal requirements. Assisting people to translate their dreams and aspirations about sustainable living into feasible plans, and seeing them through a council planning department (that may be well-meaning in general terms but often sceptical in detail), became an invaluable role that Forum Vauban filled with verve, notwithstanding some inevitable conflict potential.
(Jan Scheuerer)
Of course if you look sympathetically at developments such as at Woolwich Arsenal, you can see some of the same planning ideas in play: there’s integrated public transport (the DLR extension) and developers are encouraged to create high quality public spaces, and to prioritise sustainability. But the dialogue between private for-profit developer and local authority, often antagonistic, is never going to much resemble the dialogue between future resident (and owner) and a non-profit development organisation like Forum Vauban. Developers have their own ideas about what appeals, and in Britain that often means a view of some water. In London, river front sites are strongly preferred, and are developed to very high densities. Meanwhile, other sites are neglected completely. Local authority planners struggle to give a humane shape to the outcome; often the result is very poor urban planning. Just try to take a walk along York Road, Wandsworth.
More about Vauban, Freiburg, here.
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