New housing developments can avoid the mistakes of the past
10 March 2009
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The Young Foundation and the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) today launched a new website – futurecommunities.net - aimed at everyone involved in building the successful sustainable communities of the future.
Futurecommunities focuses on community participation and place management. It explores how new developments can become socially, economically and environmentally sustainable, building in resident involvement and engagement from the start. The website draws on the stories and experiences of a range of practitioners from both England and further afield, drawing out lessons and inspiration for agencies and residents.
Government has set itself challenging targets for building new homes, creating prosperous, inclusive and sustainable communities. These aims can only be met if public, private and third sector agencies learn from past experience, and work together across professional boundaries.
Robert Napier, HCA Chairman said “Community cohesion is crucial to any sustainable community. Through its Single Conversation business model, the HCA is putting communities at the heart of its work, helping to deliver local ambitions on a national scale. ”
Nicola Bacon, Local Projects Director from the Young Foundation said ‘traditional views about how to build a sustainable community stress the importance of structures and services. While important, we need to pay more attention to the role of social networks, myths and stories, and the less tangible elements that bond communities together. We must learn from past experience to build successful communities that underpin opportunity and wellbeing for their residents’.
For more information and interviews please contact Helen Crumley, Events and Communications Manager at the Young Foundation on 020 8709 9265 or helen.crumley@youngfoundation.org
Ends
Notes to Editors:
1. The futurecommunities.net website and the background research that informs it were supported by the Homes and Communities Agency, the Improvement and Development Agency and the Chartered Institute of Housing.
2. The research took place in Spring and Summer 2009. Seminars were held bringing together housing, regeneration, and planning professionals with representatives of the third sector and private housing builders.
3. The website includes 13 detailed case studies:
- Castle Vale (Birmingham)
- Dings (Bristol)
- New East Manchester and Salford (Greater Manchester)
- Milton Keynes
- the Goodwin Trust (Hull)
- Coin St, Camden, Limehouse and the work of the East Thames Group (London)
- Walker Riverside and the Byker estate (Newcastle upon Tyne)
- Hammarby Sjöstad (Stockholm)
4. The website is based on a series of seminars and research looking at the experience of regeneration projects in England and further afield. The emerging stories and experiences were synthesized into ten key ingredients for building a community:
- residents in control
- early engagement of future residents
- facilitating social networks
- choosing a stewardship approach
- community ownership and management of assets
- maintaining high quality public space
- promoting environmentally behavior
- achieving good design
- economic development
- the role of the HCA and other community builders.
5. The Homes and Communities Agency is the single, national housing and regeneration agency for England. Our role is to create opportunity for people to live in high quality, sustainable places. We provide funding for affordable housing, bring land back into productive use and improve quality of life by raising standards for the physical and social environment.
The HCA brings together English Partnerships, investment functions of the Housing Corporation, and the Academy for Sustainable Communities, with major delivery programmes of Communities and Local Government.
During the next three financial years the HCA controls a budget of £17.3b
6. The Young Foundation is a centre for social innovation that undertakes research to identify and understand social needs and then develops practical initiatives and institutions to address them.
7. Robert Napier, HCA Chairman, is speaking at a seminar on Mixed Communities at MIPIM on 11 March.