Indeed - compare your “standard” English city (if there is such a thing) with a continental European (or even a Scottish) one. Population density may not be that different - but that’s often because the major roads are that much more suitable for their traffic levels / including tramways etc.
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Planning Rules Have Failed To link New Homes To Public Transport - study finds.
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Despite having had so-called 'planning' since 1947, a good number of those years have been closer to approving developer-led applications. Canary Wharf was facilitated by the introduction of 'planning-free' Enterprise Zones' without planned infrastructure- the Docklands Light Railway, Limehouse Link Road etc 'threaded through' later as afterthoughts. Trams and Trolleybuses were sacrificed post-war to the car and bus, unlike on 'the continent' where they were appreciated.
The Elizabeth line has enabled developers to take advantage of de-industrialisation, eg the loss of Nestles, HMV/EMI, 'creosote works', Ovaltine, Southall gas works, Old Oak Common sheds, etc well-served by rail direct to a redeveloped Paddington Basin etc etc and into the City and beyond ...
This doesn't disprove the assertion @Meerkat makes, namely high rise (however that is defined) is a significant, if not the predominant, form of permanent dwelling being completed in plenty of appropriate locations. It is significantly more successful even than when Le Corbusier was all the rage - and certainly not "dead as a dodo".
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Not sure the Elizabeth Line ‘reach’ stretches to Kings Langley!
(I think you mean Horlicks)
Which is a meaningless statement. You may as well say that canal barges are a significant, if not predominant form of permament dwelling in … appropriate locations.
The discussion was about what was the overwhelming proportion of new homes.
The facts completely support that it is low rise/houses, as some have the good nature to accept, even if others try to twist out.
It really isnt, notably they arent springing up as they were then, and we have massive low rise development. They also seem to be devoid of any context other than a glass box with smaller investment boxes inside it.
It would be interesting to know.
Its dead as the wider living concept it was, (as rolled out to so many places) today they are, well, merely, investment tools primarily it seems.
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I'm here now
Member
or nonexistent
Thank you Bald Rick, on the ball and on the case as ever. My memory is not what it was- my mum prefered Milo at bedtime and my dad Bournvita- never Ovaltineys- times change and their built manifestations:
Horlicks Factory | New Build Homes Slough | Berkeley Developments
Discover luxury new apartments and penthouses in the restored Horlicks Factory, located in Slough. Get in touch to register your interest or book a viewing.
www.berkeleygroup.co.uk
The railway, encouraging and facilitating industrialisation, de-industrialisation, inter-city and commuting, urbanisation and suburbanisation.
Well, there are now approximately 34 million cars on the roads of the UK and that rising trend doesn't seem to be stopping despite the proliferation of the myriad parcel and food delivery companies roaming the countryside and home working. Most people's dream seems to be towards rural or quasi-rural living with space to park their little-used vehicles - which can be seen clogging up their gardens most of the day, most housing 2+ cars when hiring a taxi occasionally would be much better value. So I say let it rip in the countryside, which is essentially what is happening outside London. The extra millions relocating to the UK from the world aren't coming here for the weather, they want to aspire to luxury car ownership and a higher standard of living. Travel by bus away from London, which is a special case, is for the disadvantaged.
Even in New Towns, the love of the private car has cluttered up the narrow roads never built for mass car ownership, the cycle paths are little used [because away from London that's seen as being a low-class method of transport] and bus ridership has plummeted.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Bus ridership in Milton Keynes is low because the service is appalling, both in quality and coverage.
And MK is designed for the car.
And MK is designed for the car.
Can you explain what you mean please, because the evidence seems to be that high rise living is very much not dead but thriving and spreading as a concept.
Which is good in transport terms as they don’t have parking, are 15 minute city type deals, and close to public transport (and put lots of people into the High Street)
daodao
Established Member
I travel widely in Greater Manchester (south of the Mersey) and Cheshire and have not seen any new high rise residential developments in the last 5 years. I believe that there might be some near Manchester city centre, but they are a tiny fraction of new homes being built and almost irrelevant.
Canary Wharf is completely unrepresentative. It only happened the way it did because the London Docklands Development Corporation bypassed local planning. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the UK.
Cambridge has lots of apartments but no high rise residential buildings. The Marque is the tallest residential building with 9 storeys, 3 of which are a single penthouse on top.
This is London exceptionalism. I met a friend in Cambridge this afternoon. Neither of us are disadvantaged. We both travelled by bus. When I arrived in the old town centre the pavements of Drummer Street and Emmanuel Street were thronged with dozens of people waiting for homeward buses. There are plenty of other places outside London where buses are a significant part of local transport, especially those with well established Park and Ride networks.
It is called buy to leave. Foreign investors buy apartments off plan as a store of value without having any intention of occupying, or renting out. It is common in central London and has also had some impact in Cambridge.
Manchester seems to have way more towers than when I went years ago. Liverpool Waters is planning lots of towers
Apart from Stratford, Acton, Battersea/Embassy Gardens - all with loads of residential towers
I dont think that’s significant. The newer and planned towers round here are build to rent - little communities with garden terraces, gyms, communal spaces etc.
Anyway, the point was that high rise is not dead and is booming around suburban stations with good services.
daodao
Established Member
There is no new high rise housing near any suburban stations in Greater Manchester. New high rise housing is a niche market in the UK, confined essentially to a few parts of London and the centres of a few of the largest conurbations outside it. People are wary of choosing to live in high rise apartments post Grenfell. It has limited relevance to land use planning.
There's a bloomin great lot of it around the city centre though.
Stockport seems to be getting some round the bus station. It will spread as the centre grows and rail commuting expands.
I think you mean many parts of London and many of the towns around it. And London and the southeast is hardly a niche area, a large proportion of the population live here!
norbitonflyer
Established Member
Even when planning permissions do take consideration of transport links, they can come unstuck. Two local examples:
A development near North Sheen station was granted because there was a 4tph service to Waterloo. Then SWR cut it to two.........
A proposed development near Kingston station makes much of the multitude of transport links nearby (namely Kingston station and a multitude of bus routes). But the proposal also includes closing a road and making a neighbouring street two way, reducing the number of lanes in to the town centre from two to one, which will have a devastating effect on the local traffic, including buses, from elsewhere in the borough. (As we experienced during the past year when the bus station was being rebuilt)
A development near North Sheen station was granted because there was a 4tph service to Waterloo. Then SWR cut it to two.........
A proposed development near Kingston station makes much of the multitude of transport links nearby (namely Kingston station and a multitude of bus routes). But the proposal also includes closing a road and making a neighbouring street two way, reducing the number of lanes in to the town centre from two to one, which will have a devastating effect on the local traffic, including buses, from elsewhere in the borough. (As we experienced during the past year when the bus station was being rebuilt)
The volume of buy to leave may not be significant, but, because of undersupply, there is a significant impact on prices, with a ripple effect spreading out all over inner London.
In Stevenage, within walking distance of the station, there are numerous tall blocks being either built new as, or converted to, flats.
More generally, is there a concensus on how high is ''high rise' ?
Flats being built near stations only work in terms of reducing road congestion if the people living in them make a significant proportion of their trips by trains, and when a significant proportion of traffic in the locality would be being made by those people. I don't have any data, but suspect most new-build flats in the UK only have one or two bedrooms and are typically only lived in for a transient period - either young people on their way up the ladder or older people downsizing. I would suspect most road traffic is generated by a different demographic in between - school runs, commuting to places not on the railway network, the weekly big shop etc.
CastlebarKeith
Member
I remember the post-Beeching "Bus replacement services".
Time prove that bus operators were far less diligent operating services to timetables (if operated at all) than B.R, and I clearly remember a director of a fairly large local bus company getting pissed after a seminar, over 30 year ago,
when he said, (quite loudly),
"There is no money in carting an incontinent old biddy to Bingo every Friday. We wanted the garages"
Seeing what has happened to what were once large bus garages around London, (Dorking, Leatherhead, Southall, Hanwell etc), and seeing buses now parked in fields overnight,
there must be a degree of truth in what he said.
Time prove that bus operators were far less diligent operating services to timetables (if operated at all) than B.R, and I clearly remember a director of a fairly large local bus company getting pissed after a seminar, over 30 year ago,
when he said, (quite loudly),
"There is no money in carting an incontinent old biddy to Bingo every Friday. We wanted the garages"
Seeing what has happened to what were once large bus garages around London, (Dorking, Leatherhead, Southall, Hanwell etc), and seeing buses now parked in fields overnight,
there must be a degree of truth in what he said.
Grimsby town
Member
- Joined
- 4 Apr 2011
- Messages
- 644
Got any evidence on people's perception of high rise living? Plenty of people live in luxury flats in Manchester City Centre. Why would they do it when they could afford elsewhere. Living in high rise, I don't think people think about Grenfell at all. The lack of urgency during a recent fire alarm provides evidence for that. Grenfell has made huge advances in fire safety in high rises too.
I think the lack of high rise in Manchester's suburbs is nothing to do with the demand for high-rise living. Its a factor of
- Most local rail stations having pretty terrible frequency
- There still being space in Manchester city centre for more high-rise
- There still being space around Metrolink stations for more high-rise
- Stations in desirable areas having a lack of land around stations
- Stations in less desirable areas having land but not having the potential return to developers
I would suggest the point at which for an average healthy person a lift ceases to be an unnecessary frippery (of course, the exact number of storeys that kicks in at will vary!)
Arguably, the government has determined a limit at the height which the fire service can reach readily, in responding to the Grenfell tragedy.
Which is a much better, as “objective”, definition.
coppercapped
Established Member
According to this Government web site
a high rise building is defined as follows:
a high rise building is defined as follows:
So now we know for certain!
A seven storey building with only one residence would be some gaff!According to this Government web site
a high rise building is defined as follows:
So now we know for certain!
Nottingham59
Established Member
How should people planning New Towns today design local transport?
Assume you are in overall charge of the design of a New Town as part of Labour's drive to build 1.5 million new homes within five years. I'm thinking of large settlements, with as many people as Milton Keynes (pop 300,000), but built at a higher density and thus occupying less land.
The premise is that the towns are based around existing railway lines with spare capacity. Think Greater Cheddington (4-platform station on WCML) or Polesworth Magna (with a new exit off the M42 and an interchange station serving both WCML and HS2 East). Possible locations were discussed in this thread: https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...ns-that-already-have-rail-connections.262579/
But having a central railway station and a commitment to reduce car use doesn't address how people should get to and from that central station.
This thread is to discuss what decisions a town planner should make today about how local transport should work in such a town over the next twenty to forty years..
For what it's worth, these are my initial thoughts:
Assume you are in overall charge of the design of a New Town as part of Labour's drive to build 1.5 million new homes within five years. I'm thinking of large settlements, with as many people as Milton Keynes (pop 300,000), but built at a higher density and thus occupying less land.
The premise is that the towns are based around existing railway lines with spare capacity. Think Greater Cheddington (4-platform station on WCML) or Polesworth Magna (with a new exit off the M42 and an interchange station serving both WCML and HS2 East). Possible locations were discussed in this thread: https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...ns-that-already-have-rail-connections.262579/
But having a central railway station and a commitment to reduce car use doesn't address how people should get to and from that central station.
This thread is to discuss what decisions a town planner should make today about how local transport should work in such a town over the next twenty to forty years..
For what it's worth, these are my initial thoughts:
- Footpaths and bike lanes. Yes, obviously. There should be a traffic free route from all properties to the city centre. Should bike lanes have canopies to encourage use in winter? How do you deal with road crossings: Underpasses or pedestrian crossings? Should bike lanes include provision for Pedelecs (top speed 25-30mph, compared to (legal) e-bikes currently limited to 15mph? Where should you park your bike? Or should you take it with you on the train?
- Trams / LRT. Trams work very well in places like Karlsruhe and Manchester, but they are expensive and inflexible, with many single points of failure. My experience from Nottingham is that the tram system needs a large local bus network to provide tram replacement buses when a tram line gets blocked. If you go for trams today, should they be traditional with a driver? Or semi-autonomous with tram captains, like DLR? Or fully autonomous from the start, like the Luton Airport Shuttle? Should they be at street level like Nottingham, or on segregated viaducts like DLR and much of Metrolink? How do you plan today for autonomous tram operation when that becomes feasible in ten or twenty years time?
- Buses. Buses are great in a biggish city, but they do get held up in traffic and are expensive to run late at night when patronage is less. But if one bus breaks down, other buses can simple drive past, rather than getting stuck for hours like a tram. What would a good bus network look like? How should you design bus stops, bus lanes and dedicated busways to enable autonomous operation if and when that becomes feasible? How should electric buses get recharged?
- Roads and cars. How should your New Town plan its road network? The grid system in Milton Keynes seems to work very well, and every part of the city is within a few minutes drive of every other, but this layout undermines effective local public transport and requires a lot of space for roads and for parking. I don't know how people in MK who can't drive get about.
Will people still have and want cars in twenty years time when full autonomous driving becomes common? Will future provision be autonomous taxis like Waymo? (Except at peak times when autonomous busses would be able to carry more people in limited road space?)
- Battery trolley buses. These are probably my prefered solution for local transport. With wires in the city centre, they can recharge on the move, rather than plugging in like an electric bus. They can go round obstructions in the street, or come off the wires entirely and take a detour if necessary. Will autonomous trolley buses be feasible one day? When? How should you design bus stops, bus lanes, segregated busways and legal frameworks to accommodate autonomous trolley buses when they become feasible? And how to enable them sooner?