Design vision unveiled for 10,000-home Midlands new town
Plans for how an ‘exemplary’ new town in Worcestershire could look and feel will come under public scrutiny this month, with hopes that Britain’s latest wave of new towns can meet government housing targets without repeating the planning missteps of the past.
A consultation on a proposed design strategy for Wychavon, a planned 10,000-home community based around Worcestershire Parkway railway station, was launched today.
The 2,700-acre site is one of 12 communities earmarked by a government task-force as locations for the next phase of planned new towns, each designed for 10,000 homes or more.
The government’s plans hark back to an earlier era of grand town-building programmes in post-war Britain, which saw three tranches of large-scale community building deliver more than 30 new towns between 1946 and 1970, including Redditch and Telford in the West Midlands.
The lofty principles which underpinned those early waves of new towns were based on the English “garden cities” concept, deployed extensively across the 1970’s wave of town building as a way to separate residents from traffic, and prevent excessive urbanisation.
But critics of of the new towns, which extensively employed designs such as the offshoot Radburn concept, said their layouts led to isolated and disconnected estate-communities, with higher rates of crime – resulting in decades-long renewal programmes aimed at smoothing out the rough edges of the spikier 1970’s designs.
Now, at least six decades after Britain’s last wave of new towns, master planners in Wychavon are trying to learn from the past as they set out how the new community will take shape.
Outlining a vision for how the town could grow between now and a target date of 2041, the document includes six key principles for developers and planners to consider, centred around “landscape-led” development, transport links and sustainability.
The Spatial Development Strategy released by Wychavon District Council today is accompanied with a call for public feedback on the proposals.
Wychavon new town will be an infrastructure-led development of over 10,000 homes, developers say. Credit: Wychavon Town
“Wychavon Town will be a resilient and cohesive community that promotes and facilitates healthy lifestyles, encourages educational activities, leisure and access to jobs for a strong community life,” according to the consultation document.
“The town centre will be at the heart of Wychavon Town, with higher density residential neighbourhoods, along with office space, retail, indoor leisure, a transport hub, nursery/primary/secondary education and health/other community facilities.
“The design and delivery of all development and infrastructure will be fundamentally influenced by how they can contribute to the sustainability and climate resilient goals of the new town, across movement, energy use, and the enhancement and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystems.”
A key ambition for the town, as outlined in the strategy, is to “set an example” for how sustainably new communities can be built – promising a unique plan for sustainable transport networks based around the town’s already-existing railway station, which is says will “limit the need to use private vehicles for many work or leisure trips”.
An illustrative masterplan for Wychavon shows a mixed-use town centre with higher-density residential zones clustered around Worcestershire Parkway station, with allocations for large-scale employment areas closer to the M5 motorway at the north of the town.
“We recognise that we are living in a time of unprecedented housing need set in the context of a climate crisis,” said Cllr Richard Morris, leader of Wychavon District Council.
“It has never been more important for us to balance the needs of competing interests to ensure that we plan well for sustainable economic, environmental and social outcomes.”
The strategy document and accompanying consultation can be found on the Wychavon Town website.
The consultation will run until Tuesday, 17 February.
