Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 2.3
Key aims of the urban village approach. (Source: Department of the Environment,
Tran
sport and the Regions
1999
)
1.
Resource consumption should be minimized
2.
Local environmental capital should be protected and enhanced
3.
Design quality should be high
4.
Residents should enjoy a high quality of life
5.
Equity and social inclusion should be increased
6.
Participation in governance should be as broad as possible
7.
The community should be commercially viable, i.e. not requiring public subsidies to main-
tain its performance on the other criteria
8.
Integration of environmental and quality of life objectives—a sustainable settlement would
perform well on all the first seven themes, but not some at the expense of others
the United Kingdom through a publication entitled
Urban Villages: a concept for
creating mixed-use urban developments on a sustainable scale
(Aldous
1992
). In
this publication the urban village was outlined as a means to achieve more human
scale, mixed-use and well-designed places in cities, although in Europe it often also
entails a focus on job creation in the development. A number of key aims can be
identified in this approach, especially the stress on sustainability (Table
2.3
).
The UV idea embraces the familiar NU themes of compact form, mixed land
uses, and mixed housing types, but also focuses heavily on the urban village as
point of employment and extends into environmental and sustainable issues. By
developing these intra-urban villages for a population of between 3000 and 5000,
with local shops, mixed housing (including public housing), schools, transporta-
tion networks, social and public spaces, and local employment centres, so residents
should become relatively self-contained. In short, an urban village should include
characteristics such as variety in social character and housing, high quality design
and construction, a people-friendly environment, contain mixed land uses, high lev-
els of activity, and flexibility. In Britain these ideas have been popular, resulting in
a number of projects such as Greenwich Millennium Village (London); Allerton
Bywater Millennium Community (near Leeds); New Islington Millennium Com-
munity (Manchester); South Lynn Millennium Community (King's Lynn); Telford
Millennium Community; Oakgrove Millennium Community (Milton Keynes); and
Hastings Millennium Community. Most reviews have argued that not all of these
have been resoundingly successful in terms of the sustainability criteria identified
above. For example, an external assessment of five of these communities on all of
the dimensions above showed high levels of variations in outcomes, and many with
poor results in particular areas (Department of the Environment, Transport and the
Regions, March
1999
).
Implementation of the UV ideas in Britain was also helped by the Prince of
Wales's well-known criticism of British architecture and community design (HRH
