In particular, in the British context, new urbanism represented a challenge to a form of planning in that new urbanism creates the opportunity for communities to take root and develop (Hardy, 2006, p.34). The traditional view in urban issues of Britain is not new due to urban village movement which had the similar perspective before new urbanism was officially recognised.
New urbanism was firstly shaped by Prince Charles in 1989 when he delivered his ideas about creating more traditional and sustainable urban design and architecture in Britain. Meanwhile he promoted the first UK new urbanist project – Poundbury - as the land owner. Following Poundbury, a growing list of new urbanist projects is emerging. In 1990s, a series of social causes led to a desire to create exemplar residential developments in the UK.
These include housing demand in southeast England; concern about the quality of speculative house building products; increasing interest in environmental sustainability; influence of new urbanism in particular; and a new government (A+DS16, 2011). Consequently, this study targets two cases from the UK new urbanist project list. The selection follows a rigid process.
a) UK new urbanist project list
In that this research focuses on the new urbanism, typical new urbanist communities in the UK (as discussed in 2.4.2) are listed in Table 3-7 below.
This table demonstrates the detailed information of project partners, scale, project type, start year, and development status.
Table 3-8: The UK new urbanist community list
Project name Project
16A+DS is fully named Architecture and Design Scotland.
Surrey
10.Sherford,
18.Winfrith,
26.Ivybridge,
Milne Homes,
b) UK urban extension project list
As illustrated in 2.2.2, the first criterion of selection is that the appropriate cases should be an urban/village extension as the research subject defined in 1.1.2 in this study. When the list of Table 3-8 was filtered via this criteria, a new list was created, which is shown in Table 3-8.
Table 3-8: The list of urban/village extensions of the UK new urbanist communities
Telford &
Foundation Regional
Foundation
c) Final selection of case studies in this research
The last selection criterion, as discussed in 2.2.2, is that the research requires the UK urban/village extensions which should be completed or close to completion. The demand can help to provide the opportunities for physical fieldwork. This criterion is also supported by Barnett (2013, p.5), who states that new urbanism is the recognition that design and planning concepts cannot be separated from their implementation. According to the information of development status in Table 3-8, two cases conform to this criterion, and are listed in Table 3-9. The first is Poundbury, which is over half way to completion. And the second is Upton, where six sites have been completed.
For all the others, some of them had been granted planning application, some of them submitted planning applications in 2011, and some of them are at the proposal stage, and so on.
Table 3-9: Final list of case studies in this research
Project name Project
3.4 Summary
Given that new urbanism is mainly developed in America, its fundamental design principles from key American representatives and CNU are listed and summarised. Meanwhile there are also many key players and agencies which are practicing new urbanism. Among them, the UK plays an important role for developing new urbanist communities. Therefore this research selects the UK as a case study resource. In line with the listed and summarised design principles of new urbanism from America, Europe, and the UK, the fundamental theoretical framework including 11 design principles of new urbanism is established. The theoretical framework contains three levels. The highest level is the research aim of creating an urban/village extension. This aim has two meanings with local identity and in harmony with local context, which constructed the middle point. As viewed in Figure 3-2 of Chapter 3, the roles that local identity and in harmony with local context play are the bridge between creating an urban/village extension and 11 design principles of new urbanism. This means that local identity and in harmony with local context can be expressed by the design principles of new urbanism.
If the design principles can promote local identity or harmony with local context, they can help to create a harmonious urban extension. They are:
compactness, connectivity of street pattern, legibility, coherence, mixed use, walkability, pedestrian friendliness, diversity of architecture, symbolic architecture and attractions, sustainability, and community involvement.
Therefore, these 11 key points form the fundamental theoretical framework of design principles of new urbanism in the UK.
Furthermore, in terms of the key American practice – Seaside, Florida, and Key European practice – Heulebrug urban extension, Belgium, it is valuable to know what they have done, and what they have achieved, such as coherence, walkability, connectivity of street pattern, legibility, pedestrian-friendliness, and so on. They provide practical support for this research. With regard to the UK case studies, the last part of this chapter presents an overview of the new urbanist projects in Table 3-7. Finally, following a
rigorous selection process, two cases are confirmed: Poundbury and Upton.
Poundbury is discussed in Chapter 4 and Upton is discussed in Chapter 5.
4 Case study one: Poundbury, Dorchester
Chapter 4 presents an analysis of the first case study, Poundbury. Three topics are covered in this chapter. First, the background to Poundbury is discussed; this includes introduction to Poundbury, and its town, Dorchester, Poundbury and its project partners, and Poundbury’s masterplan and phases.
This is undertaken through a clear and logical narrative on the new development process of Poundbury. The second topic is the design principles of new urbanism at Poundbury followed the interviews with key individuals and documentation analysis. The third topic addressed in this chapter is an analysis of Poundbury based on the defined design principles.
This part mainly investigates whether Poundbury can promote local identity or harmony with local context by applying the key points of new urbanism for creating an urban extension.
According to discussions of the above three topics, it can be summarised that Poundbury is able to promote local identity or harmony with local context as an urban extension via the following design principles:
Compactness
Connectivity of street pattern
Legibility
Coherence
Mixed use
Walkability
Pedestrian-friendliness
Diversity of architecture
Symbolic architecture and attractions
Sustainability
Community involvement
Return visit made by designers after built-up