Greeny News

Planners are going back to the ideals of Victorian model towns to meet the present-day challenges of community cohesion and environmental sustainability

Do you have a long commute to work? If so, you're a dinosaur â€" your ways will soon become extinct. Or perhaps you cycle or walk to work, but return in the evening to a neighbourhood containing few friends or co-workers. If so, that lost sense of community is being linked to health and well-being issues. Worse still, those homeworkers hibernating away from human contact. The answer? The Victorian philanthropists' model towns such as Saltaire and Letchworth Garden City. Let me explain …

on Merseyside and Bournville in Birmingham.

So pleasant and leafy were these towns, that as the mills closed and 20th-century capitalism rumbled on, so the 4x4s and BMWs rumbled in. Today, they are wealthy middle-class suburbs, the once alcohol-free environs making way for well-stocked wine cellars.

However, the ideas and ideals behind their construction are beginning to re-emerge. The urban expansion of the industrial revolution is happening again in the developing world, most notably in China, prompting the same questions about provision for workers. Europe and America are reflecting on their own cities and workplaces, and questioning their appropriateness for the challenges of our age; health and happiness, community cohesion and environmental sustainability.

In terms of health and happiness, according to Jody Aked, project manager at New Economics Foundation 's Center for the well-being , nothing makes us glummer than the daily commute. "A study in the US of 900 or so participants showed that, of all daily activities, commuting was the one that led to the least happiness â€" sex was the one that led to most," she says.

On top of that, replacing a car with a bike or a swift pair of feet will yield obvious health benefits: "The extent to which we engage with our surroundings, and walk instead of taking a car, has a positive impact on how we experience our lives."

Building environmentally sustainable communities with sufficient employment and housing while reducing the need for the car provides an attractive model. The Dutch set the tone with new cities such as Almere (completed in 2007). Similar eco-town and urban developments are under way around the world, such as Tianjin, China, and Barangaroo, Australia. Ros Diamond, founder of Diamond Architects and a specialist in urban regeneration, believes these models are of critical importance: "One of the discussions about sustainability is encouraging people to live, work and have leisure facilities which are in close proximity. Such new towns are being generated by necessity."

And not simply a town planning or environmental necessity, but a necessity for our working lives too, argues Professor Binna Kandola, business psychologist and co-founder of Pearn Kandola: "People working within the same community, and seeing one another all the time, form what evolutionary psychologists see as integral to a strong community. What such live/work communities are doing, is working with the way human beings are, as opposed to working against it, as remote working and globalised teams perhaps do." The most ambitious project of this kind was Dongtan, planned for Shanghai. Dr Andrew Davies, now a reader in innovation management, Imperial College, worked with Arup on the project. "The idea of Dongtan was to be self-sufficient. People would live and work there in eco industry, there would be an institute for sustainability. The intention was, that by 2050, half a million people would live there, being close to zero carbon."

The project is now on hold due to a local mayor being jailed for corruption, but the lessons learned from the development stages have fed directly into similar smaller projects. And the ambition lives on in Masdar City, Abu Dhabi. "You wouldn't move here for the beaches, that's for sure", says the Masdar project architect Gerard Evenden, of Foster and Partners. Its plot is merely a spare (and square) patch of desert next to the airport. Yet it's famous for zero-carbon credentials, and buildings that utilise traditional Middle Eastern materials and design alongside technological innovations: shade is offered by narrow streets, dense areas of trees and "solar shading"; it is powered by a solar farm and heated by geothermal bore holes. But Evenden is even happier talking about its social innovations. "Masdar is rethinking how people live, how you create communities. If we want to avoid building cities of the past, we have to start thinking about this integration."

The project is two and a half years in, and the first residents â€" students and academics of the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology â€" are due to move in this year. The city will grow in part based on the feedback of the early residents, and businesses, including General Electric, have committed to housing operations there. No one will be further than 250 metres from public transport. Most, however, may prefer to walk the shaded, car-free streets of its 6 sq km to admire the architecture and converse with friends. As Evenden says, while such experiences are not impossible outside Masdar, the chances of you crossing the road for a chat greatly diminish when it's an eight-lane highway.

Intriguingly, we don't have to go far back into our social history to find strong live/work communities. The mining towns killed off by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s ticked many boxes. If such communities were rebuilt on a larger scale, and this time offered diverse, safe and satisfying work, then you'd have the ingredients for happiness and productivity.

The Victorian visionaries knew it and today's architects know it: "The early 21st-century city's high density/low public transportation model is not responding to what we might call 'happiness generation'," says Diamond.

But while the free market rules, the last word on live/work communities in the UK could be left to… Tesco. The retailer's seemingly limitless plans for expansion are now leading it into planning and developing new town projects, such as one recently approved at Bromley-by-Bow in east London that includes provision for 454 homes, 17 shops, a school, library, hotel and, of course, a supermarket.

The idea of a town where Tesco would be the main employer and dwarf other retailers is one Davies laments: "It just contradicts everything â€" you need diversity, you need competition. It is the opposite of sustainable."

If you feel the red mist descending, then soothe yourself with Evenden's words on Masdar: "The answer is to design and develop cities for their environment, and give people as much choice as we can in their lives within the city. All the lessons learned at Masdar we can take into the wider world."

Walking past nameless neighbours, sucking in exhaust fumes or swaying in packed train carriages for hours on end, is unsustainable in so many ways. "Masdar will become the norm in the future," says Evenden. "It has to be."

Living the dream: Poundbury

On the outskirts of Dorchester, Dorset, sits an unusual urban community. The buildings look quaintly old, yet brand new. In fact, no building dates back further than the 1990s. For this is Poundbury, the culmination of perpetual architect-botherer Prince Charles putting his money where his mouth was, based on his 1989 book A Vision of Britain.

Home to several hundred people, it also houses businesses including Dorset Cereals and (mirroring Cadbury's Bournville) the House of Dorchester chocolate factory. The two words that crop up most when talking to residents are "nice" and "clean". The so-called Poundbury Code covers the sublime (no litter or dog mess), the ridiculous (black bin bags only) and the slightly scary â€" a "three strikes and you're out" rule for those deemed troublemakers. It is mostly self-governing, however, and Andy Joslin, production manager at House of Dorchester, says: "I think it's good people have to follow rules, it's part of why I moved here. If you keep yourself to yourself, it's fine."

Harriet McKay, a recent graduate, lives in Poundbury and works for Dorset Cereals. She too likes the area, and her walk to work is "just one song on the iPod away". As for things to do, she mostly heads out to Dorchester. Her colleague Rob Ward, also early-20s, attempts: "Last weekend we went to the market … and there was a square dance," before admitting, "it can be a bit middle-aged".

Achieving a live/work community may be some way off. McKay and Ward reckon they are two of only five in the 100-plus Dorset Cereals workforce to live there. Joslin, similarly, one of only two or three at House of Dorchester. "Properties are just too expensive for most," he says. Yet the principles of community, employment and sustainability are stronger here than most UK planning projects.

"Initially I moved here for my first job and to see what happens â€" but living and working in the same community is definitely something I would look for in a future job," says Ward