Post by Sherford on Oct 18, 2008 9:41:45 GMT
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Eco homes: England's greenest and most pleasant new town is on its way
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 18/10/2008
Sherford will soon be the place to live the eco life, says Adam Edwards
The plain black and white cast-iron sign at the empty crossroads in the heart of the South Hams, Devon, reads Higher Sherford and points towards a small group of farm buildings and acres of undulating green fields. The hamlet is as rural as are its immediate neighbours, East and West Sherford, that between them make up the basin of land, sandwiched between Plympton and Plymstock, east of Plymouth.
Wiltshire vision: the Georgian-style High Street in Sherford, Devon, will be modelled on the pretty market town of Marlborough – but with fewer cars
By the end of next year, that ageing sign will point to a herd of bulldozers carving out a 1,000-acre town that is intended to be Britain's greenest settlement, with cars banned from some areas, three-quarters of the buildings fitted with solar panels and a wide High Street modelled on the Wiltshire market town of Marlborough.
Despite the loss of more than a mile of hedgerow and a plan for wind turbines that will alter the view of a nearby Iron Age hill fort, nobody is objecting. Everyone is as keen as GM-free mustard on what will in future be called just plain Sherford.
For unlike the Government's proposed eco-towns that have raised such ire across the country, Sherford has been embraced by locals - thanks to the simple trick of including any objectors in the design process.
''Before outline planning permission was applied for, the local authority worked hard to get all interested parties on board,'' says Paul Tyler, the major developments officer for South Hams district council, in whose area the new town will be built.
Eco homes homepage
''We worked with the community and the developers. We had a range of stakeholders from transport to drainage, who were consulted from the beginning. All the information on what the town was going to look like was agreed long before the basic proposal was placed before the council.''
It was more than a decade ago that regional planners agreed there was a strategic need for a new town to meet the demands of growth in Plymouth. An area around Sherford was deemed ideal for development. But when the exact site was picked, there were several thousand objections, particularly from the nearby village of Brixton.
South Hams council did not go down the usual route of sprawling red-brick hutches. Instead, the public and the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment were invited to help.
The Prince's Foundation, a charity set up by the Prince of Wales to help with planning design and building on a human scale, was responsible for Poundbury, the town in Dorset that was built on Duchy of Cornwall land in the 1990s. This time, however, the foundation could not just do as it pleased. For the land where Sherford is to be built is owned by the developer Red Tree.
''Work started with a design exercise with local people to create a vision for the community,'' says Hank Dittmar, chief executive of the Prince's Foundation. ''It was after this consultation that the idea of a single town, rather than several small neighbourhoods, emerged.''
Other ideas included a town hall, a square, and a Georgian-style high street, which the designers claim will be the first purpose-built high street created in more than a century. There will be a health centre, neighbourhood centres, three primary schools and one secondary school.
A community park the size of 300 football pitches will be landscaped and there will be a dedicated cricket pitch and a bowling green.
No buildings will be higher than five storeys. Homes, shops and workplaces will be within walking distance of each other to reduce car use, and all waste, including water and sewerage, will be recycled to cut carbon emissions.
By the end of the design process, when each of the above had been included in the outline planning permission, almost all the objections had been dealt with.
"We have decided to make the best of it," says Brixton parish councillor Derek Curtis. "We had all been to see Poundbury and architecturally it was much better than anything local councils and house-builders had done in the past."
Dittmar adds: "We believe that successful towns, old and new, share certain design characteristics which, when deliberately applied to today's town-making, result in enduring, thriving neighbourhoods that don't damage the environment.
"It's a credit to all involved in Sherford that the South Hams and Plymouth stand to inherit an outstanding example of sustainable urbanism that is bound to benefit generations to come."
Or to put it another way, with luck, by 2020 the old road sign will not be a poignant reminder of how green life was before an eco-town was embraced.
Eco homes: England's greenest and most pleasant new town is on its way
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 18/10/2008
Sherford will soon be the place to live the eco life, says Adam Edwards
The plain black and white cast-iron sign at the empty crossroads in the heart of the South Hams, Devon, reads Higher Sherford and points towards a small group of farm buildings and acres of undulating green fields. The hamlet is as rural as are its immediate neighbours, East and West Sherford, that between them make up the basin of land, sandwiched between Plympton and Plymstock, east of Plymouth.
Wiltshire vision: the Georgian-style High Street in Sherford, Devon, will be modelled on the pretty market town of Marlborough – but with fewer cars
By the end of next year, that ageing sign will point to a herd of bulldozers carving out a 1,000-acre town that is intended to be Britain's greenest settlement, with cars banned from some areas, three-quarters of the buildings fitted with solar panels and a wide High Street modelled on the Wiltshire market town of Marlborough.
Despite the loss of more than a mile of hedgerow and a plan for wind turbines that will alter the view of a nearby Iron Age hill fort, nobody is objecting. Everyone is as keen as GM-free mustard on what will in future be called just plain Sherford.
For unlike the Government's proposed eco-towns that have raised such ire across the country, Sherford has been embraced by locals - thanks to the simple trick of including any objectors in the design process.
''Before outline planning permission was applied for, the local authority worked hard to get all interested parties on board,'' says Paul Tyler, the major developments officer for South Hams district council, in whose area the new town will be built.
Eco homes homepage
''We worked with the community and the developers. We had a range of stakeholders from transport to drainage, who were consulted from the beginning. All the information on what the town was going to look like was agreed long before the basic proposal was placed before the council.''
It was more than a decade ago that regional planners agreed there was a strategic need for a new town to meet the demands of growth in Plymouth. An area around Sherford was deemed ideal for development. But when the exact site was picked, there were several thousand objections, particularly from the nearby village of Brixton.
South Hams council did not go down the usual route of sprawling red-brick hutches. Instead, the public and the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment were invited to help.
The Prince's Foundation, a charity set up by the Prince of Wales to help with planning design and building on a human scale, was responsible for Poundbury, the town in Dorset that was built on Duchy of Cornwall land in the 1990s. This time, however, the foundation could not just do as it pleased. For the land where Sherford is to be built is owned by the developer Red Tree.
''Work started with a design exercise with local people to create a vision for the community,'' says Hank Dittmar, chief executive of the Prince's Foundation. ''It was after this consultation that the idea of a single town, rather than several small neighbourhoods, emerged.''
Other ideas included a town hall, a square, and a Georgian-style high street, which the designers claim will be the first purpose-built high street created in more than a century. There will be a health centre, neighbourhood centres, three primary schools and one secondary school.
A community park the size of 300 football pitches will be landscaped and there will be a dedicated cricket pitch and a bowling green.
No buildings will be higher than five storeys. Homes, shops and workplaces will be within walking distance of each other to reduce car use, and all waste, including water and sewerage, will be recycled to cut carbon emissions.
By the end of the design process, when each of the above had been included in the outline planning permission, almost all the objections had been dealt with.
"We have decided to make the best of it," says Brixton parish councillor Derek Curtis. "We had all been to see Poundbury and architecturally it was much better than anything local councils and house-builders had done in the past."
Dittmar adds: "We believe that successful towns, old and new, share certain design characteristics which, when deliberately applied to today's town-making, result in enduring, thriving neighbourhoods that don't damage the environment.
"It's a credit to all involved in Sherford that the South Hams and Plymouth stand to inherit an outstanding example of sustainable urbanism that is bound to benefit generations to come."
Or to put it another way, with luck, by 2020 the old road sign will not be a poignant reminder of how green life was before an eco-town was embraced.