TCPA: Variety key to successful communities

Wednesday, 19 December 2007 12:00 AM

The range and variety of housing on offer is an essential factor in the creation of "socially successful communities" according to the Town and County Planning Association (TCPA).

In order to create economically and socially viable neighborhoods planners must ensure developments contain properties suitable for a range of inhabitants, says the organisation.

"It is important to provide different size housing units, so you can have houses for whole families to live in, or flats for an elderly person or a young professional couple, so there is a housing supply to suit the different needs of different people," said Kate Henderson, a spokesperson for the TCPA.

However, this has not always been the case in the past.

"One of the problems in the past has been building mono-tenure housing estates in the 1960s and 1970s, whereas new thinking is much more cohesive, and about integrating people," continued Ms Henderson.

"We need to create not just houses but socially successful communities. You can do that through design and having a mix of tenures."

High standards have also been neglected due to a high level of demand in the housing market, according to the TCPA.

"It could be that some of them have been done cheaply or have been poor designed, or really a lack of strategic vision in what they're trying to create, and perhaps a lack of asking people who are going to live there what they want," continued Ms Henderson.

"Because the housing market has been so buoyant, people have been able to get away with building much smaller places, and the buy-to-let market has dictated that as well."

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