In the current climate, where there is a high demand for new homes within an urban area, the land at the fringes (often termed greenfield) becomes zoned from a planning perspective to help facilitate growth, and this is usually in tandem with other policies which encourage brownfield sites (for example sites already within a city that may be derelict industrial space) to deliver new residential development too.
This is a very common approach globally and tends to lead to higher density development in existing central brownfield areas and lesser density (per acre or hectare or sqm) on the fringes where the space constraints are less. In order to deliver new developments to adhere to zero carbon principles inevitably means the construction of both the homes and the supporting infrastructure will be in excess of a traditional new housing urban extension, so to enable it to occur there needs to be certain criteria in place to help deliver it that sets it aside from the traditional route. The increased costs associated with this kind of development inevitably hits the land value in the overall development financial stack, but what is hoped will be achieved in the future is for this to adjust if more and more developments such as this come forward, or even become the norm, and the supply chain adapts to focusing on delivering greener materials in bulk, and sub contractors adapt to installing these newer products competitively. A key determinant is whether the demand for new homes is so strong that having legislation to enable a suppressed land price will still encourage landowners to sell. In the UK the Government researched in depth suitable sites for urban extensions that could fit this criteria and Bicester was chosen as one of them. The key attractions for picking Bicester against other areas was the existence of very good train and road links already in place, the fact that there was 1,000 acres of farmland that could fit into a masterplan to deliver circa 6,000 new homes and ancillary uses, and it's overall strategic location within the south east of England (which is an area where the demand for new homes is huge). Having 1,000 acres of farmland available meant that negotiation with the landowners could be on a very large scale, so even though the price per acre (or hectare or sqm) may be less than competing traditional developments, the overall quantum to the farmers still made it highly attractive. Once the land is identified as being potentially suitable for such a development, it is then important to establish a robust legislative framework that only allows residential development to occur there if it is to zero carbon standards. In the UK this was achieved by having a Supplementary Planning Document (*) put together at a national level, that could slot into the strategic Local Plan put together by the planners at a Local Level. This led to the promoters of the site at Bicester to formally submit a masterplan for the site, and once approved, the masterplan could be a supplement to the Local Plan for within the local Plan period (which runs until 2031). Without having these legislative and planning tools in place, it would not be possible to ensure only a zero carbon development could be delivered. Why is this important ?. Climate change and the fact that finite unrenewable resources are being reduced year on year means that we cannot simply continue as before forever (**). There has to be change, and the UK as part of the EU and as part of wider international groups, has committed to meeting certain targets on climate change going forward. It is therefore of great importance that it can be shown that large urban extensions can be delivered to these principles to show the wider house building industry it is possible, and is indeed possible to achieve with the normal profit levels associated with risky speculative residential development (which is normally expected to be around 20% if funding is to be attracted to the development). (*) www.gov.uk/government/publications/eco-towns-planning-policy-statement-1-supplement (**) Kyoto Protocol
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AuthorGerald Walker. BA Hons Economics and Studying for a Masters at UNSW in Property and Development Archives
June 2017
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