ninme

The Times - Looking up
If our buildings are taller, our green spaces will be safer.

There need be no conflict. The culprits are the planners, architects and bureaucrats, who insist on building the wrong kind of housing. The baleful architecture of the 60s and 70s has not only halted further construction of the hated tower blocks; it has also ensured that no one is now ready to contemplate any high-rise schemes. This is absurd. If ribbon development was the bane of the 30s, the housing favoured today is little better: sprawling estates of identical boxes with pocket handkerchief gardens, faux Georgian mansions, occasional pastiches of Victorian terraces. This is wasteful of land. The Government says 60 per cent of new housing should be on brownfield sites. The target is too low. The National Trust’s call for 80 per cent is fully achievable - but only if builders are ready to go up instead of out.

Scandinavia, for years, has achieved high density and environmental economy, as well as a sense of community, by building blocks of about eight storeys, tight enough to foster a community and well interspersed with open space. Architectural ratios of light, space and distance mean that these can house as many people in the area as isolated tower blocks. Could not the same be done in any dormitory town in the crowded South East? High Wycombe is notoriously long, low and sprawling: medium-rise developments would create a more concentrated, livelier centre. The same is true anywhere - Acton, Plymouth or Solihull. The trust is right to focus on the importance of green spaces. Good, imaginative architecture should combine space, density and community, and environmental awareness. Only then will our heritage be saved.

ninme bursts into grateful tears