Consultation and advisory work
Joseph Rowntree Foundation
'Achieving a Suburban Renaissance - The Policy Challenges' - July 2007
Dr Nick Hubble sat on the advisory panel for this major research project undertaken on behalf of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and published by the Town and Country Planning Association.
The Chesham Building Society
It's a Good Life in Modern Suburbia - June 2006
The Centre's Director, Dr Vesna Goldsworthy, acted as an advisor for the Chesham Building Society's 'Suburban Living' Report, published on 27 June 2006. The report investigates how suburban life has changed since the 1970s and shows how 70 per cent of the national population think suburban living is best.
English Partnership
Zero Carbon Emission Workshop - March 2006
Nick Hubble attended a Collaborative Workshop on the Principles of Zero Carbon Emission Neighbourhoods in the Contemporary Suburban Context in Milton Keynes on 8-9 March 2006. Alongside the discussion of various environmentally sustainable features such as Sustainable Drainage Systems (SUDS) and micro-generation suites, we discussed the social and cultural factors that account for the huge expansion and popularity of the suburbs.
Nick gave a presentation explaining that since the erosion of traditional lifestyles in the 19th century, modern life has been characterised by a precarious and ever-shifting balance between what is public and what is private. In practice, individuals and families negotiate this changing landscape by constantly adjusting their consumption of private goods and public services, and the suburban way of life has evolved to facilitate this complex social manoeuvring. Its combination of a private interior and immediate transport access to a global sprawl of shops and services makes it the prime location for self-identity creation in an increasingly rootless world.
In other words, the suburban way of life is overwhelmingly popular because it best meets the social needs of individuals and families in the modern world. Therefore, he argued, in order to spread the principles of sustainable living throughout society they have to be incorporated within the suburbs. Rather than seeing suburban lifestyles as the opposite of sustainable lifestyles, environmentalists and planners should seek to embrace the suburbs as offering the best prospect for the necessary mass take-up of sustainability.
The audience received this very enthusiastically and genuinely agreed that such an approach did open up a new way of thinking about the mass creation of sustainable suburbs. The aim of the workshop was to collaborate in drawing up a draft development brief for the construction of Oxley Park East, a residential neighbourhood to be built on a greenfield site as part of the ongoing expansion of Milton Keynes.
One of the principles that drew wide support was that 'the development should be an exemplary site that promotes the possibility of a sustainable suburban lifestyle both to people living in the surrounding conventional suburbs and to the general public'. Discussion of specific targets was much more intense because there are a number of potential ways of meeting the requirements of environmental sustainability, but again concord was found by approaching the question from the angle of what would accord with existing suburban lifestyles. For instance, micro-generation really starts to look like the solution to sustainable energy provision once it is considered how easily taking over the means of household energy production can be marketed as the next logical step after home ownership.
The desire to be king or queen of one's own castle, which used to be seen as the shameful and selfish secret of suburbia, can be openly celebrated once it is extended to meet the genuine responsibility of becoming king or queen of one's own 'environmental footprint'. Sustainable suburbs present a genuine opportunity to preserve our quality of life for future generations because their lower housing density enhances biodiversity and enables self-sufficiency in terms of energy production. Such settlements, with large homes and e-connections which will permit work at home (reducing commuting) and a global contact range, will prove infinitely more adaptable then high-density urban residential areas to the changes in modern life which will be enforced by the eventual expiry of fossil fuels.
