ABSTRACT
Density targets demand new housing models, and in many ways offer architects an opportunity to create neighbourhoods that can foster strong mixed-tenure communities, while also delivering housing typologies that support 21st-century lifestyles. While the UK housing crisis has tended to focus the design debate on the challenges of high-density inner-city projects, the vast majority of the UK’s needs over the coming decades will be met through the delivery of lower-density developments. Government and housing agencies are aware that the Garden City movement of the early 20th century provides a better model for living than the mid-century suburban sprawl that seems to attract almost universal derision. Clear design ‘narratives’ that give shape to defined settlement edges and coherent spatial structures are, in turn, supported by clearly defined hierarchies of streets, lanes and mews, which are given domestic scale and character by the use of innovative housing typologies.
