Launched in Parliament yesterday with Peter Aldous MP, the guide, called ‘How good could it be? A guide to building better places’, come as support for a new generation of garden cities and new towns grows, including approval from all three major political party leaders.
Kate Henderson, TCPA Chief Executive said:
“The TCPA, which began as the Garden Cities Association in 1899, has produced this plain-English guide in recognition of the vital role of communities in developing and delivering large scale new communities – especially in gaining consent for high quality, beautiful and inclusive developments.
New communities offer a powerful opportunity to re-connect people and planning and realise the Government’s ambitions for greater community empowerment. The Garden Cities were fired by a sense of idealism and enthusiasm, with numerous voluntary organisations. Today, we can go further, placing local people at the heart of the process from the outset in order to shape our new communities and put in place longer term community governance models.”
The publication is a short and simple plain-English guide for communities that want to grasp the garden city agenda, highlighting the opportunities that incorporating Garden City principles at the local level can bring. These include opportunities for self build, allotments, community land trusts, management of local parks and community facilities and community planning.
John Lewis, Chief Executive of the Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation said:
“We’re always happy to support the development of new Garden Cities and better places to live. Creating successful places is all about involving the existing community, and future communities, so this guide is an essential contribution."
Over the last two years the TCPA has been leading a re-invigorated campaign for a new generation of beautiful, inclusive and sustainable garden cities. In early 2014 the Association will launch two new publications: firstly, a good practice guide addressing how you can look after the public realm and community assets in the long term as well as retain some financial benefit for the community in perpetuity; and secondly, an amendment to the New Towns Act to show how the Development Corporation model can be updated to allow greater democratic accountability through local authority involvement.
The TCPA will also be launching a year-long study into Britain’s existing New Towns in order to learn the lessons of the past about what does and does not work in bringing forward large scale new communities.
