News

Landscape Architects welcome 3 million new homes but demand landscape strategies to avert past mistakes

11th July 2007

A radical approach to house building is demanded by the Landscape Institute, the professional body representing Britain’s landscape architects.

‘Three million new homes will create a vast new landscape. We need to think carefully about what that will look like and how it change life for all of us,’ said Nigel Thorne, President of the Landscape Institute.

Whilst welcoming the Prime Minister’s commitment to building more homes announced today in his Legislative Programme, Mr Thorne said: ‘We must learn from the successes and failures of the past. High density developments are not in principle unwelcome but the tower blocks of the 1960s for example created unloved and unused public spaces. Too much recent development has marked a return to high density living with little attention paid to the quality of the landscape in which the buildings are set. Landscape is extremely important. The more dense the building, the more important the need for good quality space both private and shared. We need to think about place-making not just units of housing.’

He continued ‘We also need to respect the best of our heritage. Some of our most successful estates – the ones that people enjoy living in – centre on the Georgian squares in the heart of our cities. They have successfully combined dense urban living with high-quality shared public and private spaces. Although the quantity of homes is important, the government needs to lead the way in changing our thinking about how we are creating new landscapes through house-building whether that’s in cities or in the countryside’.

Executive-style estates in the country are not the answer. Valuable land is wasted in the provision of detached houses with garages; suburban developments with cul-de-sacs and estates that create dark alley-ways and no-go areas for their residents. Landscape architects, architects, planners and engineers need to work together to create new places featuring homes and public spaces and other amenities said Mr Thorne.

Landscape architects are problem solvers, he said, people who use design skills to resolve conflicting objectives, bringing together human, technical and environmental systems. The severe housing crisis combined with the need to adapt to climate change pose huge challenges to the design and environment professions but it is only within the context of a progressive landscape policy, that progress will be made.

Issued by the Landscape Institute Press Office: 020 7299 4500