Community crusader

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Community crusader

By Graham Norwood

Published: October 3 2008 22:06 | Last updated: October 7 2008 06:44

For someone so closely linked to English tradition, the Prince of Wales is an unlikely person to be challenging the way cities and towns are built around the world. Yet, while most US and European policymakers and property insiders fret about falling house prices and mortgage availability in their home markets, Prince Charles is devoting increasing amounts of time, and quite a few public speeches, to crusading for what he calls “place-making” in areas as far from Buckingham Palace as Jamaica, Sierra Leone and Beijing.

The first place he tested his philosophy – derived from a movement called “sustainable urbanism” in the UK and “new urbanism” in the US – was Poundbury, a 2,500-home village in the county of Dorset, south-west England. The project launched in 1995, drawing both high praise and harsh criticism. But now the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment is spreading the model not only to other parts of the UK but also to places such as Rose Town, in West Kingston, Jamaica.

This used to be a thriving community of 7,000 people but decades of violence have forced many to leave. Today’s 2,500 residents walk along streets lined with derelict buildings or shacks made from breeze blocks and crudely covered with corrugated iron roofs. Abandoned cars can be spotted on some roads and a few routes are blocked to prevent armed gangs storming the neighbourhood.

“It’s heartbreaking,” says Melta Brown, a volunteer worker at Rose Town’s community centre. “Nothing’s really happened here for 30 years and the place has become a no-go area.” The Prince’s foundation is therefore trying to effect an ambitious transformation. At the centre of the plan – produced by US architecture company Duany Plater-Zyberk after consultation with 300 local individuals and groups – is a community square linking the hitherto warring factions of north and south Rose Town.

Some existing homes will be renovated, with other new low-density housing built nearby and sold to locals. The scheme also includes shops and facilities for young people, all built in the vernacular Jamaican style, using local timber and brick and emphasising outdoor space. Buildings will stand close to each other, encouraging interaction between neighbours, and the new streets will be narrow, with little space to park, so residents will walk to their jobs and social activities. A new sewerage system is already in place and a community park and soccer pitch are to come. The prince visited earlier this year to open a library.

It all sounds very modest when compared with Poundbury or any other of the foundation’s UK schemes. But in this part of Jamaica it is an important regeneration project.

“Some streets were bought back to life in the spring and there are signs of action now,” Brown says. “Everyone is delighted but we wait to see if it will really happen.” One positive sign is that members of the rival north and south gangs have already come together through the Rose Town Benevolent Society, the local group overseeing the work.

“The exact facilities will be different in Jamaica to Britain but the underlying principles are much the same and equally as important,” says Hank Dittmar, chief executive of the Prince’s foundation and one-time adviser to former US president Bill Clinton on sustainable development. “It’s to create a sense of community through layout and design.”

The prince created his organisation in 2001, six years after work on Poundbury began, with a mission “to improve the quality of people’s lives by teaching and practising timeless and ecological ways of planning, designing and building”. Dittmar cites some well-known historic British communities – Belgravia and Kennington in London and the Old Town and New Town areas of Edinburgh – as examples where these principles were first adopted up to two centuries ago. For some years the initiative drew little interest from developers driven by commercial considerations but now it chimes with the sustainable image that many of them want to cultivate.

The foundation’s modus operandi is practice-based learning. “To teach it, you have to do it,” Dittmar explains. That means nine projects in the UK – from the cathedral city of Lincoln to the gritty east London suburb of Walthamstow – and three in other parts of the world, all at different stages of execution. The prince receives weekly progress reports on each and gives detailed responses in writing as well as face-to-face briefings.

Poundbury, which is scheduled for completion in 2012, is the furthest along and has generated much debate among architects and urban designers, who are sharply divided on its aesthetics and effectiveness. The main point of controversy is the highly detailed programme of development, which starts with a masterplan and continues through to highly specific design codes governing the location, height, density and appearance of the buildings, as well as the materials used in them. A “by-product” is what some have called pastiche architecture; in Poundbury it is an intentionally “varied” mix of traditional British houses and ones that look as if they’ve been transplanted from central Europe or New England. This stands in stark contrast to the higgledy-piggledy layout and look of most towns, which have evolved naturally – both in good ways and bad.

Irish developer Paul Newman won the tender to build part of Upton One, a scheme of 211 homes promoted by the prince in Northamptonshire in the English Midlands, in 2005. At the time, he spoke out about the challenges of abiding by the 50-page handbook, partly written by the foundation, setting out everything from the distance from the front doors to the pavement kerbs to the low-energy-consumption boilers and light bulbs to be used – not to mention the “sustainable urban drainage system”.

But he also railed against those who criticised Upton as a pastiche. “Maybe it is. But each streetscape is different; each view of buildings [is of] different heights and different materials. It’s like Poundbury and it’s not just like the boxes the big builders put up around here.”

The approach is also economically sound, according to Yolande Barnes, a director of research at property consultancy Savills. She recently co-authored a report, “Valuing Sustainable Urbanism”, which argues that high-density housing makes sustainable schemes viable for mainstream private builders in developed countries, who are worried about returns on high land prices. Well-managed open spaces, shops and schools also enhance the value of nearby properties. “There are several new model communities in the US and UK, not all involving the foundation, which show how a good mixed-use community can work well,” Barnes says. “People can live and work close by and can have no more than a five-minute walk to where they can buy a pint of milk or enjoy a pint of beer. That’s the ‘pint principle’.”

Testimony from residents is also positive. “You have to take your hat off to the work done by the designers and the first people who moved in to the place in the 1990s,” says Poundbury resident Fran Reaper, who moved to the neighbourhood in 2003. “You’re never far from a shop or the community centre and you see neighbours in the street all the time.” The forced interaction has led to more social activity than anywhere else she’s lived, with scores of local “hobby” groups, for example. “A success? Yes, it is,” she says. “Ask those of us who live here.”

Given the housing market slowdown in the UK and the crisis in the country’s banking sector, Dittmar acknowledges that it’s a difficult time to be embarking upon big new developments. But “most schemes we’re involved in are being delivered over [a period of] 10 to 20 years and many involve [smaller] non-Plc house-builders who are perhaps under less commercial pressure,” he says. “Shorter term economic factors may impact on the delivery dates in some projects but they don’t affect the logic of what we’re doing.”

Whether the prince’s philosophy can be exported around the world is another question. Jamaican officials certainly believe it’s possible. “The prince’s visit in the spring brought world attention and is helping us to change this no-man’s-land into a community,” says Morin Seymour, chief executive of the Kingston Regeneration Company, which represents the foundation in Rose Town. “We’ve got short-term funding from local banks and housing bodies to regenerate those houses now standing and worth preserving. [And] There’s an assessment of the stock going on for the rest of this year. That’s phase one.”

Later phases will be just as methodical, with developers bidding to win the construction contracts and having to abide by rules on design and positioning. Of course, one assumes, Rose Town residents will need to be within five minutes’ walk of a rum bar, not a pub.

Outside Jamaica, the Prince’s foundation is considering a project for a new community in Freetown, Sierra Leone, an area still ravaged by the country’s civil war, which ended five years ago. “We’re working in a post-conflict setting to see if the same principles can rebuild communities,” Dittmar explains.

And there is also work under way at a Beijing university on plans to regenerate a hotel quarter of the Chinese capital into a new city settlement. “The foundation has always talked about international issues like urbanisation and climate change, which have now come on to everyone’s agenda,” Dittmar says. “Ultimately we’d like to see projects on every continent.”

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