On 31 July, 2024, the Government announced its New Towns Taskforce, chaired by Sir Michael Lyons, setting out its ambitions for new towns and urban extensions to help meet its target of 1.5 million new homes over the next five years. Create Streets welcomes this ambition and applauds the bold vision for new towns and urban extensions. We are today publishing a vision for a Greater Cambridge as part of our contribution to this debate.
We believe this vision could help the Government solve our housing crisis and create desperately needed new homes and affordable homes sustainably without sprawling all over the countryside, defined by walking and cycling, gentle density and improved public transport. Critical will be coding and pre-permitting with confidence attractive homes and streets at walkable gentle density and creating new tram lines and train stations around which new neighbourhoods can cluster.
Without these we risk slipping back into a slow and expensive ‘business as usual’ with public subsidy wasted on an endless merry-go-round of consultants’ fees and reports. Inspired by the early announcements and visit to Cambridge by the Task Force, this note seeks to outline a vision for Greater Cambridge, a new city quarter, at two dates in the future: 2050 and 2100.
This vision includes:
- a phased master plan;
- an outline approach to public and active transport;
- an outline approach to the creation of attractive and sustainable homes, offices and laboratory space;
- a summary of a future street and block design code and pattern books for buildings;
- a possible approach to parks, a national park and biodiversity net gain; and
- a possible approach for museums and cultural centres.
Though they can only be indicative, we have included images throughout on what this might look like. Critical in building public support will be a place built to this level of beauty, texture or quality. This is necessary to rebuild very low levels of public trust in the design, planning and development process.
There are several reasons to expand Cambridge. It will help solve Britain’s chronic lack of homes. It will revive declining living standards for those struggling to afford a home or move to where they wish to work. And it will give Cambridge the laboratory space it needs to retain its international leadership in research, technology and life sciences, with all the immense opportunities that this brings for enterprise and innovation in Britain.
Done with love and ambition, and with the high courage that will be required to break ‘business as usual’, Greater Cambridge can also help the British people to ‘fall back in love with the future’, showing that new places can be the equal of the old. We can make Greater Cambridge by far the finest urban extension to any city anywhere since 1945, an example that will be emulated all over the world.
You can read the full report here.
You can read coverage in The Sunday Times here.