A Plan for York

On the current housing market, the housing type that has the smallest carbon footprint is the park home. Park homes are currently the cheapest form of construction and have a good record for neighbourliness and community spirit. They are the current default form of prefab homes. After site preparation, they are available “off the peg” so can enable a rapid response to the housing crisis. In this emergency they are the quickest way to satisfy demand.

Acquiring land at existing use value, installing services and buying a factory built park home could cut the cost of a new home in York by a factor of three or more. The council should plan to acquire a first site of 150 hectares as soon as possible to provide space to locate 4500 plots for park homes and environmentally friendly homes. That will show an intent to set right the wrongs the planning system has inflicted on the poor and the young. Such a development could house over 10,000 people. The development should be more-or-less car-free.

A proportion of the plots should be sold as freehold so that prospective residents can commission their own homes. Although the aim of this plan is to cool property prices, buyers could feel secure that they are “on the property ladder”.

At present, York has a self build and custom build scheme, where plots with services installed are sold for prices in the region of £100,000 – a profit to York Council of more than £80,000 for each plot sold. Under this plans, where the aim is to cut the prices of new houses, the profit will be much less but will be enough to help in financing the development of the site. Of course, if there are financing problems for developments in this plan, the council should partner with a suitable financial institution.

The map I compiled in 2004 shown earlier shows that 150 hectares is about than 1% of the open land covered by York Council. There are several locations where these car-free developments could be placed. For example near York University either side of the Outer Ring Road, to the west of Poppleton railway station and across the River Foss from Haxby to take advantage of the proposed new railway station.

The plan could also to use the ideas of American/Austrian architect, Victor Gruen. He designed several shopping centres in North America., which had substantial car parking for the shoppers. However he came to hate the sprawl he had helped to create. He wanted to create new centres where people could socialise and experience culture together. So he proposed that shopping malls could become urban centres with population moving in next to them to them. In York there are three shopping centres where car-free developments could be placed: Monks Cross, Clifton Moor and the McArthur Glenn Designer Outlet.

List of possible locations:

• Near York University
• Poppleton
• Haxby
• Monks Cross
• Clifton Moor
• Designer Outlet

This is a flexible plan and any of these sites should be a good start. The development Near York University will reduce the pressure students put on Yorks housing. The sites near stations will considerably increase rail passenger numbers. The developments near retail outlets have existing infrastructure to hand.

If these are developed without subtracting too much from the developments in the nascent Local Plan, this could make York a centre for population growth – as my deceased friend Dennis Martin once suggested.