City Planner
Samer Bagaeen MRTPI FRICS. Build up or build out?
The issue of urban density has been the subject of recent debate. I am spending a few days in Ramallah in Palestine and it’s funny how two cities that are different in so many ways can share the same concerns about building heights and building density. One key difference between Ramallah and Brighton is that the former needs to build horizontally so that is stakes a claim to territory in a conflict area and the latter knows it needs to build vertically but does not do so because of pressures from all sorts of corners.
Still appear as fairly extreme
In Brighton, any large-scale, big impact development should in all likelihood be a skyscraper in order to meet housing demand. Here, and in other smaller cities in England, proposals like this can still appear as fairly extreme, and their approval contentious. In Cardiff, a new 42-storey, 132m high building of affordable student accommodation, and at just under half the height of London’s Shard, seems small when compared to the world’s skyscrapers. Nonetheless, developments like this are big news for the smaller cities outside London.
Unlike London and Brighton, cities such as Cardiff or Sheffield are not short of space and can accommodate the needed housing within the city boundary without going up. With clever design, a successful density level can be achieved where people still find peace, a place where they can retreat from the stress of everyday life and find a sense of identity and community belonging.
So, do we build up or build out? Recent schemes by Alison Brooks Architects in Cambridge show that models of medium density are not incompatible with access to green space.
