Seven miles to get a pint of milk in ‘self-sustaining’ garden cities

RESIDENTS in new garden villages will have to travel up to seven miles to buy a pint of milk, according to a report that says many developments will force households to become car-dependent.

The Government committed more than £3.7 million in 2018 for garden communities, which are designed to be self-sustaining and greener alternatives to the identikit housing estates usually built on the outskirts of towns and villages.

However, the campaign group,

Transport for New Homes, looked at plans for 20 developments, many of them backed by official funding, and found they were often too far from jobs and services to be a self-contained community. They would create up to 200,000 car-dependent households, the group says.

In the proposed village of Long Marston, in Stratford-upon-avon, the report found the 3,500 residents would have to travel seven miles to get to a shop or to the train station.

The report looked at villages and towns across the country, including Bicester, Oxon, and Aylesbury in Bucks. “Put forward by the Government as an alternative to characterless estates, garden villages may well end up with more tarmac than garden, limited public transport, and few ‘village’ amenities to walk or cycle to,” said Jenny Raggett, project coordinator at Transport for New Homes. Cycling routes from garden cities are often long and dangerous, and the report found there were no funded cycle networks within the developments.

They also found pavements and green spaces were often absent in lieu of car parking spaces.

The researchers say high housebuilding targets for rural or semi-rural areas have encouraged developments with little consideration for access to public transport or to jobs and services.

The Government turned to garden cities in response to the need for more housing but amid public discontent with the expansion of towns and into nearby new estates.

In 2017, the Government introduced the Housing Infrastructure Fund, which was designed to put in the transport networks needed for new housing, but researchers found that many developments appeared to be in locations chosen partly to fund a new road that was already being lobbied for. Of the roughly £1billion which went to garden communities, £700 million went to roads.

Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, which backed the report, said that while living entirely car-free was a “pipe dream” outside towns and cities, “the vision for garden developments is laudable but is at grave risk of being missed. Far from being delivered in a way that would encourage us to leave our cars at home, the reality looks set to ingrain car dependence”.

The concept of garden cities was the creation in the early 20th century of urban planner Ebenezer Howard, who envisaged self-contained communities close to nature as an alternative to Victorian slums.

Welwyn and Letchworth were the first garden cities and the idea has since spread across the world.