Towards Successful Suburban Town Centres
A study of the relationship between morphology, sociability, economics and accessibility

Please note that this project has finished. The current project is Adaptable Suburbs.

RGS - IBG Conference 2008: The Geography of Suburban Space - SSTC project in association with the Urban Geography Research Group

Paper 5: D. Chen & L. Young (Tomorrow's Thoughts Today, Think Tank) Retrofitting Suburbia: navigating from generic to specific    intro ››

Generic models of local sustainable local communities and transit-oriented developments have severe limitations when applied to existent urban fabric, especially for cities like London whose urbanism is and continues to be defined through the overlaying of successive waves of development. A key point of concern is the professional and governmental currency of generic models of sustainable communities, particularly when their relevance is always severely mitigated by site specificities.

This paper explores the practical outworkings and the theoretical underpinnings of the 'specific' registered at the scale of the suburban neighbourhood. It interrogates the notion of point-based catchment models in order to define the boundaries of a sustainable community. The case study of the Hackbridge Sustainable Suburb in south London demonstrates how the specific is instrumentalised through the 'congealing' of existing infrastructures, and reconceiving natural elements as productive landscapes that form part of this new macro-infrastructural territory. The local government agenda from which this professional commission sprang is also supported by the presence of the BedZED development that continues to be both a symbolic totem as well as active political lobbyist in local governmental circles. The paper describes the transition between a generic planning model and a site-specific urban design proposition and in so doing raises the possibility of a genuinely sustainable suburb.

Project contacts: email: l.vaughan@ucl.ac.uk - telephone: +44 (0)20 3108 9042 - general enquiries: contact us

EPSRC reference: EP/D06595X/1