Flexible housing

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Tim Lund
Posts: 6718
Joined: 13 Mar 2008 18:10
Location: Silverdale

Flexible housing

Post by Tim Lund »

This is another one for any professional planners, and again rises from the "Round up the usual suspects" thread
michael wrote:There are some areas of London (and I understand that New Cross and Brockley are reasonable examples of this) where there really is a shortage of family housing, and more is being lost all the time through conversion.

When couples living in their 1/2 bed flat chose to have children in these areas they have to move away from the area to find a place with enough space for them. This is not necessarily through being priced out, but because there is a shortage of family units in these areas - a phenomenon that is recognised in Lewisham Planning Policy for the last decade, possibly longer. What ends up happening is that these areas have high turnover of residents and no real sense of community.

These were some of the issues raised by some of the amenity societies and ward assembly coordinating groups, particularly those around Brockley/Telegraph Hill. We are very lucky in Sydenham and Forest Hill that there is a massive range of housing types and neither high rise/high density or family mansions dominate the urban environment. Getting the right mix is key to a quality urban community.
From which it sounds as if those caught up in the world of planning think this mix is fixed in stone - or even brick, timber or concrete. But the fact that properties can be converted into flats says that such designations are not permanent, and conversions can surely also be converted back if the demand for family houses increases. Obviously there are costs to such conversions, both the actual costs of making the changes, but also the cost of ending up with less satisfactory accommodation for the given household size than would have been possible if the original building had been planned with this size in mind.

But people must have thought about this - most likely working for the BRE (formerly known as ''Building Research Establishment'). Well built housing should last for over 100 years - a length of time over which we can't possibly predict what household sizes they will be needed for. So surely someone will have thought about how to design flexible housing, in which changing the unit size can be done with minimal cost and other adverse impact? Could we have planning policies to favour such new build rather than commit us to specific numbers of bedrooms?
14BradfordRoad
Posts: 1671
Joined: 8 Oct 2011 23:22
Location: Somewhere over the rainbow..

Re: Flexible housing

Post by 14BradfordRoad »

There is no reason that a buildings shell shouldn't have flexibility within it's basic structure. This has been achieved before mainly in modular buildings, flats, etc.

In about the 80's I dealt a fair amount with Southwark council working for BT planning block
wiring schedules, etc for housing estates. Around this time there was a national problem with
the re-housing / re-locating of Vietnamese boat people. Southwark council was very involved in
this as a national stategy. Southwark council tennants on the infamous 'North Peckham Estate'
were given the opportunity to relocate to other parts of the country where the Vietnamese
people had been housed dotted around the South of England here and there.
Vietnamese people prefer culturaly to live in dense communities. The modular construction
of the North Peckham Estate meant that flexibility (similar to that you describe) was easily
achievable. Internal walls were fairly easily removed / relocated to allow for very big 6 - 8
bedroom dwellings. I remember that in some Vietnamese families a household could be made
up of possibly 4 generations under one roof. Many of these flats were converted in many
various ways according to need.

The North Peckham estate was demolished in the 90's.
The point I'm getting at is that if a more modular structure was used then there are few limitations to converting and even re-converting at a later date according to needs at the time.
Eg: Eight 2 bed dwellings today could become five or so 4 bed dwellings as and when required.
I would think that this needs to be strongly considered in the future and, in fact, is done with office floor space all of the time as a normal practise.
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