Rethink urged over housing designs

31 May 2006

New housing designs should accommodate the majority of residents parking on-street to avoid obstructive footway parking and wasting space with unused on-plot spaces.
English Partnerships advice to house builders and local authority planners and designers also urges against the ‘fashion’ for rear parking courts inspired by Poundbury, which it claims are unpopular and underused.
The new toolkit to promote better-designed residential parking highlights research by Alan Young of WSP Group and Phil Jones Associates – both developing the manual for streets guidance – that including parking within housing plots is inefficient. A fifth of spaces would be unused if 1.1 car parking spaces are provided for every five habitable room dwelling – land that could have been used to provide more housing.
Meanwhile, a number of housing schemes around the country have been blighted by cars parked to the front of houses where there is no space to accommodate them, because formal parking has been provided to the rear. The innovation, attributed to Prince Charles’ Poundbury development in Dorset, has wasted space and taken away activity from the street, the document claims.
Instead, the street should, where possible, be ‘rediscovered as a beautiful car park’, with relatively wide streets similar to those created by the Georgians, Victorians and Edwardians allowing cars to be comfortably accommodated on-street in an organised, visually harmonious way. Streets need to be at least 6.4m wide to allow parking on both sides, and to ideally have trees to prevent cars becoming the dominant feature.
Multi-storey, underground, and undercroft parking is a good alternative in central city areas, where it becomes impossible to have all the parking on-street if there are more than 70 homes to the hectare.
Trevor Beattie, English Partnerships's regional director, said as he launched the guidance that ‘car parking should not been seen as an after-thought. It is inseparable from good urban design’.
Car parking: what works where. www.englishpartnerships.co.uk

Register now for full access

Register just once to get unrestricted, real-time coverage of the issues and challenges facing UK transport and highways engineers.

Full website content includes the latest news, exclusive commentary from leading industry figures and detailed topical analysis of the highways, transportation, environment and place-shaping sectors. Use the link below to register your details for full, free access.

Already a registered? Login

Sign In

Rethink urged over housing designs

order biaxin tablets

buying biaxin

ordering clarithromycin

Register now for full access

Login