THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
Neither town nor country We all know what urban architectural design should look like, and equally what it should look like for buildings in rural areas. But Antony Gibb poses the question: what about the suburbs, where town meets country?
W
hat should a house in the country look like? Ask an architect or planner and they’ll tell you it’s about ‘context’. Something suitable for the country is not going to be the same as something that fits a town. A terrace of houses wouldn’t look right in the middle of a field for instance, while a traditional farm group sits happily in its countryside context. What’s right for town isn’t right for country.
20
But what about the suburbs? A number of agricultural fields have been identified as suitable sites for housing in the Bridging Island Plan (BIP), our guide for development over the next three years. Despite plans to increase the density in urban centres, pressure on the countryside is likely to continue. The BIP gives us Primary Centres (town), Green Zone and Coastal National Park (country), and Local Centres (everything else) but hardly mentions suburbs. The inter-war coastal strip development on the south coast First Tower, St Clement and parts of St Saviour - are given the same designation as the parish villages, such as St Ouen, St Mary or St Martin, when they’re obviously very different.
And Les Quennevais, identified in the BIP as our second town, is essentially a suburban development. Given that suburbs are mainly where change is likely to happen, it seems odd that so much time has been spent analysing, assessing and describing how to protect the countryside and coast, and how to develop town, and so little has been spent looking at the spaces between, where one becomes the other. What does this mean for the design of our suburbs? What is the ‘local character and distinctiveness’ to which the BIP would like new developments to contribute?
