Vertical Neighbourhoods

Chris Murray, director of learning and development at CABE, looks back on his experiences with the Academy for Sustainable Communities in Leeds.

For the past year, Chris has been on secondment in Leeds, establishing the Academy for Sustainable Communities. His home for the year has been a new build, high density, city centre, canal-side flat - the urban regeneration dream. In this article he shares some personal reflections on that experience.

The last year has been a remarkable, once-in-a-lifetime experience. How often do you get asked to set up a new national agency on behalf of the Deputy Prime Minister? It's been tough at times but I've enjoyed every minute. It's also given me a unique insight into the experience of living the urban regeneration, high density city-centre dream. We might advocate it, but how many of us have actually experienced it?

On April 1st, I move in to a chic, light and airy new two-bed flat in a block in Leeds. I am working long hours, completely engaged with the excitement of creating a new agency to up-skill professionals working for sustainable communities. A flat nearby is therefore a Godsend; far cheaper than a hotel and more relaxed. I'm the first person to live in it and on the surface it looks great, furnished down to teaspoons and paintings - everything newly painted and clean. Then I start to notice things.

The cutlery bends when I eat with it. Moments before phoning Uri Geller, I realise that I do not in fact have hidden superpowers but that the cutlery is made of the thinnest possible pressing of metal, barely thicker than tin foil. I accidentally splash a little tomato sauce on the wall. The sauce washes off fine. So does the paint. The beautiful black-glass work surfaces are filth-magnets, requiring the skills of a seasoned French polisher to keep them anywhere near clean. Everything else is just so cheap. The iron has the steam-pressing ability of a small child's yawn, duvet covers emerge from the tumble drier without buttons, and some fixtures aren't quite fixed. It is clear that every expense has been spared.

Ergonomic design is essential to utilise limited space well, and again this appears to be the case. One room serves as a kitchen-dining-living space and it seems quite well thought out, until you live in it. A wooden floor with little soft furnishing or sound-damping material creates a very harsh acoustic. Small sounds are magnified horribly. Add to this a tumble drier/washing machine, dishwasher and TV in one room and you can feel sanity starting to ebb away. If a family were living here (there is one next door - I know them intimately without ever having met them) the noise would be incredible. Into this symphony of white goods comes the groaning crash of self-closing doors whose hinges are badly in need of oil. I oil them and feel marginally better. The doors - designed to minimise the risk of fire spreading - are to become the most annoying feature of the flat.

A totally sealed unit with economic heating, the temperature of the flat is curiously difficult to regulate. It takes little heat - and therefore energy - to warm the place up, but it quickly becomes stifling. In a cupboard I discover the controls of a ventilation system. The accompanying instructions appear to be for a moon-landing craft. Trying my luck, the system seems to suck the last remaining oxygen from the flat. During summer, the windows have to be open all the time. It is then that I realise how good the sound-proof double glazing is.

Leeds is a great city. It has changed beyond recognition since I grew up near here and is changing still; its now the UK's fastest growing city outside London. There is a plan to 'connect' the quality spaces and places within the centre more fully, and this is badly needed. In April, I have to walk for 20 minutes through dark and quite forbidding streets to a garage on a dual carriageway to get a pint of milk. By December, there are two delis within ten minutes' walk down a nicely refurbished tow path. However, the block in which I live is clearly missing a trick. There are perhaps 2,000 people within 5 minutes walk and there is no bar, café, restaurant or shop. I would have used all four. I consider opening a bar. It would be a goldmine.

I constantly need to buy small things that I have annoyingly forgotten to bring with me - part of the curse of living in two places at once - and miss not having local shops. Forgetting my belt was disastrous; it didn't look very executive holding my trousers up for half the day before I could get to a shop, which turned out to be a Costco. I bought one belt, some underwear and 48 toilet rolls; the smallest pack they had. It raised eyebrows at the till. I consider opening a shop for people that live in two places. I should probably open two.

The lack of local facilities at ground level means that there is minimal social contact in the block. In fact, the only place I meet people is in the lift and they quite often look scared when I talk to them, rubbish in hand as there are no waste chutes.

My longest lift dialogue was with a woman who got stuck in it. Trying to hold the door open for me, she pressed two buttons simultaneously and the tiny computer brain of the lift shut down with her in it. The emergency phone worked perfectly and she was put straight through to the lift company. Half an hour later they had still not tracked down their duty technician and advised calling the fire brigade or the 24-hour helpline of the building management company, whose answerphone message said they were closed until 9 the next morning. The message we left informed them that, if they were interested, when they got into the office at 9am there was a woman stuck in one of their lifts who would by then have been in it for 14 hours and might be a bit annoyed. Luckily, between us we managed to open the door with brute force.

Other schemes I have assessed or visited have integrated facilities like gyms, bars, shops and cafes, as well as social and community spaces and even residents' groups and organised social activities. Not all of that is needed or even useful in every high density development, but the lack of social contact enforced by the physical nature of the block is worrying. The young professional set currently inhabiting it have money and broad social circles, but this is not always the case. I have seen much worse, but the management arrangements for the block are clearly not adequate.

The balcony is fenced in with glass held under tension in a metal frame; a common design feature. One night, the glass on the balcony beneath me explodes, literally. I go down to the flat but there is no-one in. I can see no evidence of an object hitting the glass unless, worryingly, it was shot at. But a hit-contract seems unlikely; the glass was probably incorrectly fitted.

The pace of development in city centres like Leeds is relentless, particularly for residential accommodation. At least three very large blocks have gone up near my own block during the last year. They are unfinished but people are already living in them. I am told that more than 1,000 units a year are going up in the area. There is a marketing emphasis on buy to let and buy off-plan to mark up and sell on quickly once built, but you can sense demand slowing. The flat I stay in was bought to mark up and sell on, but the owner has been unable to sell it. Its become a buy to let by default, as many others have. The demand was low enough for me to negotiate the rent downwards considerably.

Looking ahead 10 years, I wonder who will be living in the flat? The young professionals will have grown up, possibly had children and moved on. Another wave might move in.

Experience shows however, that as the value of this kind of property decreases in relative terms, it is likely to be colonised by people from lower income brackets often with families, or older people. Is the space flexible enough to respond to a variety of possible future needs?

The finish isn't great and in ten years could be looking grim without proper maintenance. Disabled access meets requirements, but I would feel totally isolated as an older or disabled person living there. Connectivity to public facilities is poor, although there is a reliable bus service. Only small families could live in the flat and conditions would be cramped. I'm told that the construction technique would make it difficult to remove walls between flats to allow for more flexible spaces. There is no communal open space, only public space by the canal - no good for children. In addition, the other 'soft' features that support community life and cohesion are absent.

So what's the final verdict? I have come out of the experience still firmly believing in high density, but realising that there is not always enough consideration of detail from the inhabitant's perspective, that could result in a challenging future and a pull on the public purse to put things straight.

Thinking about future need and lifestyle trends is essential to help build-in flexibility from the start, expanding, contracting or remodelling spaces as needed - the technology is there to do this cost effectively. This should be encouraged and possibly rewarded through the planning process, as it will reduce public spending in the future. It is exactly the lesson we are learning now from areas with a limited and inflexible housing stock that needs reconfiguring; and it is an expensive lesson.

Thinking ahead in this way should help us to predict demand more closely and to place a cap on supply. The buy to let bubble is looking unstable. Large city centre residential developments are positively transforming local economies and the way we live, but someone buying to let is not really engaging with that place in any sustainable way. That's what this is really all about, creating sustainable communities, places where people want to live now and in the future. With a little more thought and some small changes, we can make high density living a higher quality experience.

Notes

ASC is a practical delivery agent for the integrated skills and expertise needed to create and renew local communities. Based in Leeds, it will influence the learning provision of professionals engaged in urban and rural development, urban growth, regeneration and renewal.

It aims to ensure that there are sufficient people with the right skills, working together to create and maintain world-class sustainable communities across the country; better places where people with a choice will want to live and work now and in the future. It will help achieve this vision by providing a high-profile, national focus on the skills agenda and sustainable communities.