A discussion on the future development of the City

with Prof Peter Landshoff and former Mayor John Durrant took place at

University of Cambridge - Festival of Ideas on 21 October 2009
- at the University Centre

A presentation setting the background, highlighting the currently planned enlargement of the City as well as further proposed growth, was given by Peter Landshoff - click here .

Best quotes of the evening:

"Perfect planning prevents pathetic performance."

"Cambridge attracts world class people who like first class and spacious housing – we do not have it!"

"We need brains – we have brains and that is why brains come here."

"We have space but no imagination."


John Durrant led the interesting debate that followed. Issues raised from the floor regarding the planning of the City are summarised as follows:

Housing + Growth

• Do we really need the high-level growth as projected by the Government?
• Need for first class housing to attract top academics and top high-tech industry staff, but need to avoid the 'American Sprawl' and learn from examples of European cities, where densification has been successful with retention of green spaces and more open countryside. If quality housing is not provided the city loses out to the international competition and thus other attractive cities. We do not need more 'Lego-land Housing' but need to look at quality-build and perhaps densification of the exciting city rather than permit further sprawl as presently planned and avoid fast increase of housing – this to better achieve good design.
• Must build places where people interact – we must preserve the magic of Cambridge!
• Cambridge must change from house dwellers to more flat users and early signs can be seen with the younger generation taking on the 'flat-living live style'.
• Cambridge has to supports its Universities as they make Cambridge special and it needs to foster the various business links and entrepreneurial spin-outs. It is vital to nurture and retain the crossings between academia and business and allow small companies to grow. Cambridge needs to retain its mingled diffuse centre and increase housing in the centre to permit ideas exchange between academia and businesses.
• How do we cope with the large transient population – tourists, Universities' students and academic and support staff changing annually or over a few years? Tourists will always come but it is difficult to accommodate more tourists – would like to welcome visitors but too many will dent the spirit of the Place – one cannot walk any more at the heart of the city.

Transport

• Need houses close by to minimise travel to work.
• Commuters – there is an adverse impact at a high level of inward commuting on a daily basis to the historic city from the surrounding villages and countryside, but one also wishes to prevent Cambridge becoming a dormitory for people working in the London area.
• Must have a further 'Cambridge Futures' session looking at land use planning and transport solutions – need to implement first of all transport improvements before expanding the city!

Environment-friendly developments

• Now is the opportune time to change and be more radical in finding solutions to tackle the various environmental pressures!
• University’s proposed NW Cambridge development site – the Independent Inspector’s binding ruling requiring above-average provision of energy efficiency / sustainability etc of the development is to be applauded but need to ensure other developers perform higher on this matter, too.
• Must look at the environmental capacity – we cannot keep on growing indefinitely – but some say that is that is a nimby-ish attitude.
• Need to persuade our Council to achieve even higher environmental targets (i.e. well above current local and government-set standards including Building Control). Must consider retrofitting of systems to have a much more sustainable built environment (e.g. water-saving fittings in existing buildings).

DIY

• We need to do more collectively and locally – i.e. we should not expect the Council or the Government to do it all for us!

We are grateful for the University of Cambridge for hosting this event.

We apologise to those affected by the inadvertent error promoting the event at a later time in our membership bulletin.

If you have any suggestions for future events, please contact us with your thoughts.