"Building new homes is as much about communities as it is about housing."

Again, a reference to London with resonance for Sidmouth:

Building new homes is not just about constructing houses, it’s about creating places. It’s about creating communities that people can and want to live in – now and in the future. It’s about sustainable communities – something that we in the Cabe team regularly address during the Design Review process. To create sustainable communities we need to ensure that the various stakeholders involved in this construction boom, from developers to local authorities, approach the challenge with a shared set of standards, criteria, and values. We need to make sure that everyone agrees on what is valuable, and what is viable.

The first challenge to agreeing on what is viable is to understand what this means, in terms of motivations and finances, to each key stakeholder.  For example, the local authority may be largely concerned with creating a set number of affordable housing, while a developer is interested in balancing their budget and delivering a profit. The combined realities might mean that we end up rapidly constructing cheap housing in poorly designed neighbourhoods that will age quickly and have to be rebuilt in a short space of time. One way to mitigate against this risk and to meet the needs of all stakeholders is to redefine the criteria altogether. We need to redefine the meaning of viability and make it work for everyone involved in building... new homes.

London’s 2020 vision for new homes is not just about quantity | Design Council Blog
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