2.8 Read the text for Tuesday May 19th: a sustainable village

Poundbury: A look at Prince Charles' sustainable village in Dorset, on its 30th birthday

adapted from https://www.telegraph.co.uk Graham Norwood ,   26 April 2017

Wander through many modern housing estates and you may get dispirited.

Homes stacked high in designs identical to other developments across the country, the streetscape mired with cars parked on driveways, roads and pavements. And as for being able to walk to a school, workplace or supermarket – there’s no guarantee.

If you think that’s not good enough, you’re in good company: Prince Charles thinks the same. Yet unlike the rest of us, he’s been able to do something about it. That something is called Poundbury.

Located just outside Dorset’s county town of Dorchester, plans for this new sustainable community were first revealed by the Prince in 1987. […]

More than 3,000 people now live there, with 2,000 working in 180 local businesses; 35 per cent of the homes are affordable, rented or owned by people from local social housing lists.  

There are plenty of unusual features. Some of the energy it uses comes from an anaerobic digester on the edge of town run by local farmers, street signs are deliberately few and far between, while most parking is behind rather than in front of homes to allow spacious clutter-free streetscapes. Small businesses mix with homes in the higgledy-piggledy streets, from a chocolate factory to a tech company that makes parts for plane wings. There’s room for more than 80 start-up businesses dotted around the town. […]

In the meantime, the royal influence is being felt elsewhere. At nearby Fordington, the Prince wants to build 100 Arts & Craft-style homes – expect a planning application later this year. Further south west at Newquay in Cornwall, the Prince already has a small community established at Tregunnel Hill and another under construction on a 540-acre site called Nansledan – Cornish for “broad valley”.

All three sites stick to the principles enshrined in Poundbury – sustainable communities with a strong local influence on their appearance and materials, with a mix of private for sale and affordable homes.

To cynics they are further examples of the Prince making flesh his architectural pipe-dreams; to others, they might just be homes fit for a king – or, at least, a king-in-waiting.