How do we achieve the Government’s ambitious housing target? While there is a clear need to deliver, this needs to be more than just a numbers game.
In the 1989 film, Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner’s character hears a voice saying ‘build it and they will come’. He is referring to a baseball diamond in the middle of a cornfield which attracts long dead baseball players.
While this is clearly fiction, the build-it-and-they-will-come approach has too often been taken to housing developments in the past. We are still seeing some of the damage and fallout of past mistakes today.
This cannot be the approach taken to hit the Government’s ambitious housing target.
Proper consideration needs to be given to how and where we build these houses with the impact on the environment and our planet at the forefront of the mind, not an afterthought. Also the social and transport infrastructure needs must be addressed along with adopting energy solutions that are not overly reliant on fossil fuel sources.
At Vision Zero Consult, we are leading the debate on some of these key areas and there is a real momentum building to make sure that we get it right and ask searching questions that see the wider picture. We owe it to our future generations.