Sustainable urban design: Monkton Heathfield 'garden town'

Introduction

As part of the drive to stimulate new house construction, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has identified 28 'garden communities'. Garden communities can take the form of new villages, towns or cities and have the potential to deliver well designed homes at an increased scale, boosting the local economy and creating new jobs.

Taunton is a designated 'garden town, a development of more than 10,000 homes. The new development is focused on Monkton Heathfield to the northwest of Taunton.

Create Streets, a world class social enterprise and design consultancy, has been commissioned to study a recently published Concept Plan. Their report is available here as a download (see below).

Create Streets' goal is  ‘to help neighbourhoods, communities, landowners, councils and developers create and manage beautiful places of gentle density that will be popular and are likely to be correlated with good well-being and public health’.  https://www.createstreets.com/.

Read the full report by downloading the pdf below.

Also available as a download is a summary brochure focusing on urban design, 'Designing popular places'.