Where do I put my car? Time to shut the trendy urbanist box and start talking about the kind of places people actually want.

 

The image has everything. Cool rainbow coloured pavements, rooftop gardens, vertical greenery, parks, trees, endless lumps of solar panelling, bicycle delivery boys, "kindness" and "community" daubed on walls, mixed use environments and, of course, absolutely no cars. The only actual vehicle sneaks in behind the block of apartments being built (doubtless using achingly sustainable methods). It captures everything about sustainable urban development, everything that is, apart from asking actual people how they really want to live.

Hardly a day passes without another big city based bunch of millennial urbanists and architects setting out their vision for all our futures. A vision founded on everybody renting, a romantic view of shared spaces and obviously no cars. Lots of bicycles, a great deal of talk about walkability with little or no consideration of the needs (lets alone wants and desires) of the typical family. It's a world designed for the kidult, for the single and the childless, for those who have adopted London Habits. And it's really sustainable you know.

The hard truth is that very little of this reflects the preferences, needs and interests of most people. It is quite amazing how far architects and urban designers have got away from the sort of places people want and like - all wrapped up as they are in this all embracing idea of "sustainability". It's a fake sustainability but it does reflect the world such big city elites inhabit, one with few children, with a homogeneity of outlook and income only possible through the excluding of old, young and poor. It's a sort of comfortably off millennial wet dream filled with vegan coffee shops, bicycle cafes, craft beer shops and community-run allotments.

There's a widespread view that the future will see the end of the car society. Much of this is wishful thinking on behalf of the anti-car crowd who have come to dominate thinking around transport and town planning. And it may well be the case that the arrival - at some point in the next decade or so - of reliable driverless vehicles will mean we "will dial up autonomous trikes to take us where we need to go, larger vehicles if travelling with others". But, for all that I see the driverless future as a game-changer, I don't think people will stop wanting to have a vehicle of their own any time soon. Plus, of course, we're still some way away from that driverless future.

The starting point for thinking about sustainability in urban design shouldn't be "let's dump personal private transport unless it's a bicycle" but rather the actual preferences of the people who will be living in these places:

Detached single-family homes continue to be the most common home type for recent buyers at 83 percent, followed by seven percent of buyers choosing townhomes or row houses.

Preferences in the UK are slightly different from this US picture - we're more tolerant of semi-detached and town house developments and happier with smaller plot sizes - but the common picture everywhere is that, for all the appeal of the sort of images given us by trendy architects, most house purchases are determined by a set of practical considerations as much as by look, let alone by vague concepts like sustainability. And, while we are buying into a community, the buyer's first concern is their own interests - accessibilty to work, facilities within the property, indoor and outdoor space, good schools, local amenities.

To return to America where the evidence is more accessible we find that home buyers - the millennial home buyers who are supposed to be turned on by sustainable living - still want the same sort of things their parents expected and, mostly, enjoyed:

82% want a garage (1, 2, or 3+ cars); 54% want access to public transportation.
40% want 3 bedrooms; 47% want 4 or 5.
57% want an exercise or media room (compared to 32% and 28% of boomers, respectively).
74% want a single-family detached home; only 15% want townhomes and 7% want condos.
76% want an open or partially open living-dining area

What's being described here isn't some sort of impossible dream but the reality that housebuilders all over the developed world are meeting - suburban living. And, to compound this, more people now reject the idea of living in the city (perhaps prompted by the impact of Covid-19 and the relative success of home-working):

Just 13 percent claimed that they would like to live in a city — a 55 percent decrease. In contrast, 29 percent of Americans said that they would ideally reside in a suburban area, and another 28 percent said a rural area. Small town living was the big beneficiary, with 29 percent of Americans stating that they would now like to live in a small town.

Again there isn't a straight comparison to be had with the UK but there is plenty of good evidence of people looking to move away from cities and into suburban and small town environments. Yet the dominant ideology within urban planning and architecture remains resolutely anti-suburb and pro-city. We see concepts such as "gentle density" developed in response to the limitations of high-rise development but urban planners remains fixated on a mid-rise inner-urban style of living that simply doesn't reflect the preferences of UK house buyers.

None of this is to say that we can't improve on the design and appearance of new development or that we shouldn't try to integrate development into existing communities and public transport networks. But it still remains the case that, regardless of the delightful illustrations produced by urban planners, the public still wants a good house with parking and a garage. It really is time we put the cute designs and anti-car concepts of sustainability back this their boxes and started to look at how we make it possible for today's - and future - young generations to achieve what their parents achieved - owning that good house with parking and a garage in a decent neighbourhood.

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