Welborne Garden Village - creating a beautiful place to live

In the next few months, Buckland Development Limited intends to submit the Strategic Design Code for Welborne, which will set out the design principles that will shape the development of the entire Garden Village.

It will expand the overarching urban and landscape design vision to make sure that all phases of construction come together to form a coherent entity so that all areas of the new community belong unmistakably to Welborne, no matter who the housebuilder partner is or what phase it belongs to.

All aspects of the development, whether residential, commercial, employment or educational, will be required to adhere to these principles.  Guidance may include street design and the materials palette.

Buckland Development Limited also plans to include the Welborne Streets Manual as an appendix to the Strategic Design Code.  This will set out the proposed approach to the street network elements such as signage, street widths, junction form, block form, parking, lighting, materials etc as well as the adoption strategy and a timescale for delivery.  This will help underpin the quality of the public spaces that are to be created and give certainty to developers and councils that these elements can be delivered. 

Placemaking

The way that places are planned, designed, built and managed has a significant influence over whether communities are able to live healthy lives. The built and natural environments are important determinants of health and shape health inequalities.

Welborne is designed to be a community for twenty-first-century life, but one that looks to the past to learn lessons from the tried and tested principles of Britain's rich heritage of placemaking.It takes its cues from the villages and Garden Cities of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, places such as Bournville, Letchworth Garden City, Port Sunlight and Welwyn Garden City. These are settlements that were based on strong foundations of employment, beautiful design, sociability and long-term stewardship, and a century and more after their foundation they continue to uphold and be admired for these qualities.

These places share a set of characteristics and principles that underpins the thinking behind the Welborne vision:

• Holistically planned: the development has a comprehensive masterplan, flexible enough to evolve over time
• Patient investment: there is commitment to early investment in community infrastructure that reflects a long-term approach to returns
• Single master developer: the lifespan of the development is guided by a single master developer, who ensures that the original vision is maintained
• Well-being: the development is planned in a way that fosters healthy and active living through access to green space, connection to nature, provision for walking and cycling and the opportunity to grow food locally
• High-quality design: keen attention is paid to detail and high-quality materials sensitive to the architecture and landscape character of the local area and results in a distinctive and recognisable identity
• Landscape: the development is informed by and augments the natural environment, including an extensive green infrastructure network
• Economic purpose: the development includes locally accessible employment
• Services and amenities: the development provides a range of services to meet day-to-day needs within walking distances of homes
• Diversity of housing: the development includes a diversity of housing opportunities reflecting a 'whole-of-life' ethos, with regard to the needs of older people and genuinely affordable housing
• Long-term stewardship:  A defined arrangement for how the community's assets will be looked after in perpetuity and a principle of active management and maintenance of the public realm and community infrastructure

You can see Buckland Development's Masterplan for the development of Welborne Garden Village here.