Betraying his many years in the planning game, Angus Dodds returned to Milton of Leys near Inverness earlier in the month, to see how the exciting future of family housing he saw at Scotland’s Housing Expo back in 2010 is shaping up more than a decade later…
You know how long in the tooth you must be getting as a planner when you’ve been practicing your metier for longer than all the years you were in education, and when radio 4 is the station of choice when you’re out on a site visit. Driving back from a weekend in Sutherland recently, I had these important milestones in mind when I decided to swing (at a now conservative speed) past the Inverness suburb of Milton of Leys.
Back in the summer of 2010, two youthful Fife Council planning Officers – David Shankland and me – made our way up the A9 in our tiny Council pool car to tour Scotland’s Housing Expo and see what the future of cutting-edge design and energy efficiency would mean for the nation’s housing.
The project itself took its inspiration from Scandinavia (where else?) and in particular, a well-established series of Finnish Housing Fairs that had been taking place for decades. Backed and funded in various parts by the Scottish Government, Highland Council and the Highland Housing Alliance, the purpose of Scotland’s original Housing Expo was to showcase ground-breaking energy efficiency and exemplary design for affordable family homes.
The site at Milton of Leys, masterplanned as a terrace, avenue, square and village green by Cadell2 Urban Designers, provided space and services for around 50 individually designed houses by architects from across the country. A comprehensive description of the project and all the final designs were collated in a handbook by A+DS which I bought at the event, but is now available to examine online.
Scotlands-Housing-Expo-2010
The chat at the time was all about creating the ‘Conservation Areas of the future’. A hail of new design guidance across the UK then included the Urban Task Force’s ‘Towards an Urban Renaissance’ (1999); the Scottish Government’s ‘Designing Places’ (2001); and the hot off the press ‘Designing Streets’ (2010). These documents were beginning to force many built environment professionals to challenge the standard housing orthodoxy and think a little more creatively about how we shape and build our residential areas. Milton of Leys was to be a living showcase of what could be possible.
So, now the trees and hedges have had time to properly bed-in, how well does it all stand the test of time 12 years on?
Well first up, it’s still not a Conservation Area – although the good people at Historic Environment Scotland have produced a very nice webpage that captures the raw state of many of the buildings when David and I saw them back in 2010.
Inverness, Milton Of Leys, Site Of Scotland’s Housing Expo | Canmore
Overall though, and rather like the curate’s egg, I think it’s fair to say that the project today is good in parts. At a macro-scale I was struck on my return by just how much tarmac is in evidence throughout the scheme; something I didn’t remember as being so striking back then. I think the approach to streets in the project was supposed to blur the lines between what is pedestrian space and what is vehicular space in order to reduce vehicle speeds and create more ambivalent spaces where kids can safely play in the street – woonerf-style. Interpreting these ‘shared spaces’ (if that’s what they are) today, you can’t help but see them as little more than big swathes of asphalt, occasionally punctuated by man-hole covers – made all the more visible due to the oceans of black-top around them.
The green swales that run parallel to the main streets do seem well maintained and no doubt effective as part of the project’s SUDs scheme. Sadly though, while certainly green, they are desperately boring. Closely cropped and grassed over, they look more like the engineered drainage channels of a major road than the linear water meadows that the original designers perhaps hoped for.
These observations aside, there is still plenty to applaud here a decade on from construction. What does really work today are the framed views that the masterplan was keen to preserve throughout the project. Even under leaden skies, the views down the main streets to the Kessock Bridge and the Black Isle beyond are impressive, and I dare say do create the sense of place that all new developments should be trying to achieve.
What also works well (no doubt to the groans of volume house builders) are the more bespoke areas. The intimate scale of the village green and the attention to detail on the finishing materials and surfaces that surround it work a treat – aided no doubt by some of the more interesting house designs that front onto the village green area.
In addition, the variety of house types does create decidedly more playful rooflines than you would see in a standard housing layout. One of the perhaps unforeseen outcomes of this level of variety is that occupiers seem to be using the spaces around their houses in more creative ways. When I visited there was plenty evidence of different types of ‘sitooteries’, balcony spaces actually being used, as well as some interesting ancillary developments in back gardens and yards. This did seem like a place where there would be ‘eyes on the street’, helping to provide something of a sense of security.
The most striking visual aspect of the project however was in how its overall approach provides an atmosphere that feels so different to the norm. I’ve long thought that the athletics events at the Olympics could be greatly improved by inviting ‘control’ participants to run alongside the professionals in a specially designated lane. These volunteers, lacking any athletic talent, would prove invaluable by illustrating why for example running 100 metres in under 10 seconds is actually quite impressive (I’ve always found it difficult to get a sense of this on the telly when everyone in the field will finish in under 11 seconds).
Transporting this idea into housing design then, by far the most eye-catching thing about the expo site today must be the contrast it strikes with the standard housing scheme immediately to the west. Both were built around the same time; but cross the footbridge connecting Balvonie Green and Pinewood Drive today, and you could be walking into Dunfermline’s Eastern Expansion, or Livingston, or Cumbernauld… or pretty much anywhere else in Scotland where volume house builders are active.
There’s nothing wrong with the housing to the west of course, it’s just that it’s all so very predictable. Opportunities for framed views are obscured by blobby landscaping strips and other houses; the palette of surface materials are limited to the trusty old standards of reconstituted stone quoins and white wet-dash render; and the form of the streets themselves take on that familiar, meandering, contour hugging line that makes so much of the housing constructed in the last 50 years instantly recognisable from space. By contrast with all that, the Expo site feels well…interesting!
As the rain came on, I got back in my car, switched radio 4 back on and thumbed again through my old copy of the A+DS guide. The news was dominated by the cost-of-living crisis and the eye-watering spikes anticipated in energy prices over the foreseeable future. It was quite a shock therefore to read again the projected annual energy bills for all of these houses back in 2010. Almost unbelievably they ranged from a miniscule £64 per annum to a still exceptionally good value £528 a year.
I guess nothing makes you feel old like reflecting on how much further money used to go ‘back in my day’. As I pulled away from the car park I also couldn’t help but wonder how much the cost of heating a standard house today is really all about today’s geo-politics, or steps that we have or haven’t taken in a generation to put energy efficiency front and centre of our efforts to build houses that really are fit for the future.
The project at Milton of Leys is a fascinating snapshot of what built environment professionals thought the future of Scottish housing could look like a generation ago, and presents some novel and interesting approaches to housing development; some that have been taken further, and some that have perhaps fallen by the wayside. And for a greying practitioner like me – it was quite fun to tread my sensible shoes around the place all these years later!
Get in touch with Angus Dodds on 07729 873829, or by email at angus@contourtownplanning.com