Yorkshire born and bred, Simon McCabe moved to London in his early 20s. Back then, the social isolation that could result from urban living was clear. “I remember being in a block of flats and you’d leave your front door and never bump into anybody,” says McCabe of his early years in the capital.
Two decades on, the deputy chair and chief executive of developer Scarborough Group says our cities are changing, and the real estate industry is helping to drive that change. Developers are more aware of “community, togetherness”, he says, and the best are showing a more compassionate focus on the wellbeing of people using their places and spaces.
“When we’re planning a residential scheme or one of our commercial office schemes, we very much focus on the environment, the health and wellbeing of the people who will be living, breathing and working there,” McCabe says. “We have to embrace the community that will be working in one of our business parks, for example, or buying our residential apartments. We need to bring that community together.”
A focus on the mental as well as physical health of occupiers and residents was already emerging in the real estate industry before the Covid-19 crisis shone an even stronger spotlight on wellbeing. Now, questions over how the built environment can support communities during the toughest of times have become one of the industry’s most pertinent challenges.
Pluses and minuses
The Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdowns that have brought cities to a standstill have changed many accepted wisdoms about what city living is says Philippa Gill, a director in the European division of sustainability consultancy Evora Global: “We find ourselves questioning everything we thought we knew and everything we didn’t realise we didn’t know.”
But the age-old benefits and drawbacks that urban living can have for citizens’ sense of wellbeing remain.
“The pluses and the minuses are very much dependent on who you are and at what point of your life cycle and career cycle you’re at,” Gill says. “There’s a huge energy in cities and particularly in a global city such as London – the diversity, the access to culture, the access to other ideas and other ways of living.
“There’s no doubt that the downside to that is the noise, the pollution and precisely that energy that you would like to be able to access when you want it… the issue is not being able to turn that off.”
Enfield Council’s Lisa Woo heads up placemaking at the Meridian Water scheme, a £6bn development targeting 10,000 homes over the next 25 years. The council is not shying away from density in the development, Woo says, but she adds that the inclusion of open space will be crucial as a method to ease the stresses of urban living.
The council aims for every household in the site to be no further than 250 metres from “quality green space” and for everyone to have such space visible from within their homes.
Woo is an advocate for city living. Yes, there are smarter ways in which the real estate industry can ensure that the detrimental effects on wellbeing from urban life are minimised. But arguments that cities should have fewer people or that smaller towns are the answer when it comes to mental health hold no sway with her.
“We should continue to embrace our cities,” Woo adds. “Cities have a lot to offer and hold solutions for many things – there is a danger in detracting from city living. Some other polycentric places, towns and smaller cities, need further strengthening and need to be further densified… but that doesn’t mean we should move away from our Londons and Manchesters. Those cities are engines for so many things.
“What we need to focus our minds on, instead of where we develop in the peripheries, is how can we do more to improve city centre living for all demographics?”
Never waste a crisis
The coronavirus crisis has introduced a host of mental health challenges to the national workforce that many people will never have had to deal with. Quite aside from the obvious stresses of the pandemic itself, the changes to working practices have left many feeling isolated, as home-working removes connections and the compassion built up when teams are sitting alongside each other in the office.
But some are embracing the challenge of finding the silver linings. “A phrase we keep using a lot at the moment is ‘never waste a good crisis’,” Gill says. “It can be instinctive in humans to look at the glass as half empty. [But] I do think there are some very positive and interesting things that will come out of this time.”
If the pandemic gives architects, developers, financiers and other vested interests in the built environment a chance to rethink their work, then maybe the glass is half full.
If a new approach to homes, offices and all of the spaces in-between helps people to look after their sense of mental wellbeing more effectively, and to connect with their communities more fully, then that could be an impact as valuable as any amount of shareholder return.
“What kind of spaces do we create for people and how do we build back better?” Gill asks. “There is an emotional consciousness right now to try and use this moment to move the agenda forward. I really see us being able to come out of this with better spaces that are more attuned to us. The opportunity is right in front of us.”
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