A plan to reimagine the village for the 21st century has been chosen by the National Infrastructure Commission and Malcolm Reading Consultants as the winner of the Cambridge to Oxford Connection ideas competition.
The competition aimed to gather ideas for the future of development within the arc encompassing Cambridge, Milton Keynes, Northampton and Oxford, one of the UK’s fastest-growing and most productive regions.
The winning proposal was put together by an all-female team comprising Jennifer Ross from Tibbalds Planning and Urban Design, Sarah Featherstone of Featherstone Young, Kay Hughes from Khaa, Petra Marko from Marko and Placemakers, Annalie Riches from Mikhail Riches and Judith Sykes of Expedition Engineering.
Their proposal, VeloCity, focuses on six villages at the south-east of one of the new stations on the Oxford-Cambridge rail link and how to deliver much-needed homes while retaining a person-centred approach and creating places that promote and enable travel by bike and foot.
Lord Andrew Adonis, chair of the National Infrastructure Commission, said: “The competition focused on the essential challenges facing the UK, including how to accelerate the supply of affordable homes without sacrificing the quality of the environment, how to engage and enthuse the public in making the choices ahead, and to showcase how new infrastructure can creatively enable new communities to flourish over the coming decades.”
The winning consortium said its vision had been developed to enrich village life and a sense of place while creating new homes and working environment in healthy and socially cohesive places.
Ross said: “The successful implementation of this strategy allows for traditional planning policy to be turned on its head and locations that were previously seen as unsuitable for growth transformed into well-connected and sustainable places.”
“The VeloCity proposal reconciles the needs of our environment with a high-technology and low-cost future infrastructure.
“It supports health and wellbeing while creating places with identity and a sense of belonging, a truly collaborative effort from all the team,” added Hughes.
The consortium, who met on industry ride PedElle, featured in this year’s EG Collaborators top 50.
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