COMMENT: The government’s spatial framework for transforming the Oxford and Cambridge Arc, and with it the drive of a £20bn investment to turn it into the UK’s fastest-growing economic region, highlights the area’s potential as a hotspot for job creation, investment, and environmental enhancement, but it will also need to look closely at community impact.
While the scale of the opportunity here is undoubtedly vast, it requires strategic thinking and further planning into analysing data and receiving investment. Thus far, our analysis has highlighted job creation and recovery opportunities and the need to incorporate key data from existing communities.
This was front and centre of the Radical Regeneration Manifesto, a campaign we launched in 2019 with Bidwells and Blackstock Consulting, which looked at harnessing the power of the Arc and which has helped inform the ministry of housing, communities and local government’s thinking surrounding the region.
The key to successful regeneration lies in the designs of the new communities and how they can be consolidated with those already there. It is naïve to believe that we can create positive change by simply placing houses on empty land. We must create long-term masterplans that actively engage and give voices to local communicates so that the right developments are made in the right places. The data we gather is crucial to ensuring we are delivering what is needed and that the benefits, both environmental and economic, are felt across the whole region.
The Oxford and Cambridge Arc is unique in its potential to improve connectivity, productivity, and placemaking and tackle the country’s challenges, including climate change, technological change, fighting Covid-19 and preventing future pandemics.
The Arc is particularly well placed to offer the latter, with Oxford and Cambridge Universities powerhouses of knowledge at the centre of global scientific research. Technology and science businesses located in the region are an enormous contributor to the Arc’s economic growth. We must continue to expand these through innovative clusters with cutting-edge facilities.
The Arc regeneration plans outline collaboration with science and tech occupiers, encouraging the evolution of science parks and creating indispensable laboratories where life-saving research can be carried out. While these regions are already central hubs for life sciences, they will require further investment to enable their long-term security, in addition to ESG enhancements to help pioneer a sustainable future.
The region’s transformation also seeks to position the Arc as a world leader in sustainability and a place with solid foundations for future generations. In a race to meet net-zero targets, such regeneration will be vital in tackling climate change. The built environment must clearly communicate the benefits of sustainability to the communities they serve and showcase the benefits to both people and planet.
The Radical Regeneration Manifesto, together with Perkins&Will’s own zero carbon studies, have outlined the steps needed to create sustainable communities: such as an efficient low carbon system, resourceful water usage, sustainable food production, tree planting, waste avoidance and recycling are just some of the ways in which new communities could meet net-zero targets and contribute to tackling climate change.
Our mission is to create diverse and resilient locations that generate employment and economic value and support the growth of healthy towns that put their residents’ wellbeing front and centre. Ministers are doing the right thing by thinking big, utilising data and working to harvest investment. Still, good design is essential as we look to map out the neighbourhoods of tomorrow. With six of the Radical Regeneration Manifesto’s recommendations now in various stages of policy work, our focus must be on the design of developments that conceive sustainable, economically viable and happy areas.
Steven Charlton is principal and managing director of Perkins&Will
