Homes for a multi-timed city

UDL’s Urban Challenge provided an opportunity for industry-leading voices to identify new directions following the pandemic and respond to the huge challenge of living within our planetary means. This has led to the development of the ‘multi-timed city’ approach (1), putting people at the forefront of thinking and place shaping.

The most popular ideas discussed related to the flexibility and efficiency of our buildings. Our built environment will need to meet increasing demands placed upon it as we move forward, to ensure the health and well-being of users, support the vitality of the wider community and ensure the long-term welfare of our planet. 

Homes are at the centre of the multi-timed city, forming the focus of the ‘home circle’ people inhabit within a minute of their doorstep, and linking to the neighbourhood space five minutes within reach. This article explores past and current approaches to flexible homes, looks at how they link to the multi-timed city and demonstrates just how vital these links are.

Past and current approaches

Homes going back many centuries have been places of huge variety of work as well as living, using the inside and outside of the home. However, the industrialism of the 19th century in particular resulted in very poor housing with cramped and unsanitary conditions, for example in Little Ireland in Manchester (2).  Overcoming these problems led to the development of early municipal housing, improving sanitation, ventilation and space standards.  

This positive direction of travel was also seen in the Garden City movement, however one of the tenets of change was the view that paid work should not be completed at home, with the new homes designed to be purpose built for domestic use only – reinforced to this day in the tenancy agreements used for social housing (3). The thinking was that this separation of work would provide healthier conditions for residents. Alongside these changes, the ‘hygienist’ focus within modern architecture was also developing, advocating the benefits of daylight, views, fresh air, and good ventilation. Where fully implemented this resulted in large terraces connecting people with their surroundings, large windows and plenty of space (4). 

However, in the UK over time the early, larger terraces have been reduced to small balconies or removed altogether and internal space has shrunk. Multiple aspects and views have been reduced to single aspect homes, relying on under-occupancy, mechanical ventilation or even air conditioning to make them habitable. Flats are also often built in dense urban areas with poor air quality or in noisy environments. 

For more disadvantaged communities this trend has resulted in higher, deeper buildings with inflexible features - little if any outside space they can use within the development, with no opportunity for the kind of extensions you can make to low rise homes. The connection has been all but lost with the practical use of outside space, with nature and with a wide variety of work - without little if any room to run a business, grow food, garden, relax or hold family activities. Even where homes are low rise, modern private estates often squeeze outside space to the extent that areas in front, to the side and to the rear of homes provide the most minimal amenity. The need for flexibility has never been greater, illustrated by the ‘stress testing’ of homes during the pandemic lockdowns.

This has left us in a predicament, at the same time as we face more calls for homes which run on less energy and are durable for the long term, able to cope with extremes of climate and with materials which can be reused in a ‘circular economy’. 

Private sector responses within the mainstream housing market have been minimal, with housebuilders mainly focussing on slight adjustments within the existing footprint (5). Public home providers and forward-thinking architects have been more creative (6) however built examples are the exception, not the norm. 

But most tellingly, what do the residents say – the ones who have had to live through the stress testing times of the pandemic? The recommendations within the Home Comforts survey of residents back up the case for much more extensive action (7). A core principle very marked in resident views runs through much of the debate and the many and varied proposals for change - and that is the need for choice, for generosity of space to allow for the unpredictable, for homes that can be configured and even split up in a range of ways over time. 

This debate set out within the Urban Challenge and the Multi-timed City is to be welcomed, with the hope that ways forward, whether by policy, regulation, standards or a sense of care for our fellow human beings (and all of these and more will be needed) can be found to ensure that everyone’s time at home is truly life-giving.

Flexible homes and the multi-timed city

So, if homes are at the heart of the multi-timed city, how do they link across to the immediate neighbourhood - the ‘home circle’ within a minute of the doorstep, and the ‘neighbourhood space’ within five minutes’ reach? 

The journeys people take in a one-minute zone include checking in on a neighbour, space for young children to play while you chat with a friend you pass on the street, tending the flowerpots, older children congregating at the front gate, chalking on the pavement and hanging out. For the elderly it might be popping across the street for a cuppa. They also encompass delivery drop offs and pick-ups and wheeling the bike in and out. For a flexible home, with direct access between outside and inside and space for a business to thrive/home schooling/multi-generational living and a host of other uses, these are all possible. 

For the tight, single use and low amenity homes we often see, many in high rise blocks but also increasingly in low rise design, this is hard to achieve. It calls for easy access to the front door and a generosity of shared space – secure, welcoming and loved by residents with high quality materials, immediately accessible from the inside and with short routes to neighbours and the street, creating a defensible buffer zone. It also calls for responsive, high-quality management of flatted homes with active local resident input.

Neighbourhood space is the zone within five minutes of the home. People may be taking a short walk or cycle to the shops, children should be able to walk or scoot to school with play on the way, services such as a corner shop and a social space to eat and drink should be within reach. Green spaces on the way can absorb water run-off and connect people with nature actively through care and gardening as well as to sit in or walk through. Neighbourhood space provides for practicalities, parking if needed for example for a wheelchair user or car club, refuse collection and links with public transport. This needs to be trusted, comfortable space, which is safe and well overlooked with every day, local activity which binds the community together. 

For flexible homes, this space provides a welcome space for workers taking a break, people running errands and for multi-generational families - weaving variety and interest through the day. Flexibility inside the home breathes life into neighbour space in the immediate vicinity - they go hand in hand. Conversely, mono-use homes with little amenity starve the surroundings of variety or people, activity and vitality, with work taking people well away from the locality.

Just how vital are these links?

How important is it that homes are flexible as opposed to the new build homes we often see developed? The Urban Challenge guide stresses how inter-dependant different objectives are, with each one only being truly successful if the others work well. This is true for flexible homes and the multi-timed city. A flexible home environment creates the potential for human life to flourish, in turn breathing life and vitality into the immediate locality, the local community and the wider area. It is a virtuous cycle where the benefits multiply, increasing health and the wellbeing of people and the natural world. 

Flexible homes could be the key to unlock the potential of places, giving them the space to take their place within flourishing communities. Let’s fight their corner and give them a chance.

References

(1) The Urban Challenge, Urban Design Learning, 2023.

(2) Thomas McGrath – If those walls could talk, 2016

(3) Tim Dwelly, Social tenants' access to home working opportunities, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2002

(4) What Tuberculosis did for Modernism: The Influence of a Curative Environment on Modernist Design and Architecture, Margaret Campbell, 2005

(5) Sophie Davies Sliding walls, hideable offices: How pandemic could change home design Thomas Reuters Foundation News, 2020

(6) A House for Artists review – perky, punchy affordable housing that inspires on all fronts, The Guardian, 12 Dec 2021; Levitt Bernstein Building in flexibility and adaptability, Julia Park

(7) Home Comforts, Place Alliance, 2020