Single Aspect Blog

“It is easier for outsiders to gain access to and linger in the interior areas of a building shared by 24 to 100 families than it is in a building shared by 6 to 12 families.” – Oscar Newman

Section 3 kicks off with a welcome objection to blocks with single aspect “hotel” flats.

“. . . apartment buildings with long, double-loaded corridors.  These are more suited to a short-stay hotel and do little to foster a permanent sense of home.”

3.1 Entrance and Approach

Their comments here are apparently drawn from two sources being the writings of Alice Coleman; and the Lifetime Homes criteria.  They relate both to common sense surrounding accessible and overlooked entrances and space for people in wheelchairs.

“The design of the threshold between the public realm of the street and the private realm of the home affects people’s sense of security in, and ownership of, their homes.”

Donnybrook has none – I think that’s worth considering when a new development dumps the owners directly on to the street.

3.2 Shared Circulation Within Buildings

Alice Coleman and Oscar Newman can be “heard” in the background here, their shared research and wisdom cascading down the years but with less direct influence than I would have liked.  The following bodes well:-

“Housing based on double-loaded corridors has particular limitations both in the single-aspect dwellings they demand and in the circulation spaces, which are often poorly lit and ventilated.”

and continues in much the same vein . . .

“Apartment buildings with double-loaded corridors also have a damaging effect on the urban environment. The need for apartment blocks to face in two directions means that it is difficult to make a clear distinction between the front and back of a building.”

They move on towards a better approach which bodes well for better housing . . . . .

“For example, deck access can mean dwellings can be designed as dual aspect, potentially with a secondary outdoor amenity space.”

Now comes one of the most important items in the entire document with regard to security and antisocial behaviour which begins well.

The Number of People and Dwellings Sharing a Core and a Landing

“In terms of the number of homes per floor, groups of 2-8 dwellings are usually desirable.  In these smaller groups, residents tend to enjoy a greater sense of privacy, security and ownership and may be more likely to take an active interest in the upkeep of shared spaces.  External circulation spaces shared by a limited number of people can also become places where residents can sit outside and socialise with neighbours. Management and maintenance is also easier with fewer users.”

So by this point they have laid out their true thoughts about the desirability of limiting the number of dwellings per entrance and per floor in support of better neighbours and controlling antisocial behaviour but then completely spoil it in the standards by making the requirements for limited access per entrance P2 which means “strongly recommended as best practice but not required.”

3.2.1 The number of dwellings accessed from a single core should not exceed eight per floor.

Now bear in mind that Oscar Newman in Defensible Space 1972  and Alice Coleman Utopia on Trial 1985 both went to great lengths to explain that as a result of their respective researches (the second based very firmly on the first), that the principle component of any strategy to control the security of a landing and limit antisocial behaviour is to limit the number of dwellings per entrance.

“Oscar Newman found dwellings per entrance to be the most influential factor in encouraging or abating crime, . . . people expressed strong views against having a large number of dwellings per entrance; the advantages of knowing one’s neighbours and being able to identify intruders were clearly perceived.”

Utopia on Trial 1985 p.37/38 – Alice Coleman

“The five most powerful designs are dwellings per entrance (57.7%), dwellings per block (46.7%), number of storeys (41.1%), overhead walkways (32.6%) and spatial organisation (31.2%).  These, it is submitted, are the ringleaders of the anti-social design gang.”

Utopia on Trial 1985 p.79/80 – Alice Coleman

Yet despite these two extensive studies both of just over 4000 blocks each, not flats, blocks, in two different countries, Boris and friends have chosen not to make mandatory this simple requirement. This is what Oscar Newman had to say in his book Creating Defensible Space.

Summary of the effect of building type on behavior

“A family’s claim to a territory diminishes proportionally as the number of families who share that claim increases. The larger the number of people who share a territory, the less each individual feels rights to it. Therefore, with only a few families sharing an area, whether it be the interior circulation areas of a building or the grounds outside, it is relatively easy for an informal understanding to be reached among the families as to what constitutes acceptable usage.

When the numbers increase, the opportunity for reaching such an implicit understanding diminishes to the point that no usage other than walking through the area is really possible, but any use is permissible. The larger the number of people who share a communal space, the more difficult it is for people to identify it as theirs or to feel they have a right to control or determine the activity taking place within it. It is easier for outsiders to gain access to and linger in the interior areas of a building shared by 24 to 100 families than it is in a building shared by 6 to 12 families.”

https://www.defensiblespace.com/book.htm

This has been so far the most disappointing finding in my reading of the interim report.  There are  many good standards, and I am aware that the vast majority are P1 and therefore mandatory not discretionary but it does seem to me that to ignore the findings of two revered researchers whose findings have been acted upon with success in the recent past, not least by a Tory Prime Minister (Margaret Thatcher funded Alice Coleman in the 1980s to alter some local authority estates), is foolhardy at best and potentially damaging at worst in the longer term.

UPDATE: 7/5/12 This from experience gained at Packington Square:-

The initial study to introduce entryphone installation at the lift/stair junction throughout, gave up to 84 dwellings/entrance, which was considered excessive and did not give the degree of breakdown required.

The second study, which resulted in the formation of 7 new lift/stair towers, gave 42 per entrance which was acceptable but the cost of these proposals were considered prohibitive.

The third solution considered was to introduce two new shafts and one staircase, together with splitting the access to the upper and lower decks. This gives numbers of between 12 and 34 per entry-phone which was considered acceptable. The additional entry-phone lobby arrangements contain additional refuse points to help eliminate the overused chute system.

https://www.locallocalhistory.co.uk/islington/packington/index.htm

3.2.2 Access Control Systems

Having done away with the mandatory limitation of dwellings per entrance and dwellings per floor there’s no stopping them.  It’s onto access controls and you can make it as big as you like with as many dwellings per floor as you like providing you install an electronic access system, with variations on a 24hr concierge and audio/video access systems accordingly (3.2.2).

Here’s why it matters.  In many areas of life safety is determined by initial design and secondly by what will happen if there is failure in the initial design.  In the summary for 3.2.1 we find that “The number of dwellings accessed from a single core should not exceed eight per floor.” and yet once access controls are allowed it’s open season.  By making it mandatory that no building would exceed eight dwellings per floor from a single core then regardless of whether or not the access controls were working the landings would be safe.  On council estates it is not unknown for the front door to be damaged or for the electronic access control system not to be working in which case the whole system breaks down and suddenly people who were safe before are not.

3.2.3 Natural light and adequate ventilation

Please forgive me if I remind you that I thought internal double-loaded corridors were being discouraged and if allowed presumably a window at each end with a vent above each will fulfill the criteria in the title.

3.2.4 Minimum widths

Now this one I like.  Get yourself a tape measure and measure across your shoulders or your hips, whichever is the larger and you’re going to get 50cm – 60cm so double that is 1200mm and that’s what they’ve specified as the minimum which will be a bit tight if both people are carrying shopping or luggage but otherwise reasonable.

3.2.5-8 Lifts

These requirements look good although I struggle with 3.2.5 which is P2 where it would surely have been a good idea to mandate space for a wheelchair lift in the future, please note that’s space being asked for not the lift itself.

There is a clue to the difference between P1 and P2 (mandatory and discretionary) requirements on page 38 where costs are referred to twice.  The first time here:-

“Notwithstanding the desirability of lift access, and the fact that, in relative terms, the capital and maintenance costs of lifts are reducing all the time, they remain a major contributor to the service charges passed on to the residents.  A real tension therefore exists between the desire to restrict the number [of] residents per core to a manageable level and the need to provide enough households to make lift service charges affordable. Designers and developers are asked to balance these issues carefully.”

This doesn’t bode well for fulfilling the Oscar Newman and Alice Coleman dwellings per entrance criteria does it?

They go on to refer to small blocks with few residents facing the same issue over lifts:-

“It is acknowledged that flexibility will be required in blocks with fewer than 15 dwellings where the cost of providing a lift would make viability unlikely, even in the future.”

3.3 Car Parking

I cannot add anything to the common sense provision stated here, they go on to make the obvious point that secure car parking will add considerably to the service charges paid by residents and this is already a contentious issue in some quarters, A2Dominion to name but one.

3.4 Cycle Storage

There is a welcome requirement for cycle storage and intelligently, not “within habitable rooms or on balconies.”  Although once again this has been watered down for in the summary at 3.4.2 we find Priority 2 given:-

“Individual or communal cycle storage outside the home should be secure, sheltered and adequately lit, with convenient access to the street.  Where cycle storage is provided within the home, it should be in addition to eh minimum GIA and minimum storage and circulation space requirements.  Cycle storage identified in habitable rooms oron balconies will not be considered acceptable.”

That’s all very well to bleat that it “will not be considered acceptable” but under P2 what are they going to do about it?  Pass it for planning anyway?  That’s what worries me about the P2 category, that developers will do it knowing it is not actually outlawed.

3.5 Refuse, Post and Deliveries

The only comment that caught my eye here was a reference to noise:-

“Dwellings next to, or above, refuse stores will need special design consideration in terms of the placement of habitable rooms, windows, balconies and vents in order to preserve amenity.”

Reading this took me straight back to Alfa Laval in Brentford and that dreadful proposed flat next to the recycling store reproduced below:-

Click image for full drawing

Opinion

What really worries me about section 3 is that it will encourage the growth of large gated developments like Bolanachi in Bermondsey which are ostensibly housing to be admired and copied but are in fact insular and isolated communities disengaged from the street.

At a time when so much is being made of re-engaging former council estates with the traditional street patterns by demolition and rebuilding (Holly Street Hackney) and others in the pipeline, and talk of permeability and passive surveillance, is it not a retrograde step to encourage by legislation the development of a whole series of island communities across London with their drawbridges firmly up?

It’s not that I think every block of flats should have the public walking through it dropping litter and causing a nuisance.  I’m struggling with the vision of Bermondsey, or anywhere else for that matter, populated with a series of these isolated units.  It worries me in terms of social cohesion that people will emerge from their respective lairs to buy a newspaper and a pint of milk only to return without ever having any other social encounter than within their own block, and perhaps not even there.

This must however be the case in the densely packed and flat dwelling West End, and yet this works too.  It must also be the case in the Barbican where there is a “society of flats” so to speak.  So this remains unresolved.  Perhaps the solution is a variety of building types in the suburbs, the odd row of three storey terraces interspersed with blocks of flats.  Certainly I fear for the emergence of an entirely gated society.

A walk along the old Wapping High Street for example is a most odd experience, for me at least.  I find much of  it cold and forbidding, all undercroft car parking and gated communities.  I was there yesterday (21/9/10) and noticed that there are sections with a few shops, and there are a fair number of people on the street, mainly as a result of the bus stops.  I find it difficult to believe that these are the same people who live in the flats.

Do the residents of expensive riverside flats use buses?  I doubt it.   There is one section near Wapping tube that has two opposing blank faces, like a gulley or mountan pass.  Blank facing walls to the street are one of the things that Alice Coleman highlighted as being objectionable in her book.

Following discussion with a friend one solution would be to grant a concession for a small businesses such as a hairdressers or coffee shop within the atrium, so that public access was available on a limited and controlled basis (working hours) while simultaneously providing a service to the residents.  This would not enable a right of way through the block but would go some way to linking the building to public realm.  The alternative I find very bleak.  Go and see Bolanachi in Bermondsey and you’ll see what I mean.