From the Fundación Arquia Blog, architect María Álvarez García presents an article on the controversial revival of garden cities in England's urban planning, which is depopulating city centers—proposals that lead to an inevitable segregation of uses that is neither sustainable nor conducive to social and economic development.
Aiming to address the growing demand for housing, January 2017 saw the announcement of the locations of the new garden cities to be built in the United Kingdom. Specifically, fourteen garden villages and three garden towns with the capacity to house 50,000 and 200,000 new homes, respectively. Ebbsfleet, in Kent, is the first of these; under construction for three years, it is already raising initial doubts about the viability of this urban model: neighboring communities fear these new developments will cannibalize their services and economies as, much like in Bicester, housing is being built before infrastructure. All of this unfolds under the threat of an almost certain “bite” into the green belt that has guided English urban planning for over sixty years.
