I attended the “launch” meeting for North Berwick as a ‘Transition Town‘. At the meeting the subject of housing was raised. A representative from Transition Scotland was there who said it wasn’t something that had cropped up regularly, and that no one had done much work on the issue. Really – how surprising!
I spoke with one or two people at the during the meeting and mentioned that there is provision for 500 houses in the Council Local Plan for the Grange Road area of the town. They were unaware of this. It’s on ‘green field’ land.
There are two options for this group over housing that I can see. One, they object to any new housing development on greenfield land on principle and demand it be left as farmland. Two, they embrace the need for new housing and try and influence the design of the scheme by interacting with the developers of the area.
Any proposals need to be looked at in connection with the materials used in construction, the orientation of the buildings (to ensure they make use of passive solar heating), the capture of ‘grey water’ for flushing toilets or watering garden areas, the use of solar PV cells and mini windmills for power and heating, ground source heating, the style of the houses and the overall design of the site and whether cars are to be allowed.
The overall thrust of transition towns is to reduce dependence on peak oil so, houses should not be built with garages and the space between the houses should be narrow enough to prevent anyone building a garage at a later date. Although you could ban cars from travelling or parking on the site, there needs to be provision for emergency vehicles to get in. Paved areas need to be carefully designed. Of course, you could set-aside certain areas for cars and run a ‘car club’ in the scheme. The vehicles could be electric ones and have their own solar PV cells or windmills and battery power storage area to charge them up.
What could the houses be built with? Timber is the obvious answer but where does the wood come from? There would be a need to ensure it came from a sustainable source and that new trees were planted to cover those used in construction.
I think it’d be really useful if the group got involved in the design and specification for this site at the earliest stage possible.
