Who better to build the “town of the future'' than His Royal Highness Prince Charles,
Prince of Wales the heir apparent to the British throne who grew up living
in let me check my notes here...Buckingham Palace. Well, clearly he seems to think so,
as he decided to do just that when starting construction on Poundbury in 1993.
Prince Charles has long held an interest in architecture and city planning
and pretty pointed views that haven’t always been appreciated in those circles. His main
perspective can be summed up as “traditional” architecture styles should continue to be used
while implementing modern technologies and placing our connection to nature at the center of it all.
In his 1989 book, “A Vision of Britain,”
Prince Charles wrote “We can build new developments which echo the familiar,
attractive features of our regional vernacular styles. There are architects who can design with
sensitivity and imagination so that people can live in more pleasant surroundings.”
He’s also laid out 10 principles of architecture and town planning, many of which are fairly vague,
but by and large seem to make it clear that Prince Charles is not a fan of the kind of
modern architecture that involves large, tall buildings that use a lot of glass and metal. And
also that he believes towns should be laid out with pedestrians as a priority over vehicles.
Poundbury is his effort to put his money where his mouth is and actually build a town that represents
his vision for the future of architecture and town planning along with the help of the
town’s chief architect, Léon Krier, a fellow hater of modernism. And today, this town is
more than just a hypothetical, it’s an actual functioning town with thousands of residents
and nearly 200 businesses, due for completion by 2025 when it’ll house about 6,000 people.
Speaking of Prince Charles’s money, he receives his income from the Duchy of Cornwall,
which is essentially a collection of investments totalling a worth of over $1 billion dollars,
from which the profits go to the heir to the throne. The main investment being land,
principally land in the county of Cornwall, giving Prince Charles one of his many titles,
the Duke of Cornwall. That’s quite the little trust fund.
Poundbury is built on a piece of Duchy of Cornwall land in the county of Dorset and is technically an
extension to the existing town of Dorchester. And as you can see, at first glance, it looks
like what you might expect from an average British town, but not necessarily what you might picture
if someone told you to envision the town of tomorrow. So what makes the town an opinion
article in The Guardian called “fake, heartless, authoritarian and grimly cute” so innovative?
Well, it’s nothing like the cities imagined in “Cities Of The Future” a documentary on
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Ok so as Poundbury’s website, which misspells the town’s name not once,
but twice as “Poundhury” and “Poundbuny,” points out, one of the main innovations is
the mixed-use nature of the town, interweaving stores, cafes, and offices with private homes,
unlike the common suburban neighborhoods of predominantly private homes distanced from
the commercial lots on the neighborhoods’ edges. And it’s not all small shops either,
there are also a couple of factories which they love to talk about in their PR releases,
in particular a chocolate factory and a cereal factory. And this mixture also seems to benefit
the businesses and residents mutually, where the workers can drop off their kids at a daycare in
the same neighborhood as the factory in which they work, and go out for lunch at one of the
local restaurants which I’m sure appreciate that business. This also makes it easier to
run errands, go to work, and go out to eat without the need to use a car if you live in Poundbury.
And although Prince Charles’s town planning principles specifically point out prioritizing
pedestrians over cars, the mission doesn’t seem to be to eliminate cars from the town.
There’s plenty of parking at both homes and commercial properties, but one particularly
strange thing about Poundbury is the total lack of traffic signs directing drivers,
not even stop signs! Instead, the roads were laid out in such a way as to
naturally slow drivers down. This might partly explain why the layout of the town
does seem somewhat chaotic for a carefully planned brand new town. The town follows
something called the “70-meter event rule” which is about 2756 inches for you Americans or about
250-and-a-half Subway footlongs which are about 11-inches long on average, that helps, right?
Anyway, the 70-meter event rule is basically what it sounds like,
every 70 meters, some sort of car-slowing event is designed. For example, buildings jutting out into
a road creating blind-bends that force drivers to slow down. It basically creates as unpredictable a
road as possible considering everything stays in place. Having lived in major cities like Miami,
Boston, and Washington, DC full of, let’s just say not the models of great driving,
and also road signs a-plenty I was really curious to hear if this actually works.
So I reached out to another YouTuber who happens to know a lot about city planning…
My name is Dave Amos, I’m the creator of
City Beautiful, a YouTube channel about cities and city planning.
And my day job is I’m assistant professor of city and regional planning at CalPoly San Luis Obispo.
I was wondering your take, does this sound practical?
Is this something you’ve heard of or used before?
Yeah, I haven’t heard of the 70 meter rule specifically, but the principle is sound,
the idea that you would create obstacles, or make drivers feel uncomfortable to make them slow down,
that’s a real thing. The average width of a highway lane is much wider than the width of
an alley or small neighborhood street. And that’s because you want a wider street so you can feel
comfortable going fast on the highway, and a narrow one makes you go slower. And similarly,
you can make drivers uncomfortable by making them have to divert, similar to what they’re suggesting
here, so yeah it’s all kind of, sound psychology, honestly. As drivers, if you’re uncomfortable,
you’re going to be moving slower, you’re going to be looking out for people, and it creates
a safer environment for everyone, even though drivers tend to hate it. But that is what it is.
Another feature of Poundbury which has been lauded is that 20% of housing is designated as affordable
housing, but these are actually scattered among the other houses and are indistinguishable by
design. This is meant to reduce the stigma that has long plagued tenants of affordable housing
and is also meant to encourage socializing across people of different income-levels. This sounds
really great on paper, but being a cynic I wanted to hear Dave’s perspective on this approach…
Yeah, the idea there is absolutely sound. Also there are lots of benefits that have been
found to be associated with mixing lower income and higher income populations. For example, you
have lower income households having a lot of the benefits that come with being in an upper-income
neighborhood. Things like school access, just sort of the informal networks that form. A lot of the
advantages that upper-income folks accrue, is due to networking, talking to neighbors and having
neighbors that are of different incomes means that lower income neighbors sometimes get those
network benefits as well. So, for all of those reasons, it’s generally a positive thing to do;
tricky sometimes, but if it’s done well, it can really make a difference for everyone.
All of these seem like promising ideas for improving life in a modern town. The problem
seems to be the Prince’s contradictory vision for the future; on one hand a modern take on urban
planning that takes into account industry, the co-habitation of pedestrians and cars,
and rising income inequality and on the other hand a wish to stay in the past when it comes
to the look of the town. It’s hard not to draw comparisons to the idea of the
Crown and royalty adapting to a modern life while holding on to antiquated traditions.
Prince Charles has made his absolute disdain for modernism in architecture clear and
there’s definitely something to be said for not building a town that wholly ignores the history
and cultural language of the region it’s built in; but Poundbury’s design ends up looking more
like a cheap movie set of an old English town. It’s meant to embody Georgian architecture of
the 18th and 19th century, but it was built using 21st century tools. So the brick and
stucco buildings are actually steel-framed on the inside and ornamental features like
gargoyles are not sculpted, but rather molded like mass produced products. Steel and fiber-glass,
materials that are on display and part of what some find appealing about the look
of modern design and which the Prince has denounced, are still in use in Poundbury,
but hidden or disguised. Critics have rightly pointed out that faking classic architecture
looks and feels as heartless and awkward as the Prince claims modernist design looks and feels.
At the end of the day, the architectural style of the buildings is just a matter of opinion…
As a city planner, I’m more concerned with how the building addresses the public realm. So,
for me it doesn’t matter if it’s like Georgian or modernist, so long as there are frequent entry
points to the building, to create activity on street level, there’s transparency in windows,
like the shop windows, you know you can look into buildings. Blank concrete walls are generally bad,
because it just creates an inhospitable pedestrian environment, and blank concrete walls can happen
in modernist buildings and in Georgian buildings. So, it’s really not so much the design style,
it’s how the buildings work with each other and work with the rest of the city.
But Poundbury is meant to be a prototype for more new towns around England and elsewhere.
My hope is that other city planners and architects take from Poundbury what is working, but continue
to try new and innovative designs that are not strictly nostalgic for a bygone era.
I would also love to revisit Poundbury’s success once the so-called masterplan
is achieved in 2025. Since the town is built to accommodate 6,000 people, how would it adapt to,
say a new company setting up shop in or near Poundbury creating thousands of new jobs?
Most of us live in towns or cities that have been developing over decades or even centuries,
so I wanted to hear from Dave what his perspective was as a city planner
on Poundbury’s experimental brand new town and its future.
It’s a very difficult task and it’s probably going to take years to make the city feel,
the community feel lived in. Because I know a lot of the criticisms of Poundbury is that
it’s kind of Disneyesque right now, or sort of artificial, so it just sort of takes time
for a city to sort of settle into itself. We’ll see what happens in 10, 15, 20, 50,
100 years from now. It’ll just be interesting to see what happens in the long term, but
it’s a tough task, they’re doing the best they can, I think. And we’ll see what happens.
Overall, I’m glad that people are trying new things when it comes to imagining the future of
modern neighborhoods and the interesting thing about Poundbury is that it's not theoretical,
it’s an actual functioning town. If you liked this video, definitely check out Dave’s videos over at
City Beautiful, he’s an actual city planner and makes fantastic videos explaining what makes
for good and bad cities. And make sure to check out curiositystream.com/futurenow and use code
“futurenow” at check out to support my channel and stream fascinating new educational content.
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