Dispatch: Cambridge Forest Designathon
Co-founder of Forest City and co-founder of the Looking For Growth campaign.
Photos from the evening
"He's missed the football for this," she says. He shirks slightly sheepishly but then is proud of the fact he's made it out, adding, "It was a Champion's League game!"
Let's call them Melissa and Steve. It's a Wednesday evening and there are 60 people gathered around eight tables in a grand but simple United Reform church. On the tables are pens, paper and a huge A0 map, and each table has been given a task that will contribute in some way to building the UK's first city in over 50 years.
For some, their task is to figure out how to win over other residents to the project and its aims. For others it's to think about technology and the implications of new ideas that could transform how the city is planned.
Why Melissa and Steve came
Melissa and her husband have lived in Haverhill for 20 years. Their kids, now in their 20s, recently moved away. Why? Their commute to work is too difficult — Haverhill, a town of 30,000 people, does not have a train station — and housing is too expensive for their kids to afford.
The rest of the room is filled with locals. Students from Cambridge, cycling groups, those invested in the protection of the chalk streams, a senior civil servant, a former councillor, and then several people from the villages where the city is being planned: Kirtling, Carlton, and Cowlinge. Some are intrigued. A few are against a city being built in a predominantly rural area but nevertheless want Britain to unlock its ambition.
Melissa is in favour of the project. She wants to live in a city before she gets too old; somewhere with some excitement where she doesn't have to drive all the time. Her husband later says, "I have been speaking nonstop to my workmates about Forest City. We really need to get the word out… communication is key."
The hard questions
During the Q&A, the audience questions come in thick and fast and require detailed answers. What would be the impact on the people of Haverhill? Will nature simply be an afterthought or right at the heart? What about cycling vs cars? Would there be homes for the underserved residents of Cambridge? What about older and disabled people? Or is this a place only for productive people?
And what about the chalk streams? ("If we can't replenish them, then we shouldn't build this," we responded.)
What the tables came back with
With the one-hour workshops complete, each table gave its feedback.
Ideas for marketing to Haverhill residents: What would be the vision Forest City was selling? Did that include something to get people excited about — like a planetarium, concert venue or sports arena? It's got to be more than just a train station.
For prospective residents moving from Cambridge and beyond: Undergrads must live within Cambridge city limits, but this could be very attractive to postgrads with families. It would also be important to incorporate work-friendly third spaces and ensure that journey times into Cambridge won't be more than 20 minutes, even by bike.
For prospective employers to relocate: Cheaper energy for advanced manufacturing would be a huge boon, as well as a pro-planning permission attitude to ensure that specialised buildings like cleanrooms and vibrationless quantum computing labs could get established without years of planning permission delays.
On keeping abreast of technological developments: Had we thought about autonomous building, district heating and ever-improving forms of energy storage?
What comes next
It was a great evening, and only the start of a long series of conversations in the coming months and years.