The end of the private back garden? AIBU to think this is a crap idea?

[2beesornot2beesthatisthehoney]

www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/architects-hope-to-tear-down-garden-fences-of-englands-future-homes/ar-BB18huJd

Reported in the Guardian this morning. The shortlist of developers drawn up to attempt solve our housing crisis by new design
includes the idea of communal back gardens that have to be booked in advance to use privately!

Oh yes I can see that going down really well on Mumsnet future AIBU

"My next door neighbour overstayed their time"
"I hate sharing and want peace and quiet"
"Cynthia has just repotted all my begonias"
"Can I put a swing up in the communal garden, the neighbours are complaining"

AIBU to think that this is just a really crap idea?

It could work but it depends on the people in the community of housing which you'd have no control over and how they behaved. It could go wrong so very easily.

and some of the prototype estates are designed as car-free zones.

I'm also wondering what they mean by this.

I don't drive but still need deleiveries to be made and occasional pick up lift or taxies and if parking spaced aren't provided or even when there are drives people start parking all over pavements which if done badly can mean it hard to get puchchairs or wheel chair past or even sometime walk past without ending up on the road.

Also need to be near public transport - having bus routes set up and buses frequent enough to be usable.

I suppose in both cases it depends in the detail and how much the implications are thought through.

@rainyinscotland

I've learned from Mumsnet that people in the UK really do have a "my home is my castle" attitude. This would not go down well in the UK. In my town we have a very nice community garden, which anyone can use. It's in an area where houses only have very small gardens. You never see anyone in there, and there has been very little interest in maintaining it.

Nice anecdote. My friend lives opposite a brilliant community garden, where last year they got together and jointly funded a pizza oven, which is now well used. The garden is well maintained and I don’t have any other friends who know so many neighbours well.

I suppose that provision of a limited number of these homes with shared gardens would increase choice and flexibility and be good for people who'd be suited to them, but they're definitely a "niche" and won't become widespread, that's for sure.

So my cynical mind, when reading this, thought:

OK that's the headline-grabber that'll never happen but gets the newspapers and readerships all frothy; where's the actual thing the developers/builders/whoever are trying to get approved/made policy/push through under the radar? My betting is that it's something to do with planning laws or minimum parking provisions or similar.

Could be a potential market for the indoor trampoline - if these architects can factor in higher ceilings.

I remember the last time we lived in a block of flats with a communal garden, my then 3 year old son found used condoms next to the slide in the playground.
This was a mansion block in South Kensington, just for added context. Our neighbour downstairs took her sex work further afield to the kiddie area. We'd only lived there a couple of months when this happened. I understood very quickly why the communal gardens were constantly empty.

@RedRumTheHorse

I think people buy them because they look smart, are newly built and have a lot of bedrooms. They don't realise how much they need outside space until they are in them.

A family that needs five bedrooms (or even just three) certainly should need more outside space than afforded by these houses. Kids can't stay in their bedrooms forever... even older children need somewhere to throw a ball and sit outside with their friends.

And everyone uses a tumble drier because they can't hang out the washing (dreadful for the environment and we live on top of a breezy hill so they are missing out on line-dried-washing-smell!)

Presumably all the leaseholders paid for the communal gardens to be maintained as part of the tenancy agreement?

In my experience yes. Leasehold flats in blocks/mansions have a service charge for communal services and gardening will be part of that. Children played out in them safely, people took out chairs or paddling pools in the Summer or used them pretty much like a regular garden. For the older people it was quite the social gathering at times.

This is a common model across European cities and makes a garden an option when you can't afford the MN mini castle with grounds and 2 metre fencing!

Looking at newbuilds over the past couple of decades, with their tiny outdoor spaces I'd rather have a spacious communal garden than a small square barely big enough for a paddling pool.

Sounds like the Accordia development in Cambridge which has worked very well www.dezeen.com/2008/10/11/accordia-wins-stirling-prize/ www.paving.org.uk/documents/accordia.pdf (site plan on page 2)

Houses still have private roof terraces or courtyards, but most of the garden space is communal. It's a layout that allows greater housing density, so putting less pressure on land availability, without losing access to green space. It was built over a decade ago, follow up research has suggested that this type of layout promoted more community cohesion and more time spent outside than traditional terrace street development.

I imagine recent events have shown our Lords and Masters that far too many people have managed to get above their station and have gardens. That's got to go.

Funny that gardens weren't an issue in the 1930s when they were building a million houses a year.

I do wonder whether they'd be popular for the young/trendy/graduate market though. Most graduates will have more experience in living "socially" i.e. shared kitchens in halls for the first year, shared bathrooms and living rooms in shared houses for subsequent years, etc. The majority will have experience in dealing with "difficult" house/flat mates, maybe more likely to consider others etc. Perhaps they'll work in commuter belts which are more likely to be where graduates live??

Funny that gardens weren't an issue in the 1930s when they were building a million houses a year.

There was massively more land available, massively fewer people living in the UK, much less awareness of pollution, urban sprawl, etc. Unless you want to continue building on green belt, then some compromises have to be made.

Communal gardens are shit. I had one in my first flat years ago and we didn't ever use it. Privacy is so important to me.

Unless you want to continue building on green belt, then some compromises have to be made

Well we could start by building the million odd houses which already have permission and are being land banked.

@C8H10N4O2

Presumably all the leaseholders paid for the communal gardens to be maintained as part of the tenancy agreement?

In my experience yes. Leasehold flats in blocks/mansions have a service charge for communal services and gardening will be part of that. Children played out in them safely, people took out chairs or paddling pools in the Summer or used them pretty much like a regular garden. For the older people it was quite the social gathering at times.

This is a common model across European cities and makes a garden an option when you can't afford the MN mini castle with grounds and 2 metre fencing!

Looking at newbuilds over the past couple of decades, with their tiny outdoor spaces I'd rather have a spacious communal garden than a small square barely big enough for a paddling pool.

So, despite "owning" your own house and "owning" a share of the communal land, you'd be happy to pay for maintenance, such as gardening, lawn mowing, property management to supervise/administer it all, etc?

It does say courtyard garden which suggests it's probably only big enough for one household to use at a time-so hardly communal!

houses squashed in at random angles

Yes this really annoys me. If we want to be environmentally friendly why are houses designed and orientated to benefit from the sun?

*aren’t

it works for us, in the uk (minus the booking). All the houses have tiny back gardens, but there is a massive green space/park that is accessible to all 18 houses and 18 flats. we pay a bit per month for maintenance (£20
I think), and everyone can use it. kids play out etc. There is grass and sone mature trees, it’s awesome. it isn’t flat, so nobody is tempted to leave play equipment out. The area is average , not posh, not deprived, and there haven’t been any problems in the 6 years we’ve been living there (the estate was build in the 50s)

YANBU.

However, access to a communal garden must be better than having no garden at all.

@witheringrowan

Sounds like the Accordia development in Cambridge which has worked very well www.dezeen.com/2008/10/11/accordia-wins-stirling-prize/ www.paving.org.uk/documents/accordia.pdf (site plan on page 2)

Houses still have private roof terraces or courtyards, but most of the garden space is communal. It's a layout that allows greater housing density, so putting less pressure on land availability, without losing access to green space. It was built over a decade ago, follow up research has suggested that this type of layout promoted more community cohesion and more time spent outside than traditional terrace street development.

This explains the new build estates some of my friends live in. Their gardens are smaller than they should be for the size of their houses, but there is lots of communal green land which their children and other children over about 8 play together in. Older estates built in the 1990s in the same areas don't have this.

Shared gardens may have worked years ago when people were societally more prepared to consider their neighbours. These days? Not a hope.

Absolutely. Where I live, you're either kept up half the night by booze-fuelled deep house basslines or woken at the crack of dawn by a pneumatic drill. Add to that my neighbours who talk on their phones in their gardens most of the day and you've got a recipe for stress and resentment. My fence is my psychological salvation! When our fence blew over last winter, we went higher with the new one! Bliss! Give me climbers and creepers any day over people!

@Newdaynewname1

it works for us, in the uk (minus the booking). All the houses have tiny back gardens, but there is a massive green space/park that is accessible to all 18 houses and 18 flats. we pay a bit per month for maintenance (£20 I think), and everyone can use it. kids play out etc. There is grass and sone mature trees, it’s awesome. it isn’t flat, so nobody is tempted to leave play equipment out. The area is average , not posh, not deprived, and there haven’t been any problems in the 6 years we’ve been living there (the estate was build in the 50s)

That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about a "normal" sized garden being shared between a small number of houses.

I don't think anyone would argue that 36 households "sharing" a large open space is a problem. That kind of number sounds ideal to me as long as the space is large enough to allow for a variety of activities to happen at the same time.

Sounds awful. Booking the garden on an app? That's going to lead to no end of problems.
The garden will have to be maintained by someone so there will be monthly costs associated with that.
I can sort of see it working if it's laid out nicely with a few benches - more like a public park - and people are free to go out whenever they want and sit quietly and read or chat with others. I think it works well for retirement communities or perhaps flats where you have lots of young professionals.
What is more problematic is if you had one family wanting a trampoline out there or sending their kids out to play all day or a couple with a dog or a quieter couple who just want to sit in the sun with a drink. It would cause clashes due to the differing needs.
There are threads on Mumsnet everyday about conflicts with neighbours concerning use of gardens and that's with 6 foot fences in between!

I live in flats now where 4 of the flats have a private garden and there is a communal garden for all 8 to share. Well, I say communal garden - it's just a strip of grass with high hedges and trees and gets no sun and it has a washing line in it. When I take my washing down to hang out I get tutted at by the neighbour who has the private garden next to the communal garden. She doesn't like anyone in it because she feels overlooked.
I also lived in flats around a grassy courtyard which was for communal use but what actually happened was one of the neighbours let her kids play out all day everyday and they basically terrorized everyone else out of it. Bloody nightmare.

I think it's the sort of idea that sounds good when you're sitting at your desk thinking about how we can bring people together but never actually works in practice because most people don't want to be "brought together" with random neighbours as they have their own friends and family. I get on ok with most of my neighbours here but I don't "click" with any of them really - we have very little in common - an I wouldn't want to spend time sitting in a garden with them.

A small park area is a great idea. It's maintained by the council (crucial) and any bad behaviour can be dealt with by the police.