To think we could make housing estates like Center Parcs re cars

[QuertyGirl]

The USP of Centre Parcs is for many, the fact that they are mostly car free. Kids can play out and ride their bikes like I did when I was kid.

Can't do that now due to the amount of cars, speed and size of cars and, attitude of some car drivers.

People (including myself) pay a small fortune to holiday at CP.

Why can't we make housing estates more like that?

Communal car parks in walking distance, deliveries by small electric vehicles from a hub (like old fashioned milk floats), exemptions for blue badge holders and funding for electric mobility scooters for those that need them.

Yet, if the council suggests a couple of cycle lane and all hell breaks loose.

Housing estates need to be better designed. The council housing estate I lived in as a child has play parks, green spaces, wide pathways at the back of houses between gardens (the sides of the pathways had bushes and trees landscaped and cared for by a gardening team). Grass at the front of houses too.

We cycled and played in the back pathways between playparks and could reach most of the estate, and the central hub with the local shop rarely having to cross a road (which was good because we were not allowed to!). It was a great layout and we would be out for hours playing kick the can, hounds and hares or kerby. There was enough grass to kick a ball about, or concrete to setup a portable badmington/tennis net.

It was forward thinking and even though there were not many cars around when it was built over 50 years ago, even now there are plenty of car parking spaces so cars rarely have to park on the roads and the speed limit through the estate is 20mph. There is a dedicated bus route through the middle of the estate so everyone has access to a nearby busstop.

Build in the late 1970s, the houses were plain ugly boxes. The place was known as lego land, but so many of the features of the estate, and inside the roomy houses, were family friendly. Terraced houses were well built and stepped to improve soundproofing - we never heard noise from our ndns.

Within the estate there was a mini estate (the courts) of bungalows near the shop that had additional accessbility features such as ramps, all had their own gardens but also faced onto a central courtyard etc.

Forgiving the uglyness of the houses themselves it really was a perfect place to grow up and play out.

Cars don't need banned from estates, estates need to be better designed and not designed to cram in as many tiny houses as possible to maximise profit with little consideration for the people and families that will live in them.

I'd like to see the speed limit substantially reduced on most residential roads.

They are doing that in Wales, from September there will be a 20mph default speed limit on residential roads. I can see the value in it but under every other news article on this people are moaning about how it will be unreasonable and unworkable.

Like most ideas would depend on implementation.

We don't drive - but have still needed ambulance, district nurse. MN access, food and furniture deliveries too heavy to carry long distances and near door access when we house moved as carrying an entire housed furniture for 10 minutes is a lot - you want access as close as possible to front door.

Then you'd want very secure parking - as people often like to see cars out front so they can be checked on regularly.

But better designed estates would be a good first step.

Good for you OP. News flash, not everyone is like you and people’s circumstances are very different. I have a hidden disability and qualify for a BB. It’s not feasible for me to walk a long way without becoming very tired.

You would need large numbers of exemptions and not just blue badge holders. Eg all those that work in the community and don't have time to spend an extra 20 - 30 minutes at each client. Likewise family carers. School transport - many users don't have blue badges but won't cope with all that faffing about every morning and afternoon.

What annoys me the most about these kind of threads is people assuming everyone lives like them, in a city with easy access to facilities, and only have cars because they're lazy, and don't get any exercise, yada yada yada

Yes, even on a local level, people will still assume that anybody without a blue badge is not disabled at all. It's especially awkward for those of us who have bad days and better days.

People who are lucky enough to have good health and peak physical/mental ability almost all of the time will often be right there hurling abuse at people who 'claim they're disabled' because they happened to see you on a good day doing a strenuous activity for a brief time (although they didn't see you have to sleep for several daytime hours afterwards to recover).

If they did this on my estate, I would be housebound. I have long covid and mobility issues (due to my weight, I know), but I don’t have a blue badge. Before covid I could have walked 10 minutes to a car park, despite my weight, but having added long covid exhaustion and breathlessness on top, I can barely walk for 2-3 minutes. I’d be stuck at home.

Why is it not practical? Is the concept completely unworkable, or is it just that the infrastructure not set up for it? If the latter, that's something which can be changed.

Because a 10 or 15 minute walk with a toddler, baby and 6 bags of groceries is impossible. Because a 10 or 15 minute walk with a sprained ankle or pregnant with diastasis recti would not be doable. Because a 10 or 15 minute walk in the snow for a 75 year of may be unadvisable. Because nit everyone can manage a 10 or 15 min walk every day.

They are doing that in Wales, from September there will be a 20mph default speed limit on residential roads.

I'd be very happy with that; but I'd also like to see them instal smart speed bumps - the kind that don't impede you at all up to whatever the signposted limit is but give you a very nasty unexpected jolt if you exceed it - instead of the enormous exhaust-wreckers they currently use in so many places, which force you to practically stop (and wince as you wait for the scraping sound) and thus increase pockets of pollution. Maybe highways environmental planning officers all drive (diesel) Range Rovers and just don't see an issue?

Did you work? If not you probably were able to go shopping 3 x a week and get little loads. Working ft often means no time for that. It's one giant shop once a week

If you had the convenience of driving (and parking outside your house) I don't think you'd be quite so quick to suggest it's taken away.

I think you're coming from the point of view "I don't drive / have this convenience" so why should anyone else.

Good luck selling them to mothers that work 👍

I wouldn’t want to walk 10-15 minutes to my car on a morning before my commute to work. No thanks.

Why would these people need exemptions? Why would someone with a school run not be able to cope with a 5 min walk to the car? Many community and healthcare workers don't have the funds for cars and rely on public transport, should they qualify for subsidies so they don't have to ever walk to a bus stop and wait?

Plenty of people have discussed edge examples, like those with mobility scooters or living very rurally, and maybe certain medical professionals - and sure, they should absolutely be exemptions. But the vast vast majority of car owners are none of these.

So many people talk big about wanting the best for their kids, but it's so clear on threads like this that we don't want to accept even the slightest inconvenience to improve the lived environment.

We're going to let our children inherit a ruined earth, and the people of Bangladesh and small island nations drown, because we don't want to walk a few minutes to the car before a school run, or do without fast fashion - and before someone comes along to say it's about the big polluters, they're only polluting, ultimately, to provide things for end consumers. And we don't want to consume less.

I'm a mother who works.

The way people go on when they can't park right outside their house and have to park on the opposite side of the street, 3 doors down, or (heaven forbid) around the corner, I can't see being told they have to park a 15 minute walk away going down too well.

The NHS literally recommends 150 mins of exercise a week. Unless physically incapable, 10 or 15 minute walk should certainly be doable. How did you manage round the supermarket?
www.nhs.uk/live-well/exercise/running-and-aerobic-exercises/walking-for-health/#:~:text=You%20do%20not%20have%20to,adults%20aged%2019%20to%2064.

I think you're coming from the point of view "I don't drive / have this convenience" so why should anyone else.

Yes, I think this too. If you currently use the bus and it's now a 15-min walk to the stop, would you quite happily see that become a 30-min walk each way? If you ever get a taxi, that has to pick you up and drop you off 15 mins from home as well?

@pocketvenuss

I work, my mother worked and both of my grandmothers worked.

Working class women often had to make ends meet.

How did you manage round the supermarket?

Presumably with a big trolley that had two child seats in it?! Not so convenient to push them all the way home, up and down all the kerbs and over rough surfaces, even if the supermarket did cheerfully let everybody borrow them until next week.

I’d love to know how many commentators here also drive SUVs. Going to hazard a guess that the crossover is high between those who would never move to an area like this and those who drive a 4x4 to drop the kids off at school in a city (and barely set foot in countryside nor have a tow bar attached.)

Are you a member of the GCP. it sounds like it.

cambridgeshire.cmis.uk.com/ccc_live/ePetitions/tabid/115/ID/60/-Petition-demanding-referendum-to-decide-on-congestion-charge-for-Cambridge.aspx

Perhaps this fantasy neighbourhood has better pavements as cars are not parking kerbside (which is what buggers many pavements!)

Surely it's the opposite - it's someone who actually does walk every day pointing out that it's quite manageable for the majority of peolle, and then a ton of others (who presumably are like the people in Wall-E, on motorised loungers), piling on to say no way, never, because [insert small group] couldn't do it, so nobody ever could ever. Or getting very dramatic about how mothers can't survive without cars, when there are many millions of mothers - in developed countries and comfortable circumstances - doing just that.