I'm obsessed with housing estates

[Namechangepleas]

I'm going to struggle to put this into words. Over the past few weeks I've become obsessed with new build housing estates.
That sounds ridiculous I know but just thinking about the makes me cringe but I also can't stop. I've been driving around new build estates in my area just for the sake of it to look at them and also searching for them on rightmove.
It's more the estate its self than the individual houses. I feel like I'm in the film vivarium when I'm in one.
I know this makes absolutely no sense but has anyone else ever thought this?/

I think Poundbury is seriously weird!

It's probably a lot bigger now than when I visited in the noughties, but it felt like a model village that had mysteriously grown into full-sized houses.

If you have an enquiring mind anything is interesting.
I live in a little estate like this that has been squashed into a town centre. It is weird but it’s great. It’s incredibly quiet and peaceful and clean and tidy. (residents only footpath around it) but in two minutes I’m in the lit up blaze of a major shopping centre.
En Suite, cloakroom, low maintenance, convenient. It works well and I don’t miss my old period house. I just wouldn’t like to live in an estate with no facilities on the edge of town.

Im also a bit fascinated by them-though not to the extent of driving around them. But how they feel when you're in them. Especially the ones that have got a sort of centre to them-like my friends one has a sort of ornamental lake and a Wetherspoons style pub and a cafe, shop and DRs which all is a great idea and in fairness they are all busy whenever I've been there-but I get this feeling that it's a bit-stepford wives or Truman show. It's all new and neat but the plants etc aren't yet established so it feels like it might all blow away in a stiff wind. And you could literally be on any new build estate anywhere in the country. There would be no way of knowing where you were if you were just plonked down in the middle of one.

My DSS's mum made this huge deal about moving an hour and a bit away for a better life etc etc. (actually she wanted to move in with her new boyfriend as it turned out). They moved to a new build estate on the edge of a reputationaly horrible town. She could have saved themselves (and everyone else involved the resultant total stress, time and travel costs), and just moved to any of the new build estates around here. They look the exact same. And it's not like she or the boys ever go into the town itself-they go to the out of town shopping centres/leisure stuff which are the same as those near here. I just don't get it.

That said PP mentioned letchworth. See also Welwyn gardens city. Both of those give me the same feeling, and they've obviously been around since the war and are well established but there is something a bit odd about both of them to me. (I used to work on one and lived briefly in the other)

I live in a fairly new housing development. I love my house and where I live.

I appreciate it's not for everyone.

Although perhaps I'm missing a trick and should run a bus every hour at the start of the development for people who are interested in housing estates or just want to sneer at the residents.

Why be sneered at for free when you can charge for it? 😂

I also like wandering through housing estates. I used to walk five miles daily and made it a challenge to go as many different routes as possible, so I got a lot of mileage (literally) out of the labyrinth effect. Extra points for finding unofficial paths through gaps in fences into woodland, which led me out onto a whole different road than I expected.

I particularly like when it’s a really new estate and everyone’s just moved in; the glimpses of decor where it’s all perfectly coordinated and still looks like a room set in a shop. And the dedication to Christmas decorations, pristine box-cut trees with lights in them and large bows on doors. I just think fuck me, these are some super-organised, tidy people. The cars are also always clean and somehow ‘go.’

DH has a horror of living in an estate (weirdly we grew up in identical 1970s Wimpey mazes) but my favourite houses are the red brick Brookside looking ones; those seemed very sexy and glamorous as a kid. Popular kids lived in those streets. And I love when people extend them so they’re huge, there’s one I like where they even matched the bricks, they’re not new-looking.

DH has absorbed the negative associations (nosy neighbours, people judging your garden, electric garden tools going all day long on a Sunday) and I know a lot of people are snobby about them but I think there’s something very comforting about them. Probably they’re what I think of as home, deep down. I’d love to get one and do it all up inside like it was a weird little boutique hotel 🤣

New builds have to be 10% social housing.

I know this as am a SW and spend a lot of time on them.

Pay £450,000 for a new house and quite often have the local drug dealer living over the back fence (obvs not everyone who lives in social housing make poor life choices bit the ones I visit often do).

fuck me, just when you think you’ve read it all on MN.

😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

This made me laugh. And it's definitely weird. But I sort of get it!

Yeah I've visited a few friends who have worked hard to buy a house on these new estates and it's been ruined by people in social housing. They all had to move. It's not a good mix.

‘Couldn’t think of anything worse’ nice one OP crikey 😂

I do this! I love to see the way the owners have gussied up their particular house to differentiate it.

A new build estate went up near my home when I was about 10. The houses were near on identical, walking around now it's so rare to see one still as an original.

That should be the plot of a newly uncovered J G Ballard novel.

I read a really good book about town planning!

I quite enjoy driving round them too (although I'm there for a reason) I'm a nosey cow though. We lived on one for 2 years, but it wasn't for us. It was too claustrophobic, but lots of people like it.
I think it's a completely harmless hobby OP and I get it. Some people like the feeling they get driving around the countryside, you like the feeling of driving round early 21st century housing estates. Who's to say which is morally superior?

I totally get the fascination, although to be fair I'm a geography nerd and subscribe to urban planning YouTube channels. There's something about planned development that you can find fascinating if you look at it in the right way.

If you want a slightly different weird place to wander around on Google maps, try Quarriers Village - it was constructed in the 19th century to home orphans, but now is private housing.

Some of the houses are gorgeous, but I've driven through there (okay, had a nosey) and it has that uncanny valley feel to it.

I wish I could share your like of new build housing estates. I did a stint as a delivery driver in lockdown and finding specific houses on some of them was a complete fucking nightmare.

I can only describe it as looking like someone has taken a map, some house numbers, and then used a ceiling fan to distribute them across the map in the most unhinged way possible.

Whoever put houses 21 and 22 next to each other, but 23 and 24 on the other side of the estate next to number 51 (on an estate which all has the same road name, despite the many offshoot culdesacs) should be hung, drawn and quartered if you ask me.

Give me the order of a Coronation Street style terrace any day.

There's a couple of Noddy estates gone up near me. £700k for a semi that have 30ft back gardens and a laurel bush for a front garden, oh but but but they are 5 bedroom. Cram 'em in, pile 'em high! You walk past the show homes at the entrance and you think, ooh this isn't bad, but further into the maze you go the more crammed in they become, they can be very claustrophobic. No thought to where cars are going to park - quite often a cycle shed will be their nod to sustainable transport policy, lol. The streets are bendy and narrow, with more cars than people, must be very dangerous for drivers and kids out playing. After 6 months once everyone has moved in, there's more parked cars, the weeds come through the block paving, the bark chips look tired, 4 wheelie bins out front because the developer didn't consider storage(course not), and efflorescence on the brickwork.

Different town, same shit. Architects and town planners in this country need to have a serious word with themselves.

As a PP sad, have a look at the shit planning twitter page.

Errrrrrr….. are you ok Op?

Hi OP
I'm similarly obsessed with new build estates, but it's because I'm looking to move and I'm fascinated by housing and planning.
I'll pour over the plans and look at how close the gardens are, the strange access routes to the nid terraces, the weird parking layouts which will no doubt cause future neighbour wars when someone doesn't stick to their allocated spaces. I also enjoy looking at the internal house plans to see where adjoined houses' rooms share walls. I'm extremely fussy 😂 I've yet to find a house suitable in my tiny budget yet😂

When you say driving around, surely you mean driving into dead ends and then reversing awkwardly out?

You need to visit Great Ashby in Stevenage. It’s vast!

I spent at least 4 hours one evening on google street view enjoying that place 🤣

I find it odd that people who can afford a 5 bed detached double garage type of house choose to buy them on these estates. I used to iron as a living and did lots of collecting and delivering and it mystified me. It was so, so hard to park! One customer had a brand new 4 bed in a village with one garage and a drive that could only fit one of their cars.It was detached but so close to the next house it may as well not have been! I used to dread picking up and dropping off because it was usually evening so everyone was home and they all had more than one car. I often had to park quite a distance away with loads of ironed clothes to deliver. I live in a ten year old mid terrace with street parking and a secure car park at the back. It’s social housing and they were built when the old prefabs were demolished. There’s an interesting mix of houses and bungalows and some of the old prefabs are still here having been bought by tenants. Our town has recently doubled in size due to a huge development of houses and its houses like the ironing customer lived in. Cramped close together with nowhere to park unless you have a drive. It’s madness.**

Never heard of Vivarium so watched the trailer

F U U U C K