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?/

Here's one to look at, I get lost every time

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckshaw_Village

@christmaspaws stop😂 (that's my evening sorted).

Jeez take it easy, why do you have to be so mean and nasty?

How the hell is she looking down on them? She said she finds it fascinating driving around the new building estates you interprete it to she is looking down on them.

I'm fascinated by them too, and definitely not in a sneery way. Whenever I walk around them I think wow, someone has literally planned a village/town and built it from scratch and I imagine how I would design it, what I like, what I would change etc.

It also interests me to imagine what they'll look like when they've sort of 'settled' and look a bit more worn and lived in with mature trees. My parents live in a house that would have once been described as on a new build estate, and I imagine all the houses once looked identical but now they each have their own personality with different doors/render/landscaping etc like they've always been there.

We've got a really unique one near us and I love walking around it. It's built around man-made lakes and all the houses have cladding in pretty pastel colours. It has nice outdoor spaces too, little unexpected ponds and play areas and nice wooden sculptures. There are blocks of flats too and I wish I'd lived somewhere like that when I lived in a flat on a new-build estate- so many nice outdoor spaces on your doorstep to make up for not having a garden.

I think it's a conversation worth having personally, developers should have to design new build estates with quality of life in mind.

Visit Poundbury OP!

But I will add strange obsessions are actually really normal. If you ask friends or people close enough to give an honest answer, nearly everyone experiences them from time to time. One of my friends recently confessed she loves watching YouTube videos of people cleaning their houses.

I live in a early Edwardian (1903) street of terraced houses in an area of Bristol built up between 1890 and 1910. Yes, he 3 or 4 streets that are off the main road like ours is were all built within that period but they are not all higgly piggledy on a ring road.

Antoher type of housing I hate is anything 'between the wars' especially semis, and places like Becontree. For the avoidance of doubt, it's not the people, it's the architecture, and the way they are planned.

This is exactly why I love Mumsnet. I needed a chuckle. Thank you, OP.

I grew up on a 70s built estate. I loved it. There was hardly any cars then though, so we had the run of the place. As an adult I lived in a 2000's one and didn't like it. There were too many cars fighting for parking, that was my main bug bear. I cant imagine myself living on one again. I wish the developers would stop being so greedy and give people a bit more space. These houses will be around for a long time (perhaps my kids will buy one in the future) Better planning would give people a happier life, with less neighbour wars over noise and parking. I definitely don't look down on estates. And I know lots of people love the community feel of them.
Now we live on an old road, with a mix of houses from the late 1800s up to a couple of new ones being built now. From 2 bed terraces, to big 5 bedroom detached. Other side of the road is farm land, so there's nothing facing us. I definitely wouldn't class it as an estate. There are pros and cons for estates, just as there are for other styles of housing.

No, but I'm more a lover of 1970's suburbia! It fascinates me for some reason, so much more spread out than houses of today, corner houses with actual grass at the side, not using up every available inch of land! The sign of dreams and future prosperity at the time. I actually like older housing estates than this too.

let me quote you No no no I couldn't think of anything worse!! when asked if you were looking to buy one, so yes I would say that is sneering.

Completely agree.

I grew up in a 70s suburban housing estate (albeit in the 80s and 90s) and the houses were so roomy, with large garden plots to front and back - not as many houses as possible crammed onto a piece of land.

The same goes for inter and post-war council houses - real vision about how people should live, with gardens, green spaces and amenities, and nicely spread out.

Well, it’s easy to blame “greedy developers” because we all want someone to blame when we are upset about something. But ultimately, Brits have small houses because this is a densely populated country and Brits will not make the trade-offs that might allow floor space per person to be increased.

Do you want more land to be released for development? If so, where? Green fields? We are facing an environmental crisis. We could shift towards really good public transport, walking and biking, reduce car ownership and make use of the space currently used for housing cars (which is a lot)—that is part of the reason why Dutch people have more floor space per person in spite of being more densely populated. But suggesting to Brits that they give up one of their cars and do more PT, walking and biking, tend to go down like a cupful of cold sick in this country.

We could stick with the same amount of total development land while increasing each plot size, by building fewer houses. But this will just lead to a whole lot of different complaints. Because we have a 4 million home shortfall in this country. At the moment, Jane and Anne each get a tiny house. Is it OK that we decide to give Jane a bigger house and garden while Anne gets nothing, stays in a flatshare and can’t have the family she wants?

Or, floor space per person could be increased by shifting towards flats, where you build upwards - again, this is another reason why the Dutch have more floorspace per person on average. But British people are negative towards apartment living (even nice apartments with balconies and shared green space and close to parks!!) and are really really rigid on “children must have a garden!!” In my experience. Leasehold reform might help. But even if you reform leasehold, I just find British people don’t like the IDEA of flats, esp for families. It’s a real cultural thing here.

I don’t think there are any other suggestions.

And so you end up with little weeny lego brick houses and gardens too small and overlooked for kids to actually do much in, all wedged in at weird angles.

@Luxell934 Don't worry, I live in a flat (purpose built 1930s block) which most people on here waste not time in saying they would find absolutely dreadful.

I totally get this OP! I'm not quite the same but I love looking on google maps satellite view at large complexes like prisons and airports, railway stations etc, looking at the service roads, routes and buildings.

The OP said she couldn't think of anything worse than living in one. Definitely sneery and also lacking in imagination because there are many worse places.

You need to get on twitter rather than Mumsnet OP. This isn’t that unusual. Lots of people are interested in planning and design. It’s not unusual for people to like visiting 1950s estates, garden cities, 80s Po Mo etc. DP and I both do it, but not to an obsessive degree for the benefit of those posters who think any hobby outside knitting is a sign of autism.

I agree that there’s something weirdly fascinating about the pokey 90s and 00s estates.

Love this post you describe so much of what I see in the better planned "new estates" near us.

No.

My daughter lives on a new estate. It's very Dutch in design and deliberately urban rather than suburban. Several different designs of house and a few flat. There is no social housing but some so called 'affordable' housing and some of these are shared ownership.

I live on a Barratt estate and have views of woods and countryside from our doorstep. The location is one of the reasons we chose the house which is also warm and well insulated. I used to live in a Victorian cottage which was a money pit - no thanks, never again.

There is nothing to stop anyone buying a house anywhere and renting it out privately to anyone they like who may or may not 'lower the tone'.

I don’t get it but you’re NBU to have this interest.

I once visited Huf Haus in Hamburg Germany. A little village of show houses you could buy like a flat pack to build where you like. Fascinating place.

Each tot heir own but couldn't think of a more boring hobby than driving around these -pretty much identical to each other- houses 😂

Yes, I think that’s it for me. A smallish development of about 80 houses was built on the edge of the village I lived in 2016/17, and something about watching this tightly-constructed, entirely uniform set of house-lined roads grow on what had been pasture where we used to go blackberrying was weirdly compelling — the raw earth, the destruction of habitat, the names the developer gave the house designs (the Ingleby, the Holden, the Avondale), the name of the development itself (developer trying to tie it organically to the village where virtually all residents had opposed the development on the grounds of traffic and a badly overstretched GP), the names given to the roads (family names from the village war memorial to those who died in WWI), the weirdly stagey show house with scaled down furniture and elaborately-set dining table and scents to cover the smell of paint and new carpet adhesive.

OP, read Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black — it’s mostly a very black comedy about a medium who works on the outer edges of London, but there’s a very satirical episode where she buys and moves into a new build.

laneways? Huh

But you've said yourself that you couldn't think of anything worse than living in one! That's sneering and looking down on people!