This document discusses building sustainable communities in an urbanizing world. It argues that mass production of standardized housing risks losing local culture and identity. Alternatively, communities can be built by empowering local groups, demonstrating sustainable models, and recognizing local adaptation. The Prince's Foundation works with communities to build skills, social capital, and housing that respects local needs through techniques like community engagement, training programs, and green building practices.

2. Building Communities and Transforming
Lives in the Urban Century
Hank Dittmar

3. T H E P R I N C E ’ S
F O U N D A T I O N
T E A C H E S a n d
D E M O N S T R AT E S
S U S TA I N A B L E
D E V E L O P M E N T
PLACING COMMUNITY
ENGAGEMENT at
the HEART of its WORK.

4. • Lively, interesting high streets
with a mix of local shops and
quality brands.
• Streets and neighbourhoods that
are well designed, that reflect
local character and feel safe to
walk along.
• Parks, schools and shops within
walking distance of our homes.
• Homes that look like they
belong, that reflect local
identity but are also
contemporary and comfortable
inside.

5. World Population

6. An Urban Century
The pace of global urbanisation -- 2 billion more city dwellers
by 2030 -- leads to an assumption of mass production,
assembly line cities and tower block living. This endangers
local culture and distinctiveness, leads to social disruption
and possible future problems.

7. The Future?

8. "International Style" or Homogenisation?

9. THE OPPORTUNITY ACCORDING TO MCKINSEY:
A LARGER CONSUMING CLASS
If we are to have 3
billion more
consumers, can we
also see global
urbanisation as a way
to engage billions in
the production of our
communities?

10. THE EVIDENCE
ABOUT SLUMS
•
. . .increasingly points to
them being a stage in the
process of urbanisation,
a platform for individuals
and families,and having
complexity and social
organisation of their own.

11. • The 20th Century notion of an
International style has dominated
approaches to meeting this
challenge.
• A another model is to build on
local identity, allowing cultures to
participate in the global economy
from a place of strength and
awareness.
• Place can be a framework for
building this, reinforcing social
integration and community
cohesion.

12. About The Prince's Foundation
The Prince's Foundation has been working in communities from
Galapagos to Kingston to empower community groups, build skills &
social capital and demonstrate models of urbanisation that build
sustainability by recognising local adaptation. We believe there are
some helpful tools:
• Enquiry by Design: Community Empowerment and Engagement
• A Culture of Building: Training and Skills
• Building Community Capital: An Integrated Approach
• Green and Natural Building for Resilience: Learning from Nature
and Culture

13. A tool bringing the right people
together to create real solutions
through intensive workshop
sessions designed to
accommodate continuous
feedback.
These stakeholders are actively
engaged in the planning and
design of their community,
ensuring practical, achievable
solutions for the vision to be
taken forward beyond the
workshop.
CORE TEAM
Eg. ARCHITECTS,
LANDOWNERS
LOCAL
AUTHORITY
STAKEHOLDER
AND ADVISORY
AGENCIES
Eg. EDUCATION
AUTHORITIES
HERITAGE
BODIES, LOCAL
BUSINESS
WIDER
STAKEHOLDER
GROUP
Eg. LOCAL
RESIDENTS
GENERAL
ENQUIRY BY
DESIGN

14. EMPOWERING COMMUNITIES
W E O F T E N H E A R A B O U T
NIMBYs, BUT ISN'T
NIMBYism, OFTEN A
RATIONAL RESPONSE
TO THE FACT THAT MUCH NEW
DEVELOPMENT DEGRADES
OUR COMMUNITIES?
CAN COMMUNITY AND
S T A K E H O L D E R
ENGAGEMENT LEAD TO
Q U A L I T Y I N M Y
BACKYARD?

15. PLANNING REFORM
England has now reformed its planning
system, introducing a focus on localism
and community engagement.
• Presumption for Sustainable
Development
• Neighbourhood Plans
• Community Right to Build
• Custom or Self Build
• Social Investment: "Big Society
Bank"

16. LOCALISM BILL & NEIGHBOURHOOD PLANNING
"Neighbourhood planning will let people come
together at a very local level and decide,
together, where the new homes, shops and
businesses should go, and what they should
look. . .
This is a very significant change in the way we
think about planning. This is not a chance to
be "consulted then ignored," but to wield real
power. If approved by a majority of residents
in a local referendum, a neighbourhood
development plan must be brought into force
by the local authority.
Our aim with the Localism Bill is not to
prevent new building, but to promote it."
Greg Clark, Speech to Adam Smith
Institute, 2 Feb 2011
.

17. Neighbourhood planning
in practice across
England.
MAKING IT REAL -
Community & Neighbourhood
Planning Engagements

18. A CULTURE OF
BUILDING
The Prince's Foundation's
Summer School blends
theory and practice,
integrating practical
building, architecture and
urban design with
drawing and seeing the
local DNA of a place.
The course culminates in
a community project.

19. SKILLS AND
SOCIAL CAPITAL
After a number of years of
conducting summer schools
and courses in the UK, we
have done them in New
Orleans after Katrina, in
Jamaica in the Kingstonn
ghetto of Rose Town and in
Freetown, Sierra Leone. This
builds skills as well as building
social capital.

20. HRH The Prince of Wales, Richard Dimbleby
Lecture, July 2009:
“We need to ensure that community and
environmental capital is indeed put
alongside the requirements of financial
capital.
An example that would enhance both
community and environmental capital,
lies in the way we plan, design and build
our settlements. This approach
emphasizes the integration of mixed-use
buildings and the use of local materials to
create local identity which, when
combined with cutting-edge developments
in building technology, can enhance a
sense of place and real community.”

21. COMMUNITY CAPITAL

22. • Form follows function only works if function
doesn't change, but it always does: failure of
tower blocks, US suburban collapse and
flooding from channelizing river systems are all
examples of failed single order hard wired
solutions, predominant in the 20th Century.
• A C21 alternative is to design in resilience,
with simple, hackable and adaptable systems
that respond to changed conditions, whether
social economic or environmental
• We can learn how to do this by studying and
adapting from natural systems and many
traditional cultures: river systems and
sustainable urban drainage for example,
thermal mass and passive ventilation for
another.
RESILIENCE
Sustainable urban drainage, Upton
Water meadow, Salisbury

23. THE ARGUMENTS
AGAINST:
1. The problem of large numbers:
going to scale is presumed to require
standardisation and mass
production.
2. The presumed cost of building
well and for the long term.
3. Increased urban population
demands mega densities.
4. Lack of awareness: it is a
condition to be endured not a
problem to be solved. "Demand
pull"

24. 1. The Problem of Large
Numbers: Learning from History
• Faced with the problem of
accommodating a rapidly urbanising
population during the Industrial
Revolution, Georgian builders
responded by building simple, replicable
streets of attached houses with pattern
books and then modern methods of
construction.
• They then individualised with a craft
layer, allowing adaptation to place, to
individual, and at the same time creating
a space for high value creative work.
This use of craft has substantial social
capital and human capital benefits.

25. • Apple's App Store is a standardised
platform with protocols that ensure
transferability and reliability, while
encouraging creativity adaptation
and specialisation.
• Might a similar approach be taken
to city infrastructure and building?
The Problem of Large Numbers:
Learning from the App Store

26. RATES OF
CHANGE
•
Blending fast and
slow, with slow
adding value and
difference.
•
Green and low tech.
•
A tool for
understanding how to
provide local identity
while competing in a
global economy
•

27. Sustainable mixed-use/ income neighbourhoods increase values.
Savills and PFBE, Valuing Sustainable Urbanism, 2007.
2. Addressing the added cost of quality.

28. Research: Strategic
Land Investment
Model
RISK
RETURN
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027 2028 2029 2030 2031
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
20
PROMOTER
COSTS
LAND OWNER
COSTS
INVESTOR
COSTS
REVENUE
TO PARTNERS
PLANNING PHASE INFRASTRUCTURE PHASE
INFRASTRUCTURE COSTS
PLANNINNG AND
PROMOTION COSTS
£
m
Cash Flow Profile of a Typical Project
Phases 2,3,4 and 5 also see a value uplift
due to the sale od previous phase

29. ADDRESSING THE
COST
OF BUILDING WELL
Providing a model for building
well which moves from
prototype through value
engineering to production,
addressing challenges of
customisation vs supply chain
efficiency.

30. THE NATURAL
HOUSE

31. FABRIC FIRST
Natural Thermal
Enhancement

32. IMPROVING
Environmental Performance
through passive means
COOL in summer,
WARM in winter
INCREASE AFFORDABILITY
OF RUNNING COSTS

33. MOISTURE &
VENTILATION
Moisture should be kept between 40% and 60% Relative
Humidity, The Prince’s House has a natural strategy for
moisture control

34. The Natural House Is a
prototype for a low carbon
home that is natural, easy
to operate, and aimed at
ordinary people. Built at
the Building Research
Establishment, it is
undergoing testing and
occupancy evaluation.

35. Versions of the Natural
House have been built at
Britain's Ideal Home Show
for the last two years,
employing the same
principles, and visited by
over a quarter of a million
people each year, to show
people that being green can
be a positive choice.
It is being licensed to house
builders complete with
urban and siting guidelines.

37. Detached houses:
3.7 units/acre
Terraced houses
with integrated
parking: 19.4 units/
acre
Mid-rise
mansion /
perimeter
block flats:
170 units/acre
Location Efficiency and Density
3. Increased urban population demands mega densities.

38. DESIGNING WALKABLE SUBURBIA
Updating the Terraced house for C21
Addressing the demand side of the equation

39. CONSERVING RESOURCE
WALKABILITY
Laying out our neighbourhoods so that
people can walk to access their daily needs
FABRIC FIRST
Creating a high performing building shell
reduces the amount of energy to heat or
cool it
THERMAL MASS OR SOLAR
SHADING
The ability of the building to stay cool or
warm with minimal technological
interventions
PASSIVE VENTILATION
Fresh air is key to well being and passive
ventilation allows this to happen without
mechanical means

40. ADAPTABLE
HOUSES
A N I M P O R T A N T
P A R T O F A N Y
S U S T A I N A B L E
C O M M U N I T Y I S
M A K I N G S U R E
THERE IS A GOOD
MIX OF AGES AND
INCOME BRACKETS

42. Upton Urban extension,
2005-9