Homes for today & tomorrow.

  • Great Britain. Ministry of Housing and Local Government.
Date:
1961
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Homes for today & tomorrow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    92/104 (page 82)
    14 15 16 17 18 19 open space would be split into small areas scattered about the estate, so as to be of little use either for visual relief, or for the various other uses of space around buildings referred to in paragraph 3. We have attempted to assess the likely cost of providing for one car per dwelling at various levels of density; our approach has inevitably been limited by the fact that there is little or no practical experience of making provision for cars at this scale. Moreover, our assessments of cost are largely theoretical; the way in which cars are accommodated on a particular site will be a complex question, for there will be factors to consider which we have not been able to take account of— e.g. site levels, whether, on a redevelopment site, there are existing cellars, whether the immediate demand for garaging is likely to be large or small, etc. The density affects the ‘‘extra housing cost’’, because of its effect on the selection of building types. For instance, there will already be more high buildings at 160 than at 100 habitable rooms per acre before any provision is made for cars; and the average extra cost per dwelling of increasing the number of high buildings in a scheme which already contains a considerable proportion of them is rela- tively less than the cost of adding high buildings to a scheme which has only a few such blocks. The “‘extra housing cost’’ will therefore tail off at the higher densities, the density at which this occurs varying with the average dwelling size of the estate. (The average dwelling size also affects the problem in other ways and we deal with its effect in general terms in paragraphs 28-35). In our assessments of cost, which cover estates at 100, 140, and 160 habitable rooms per acre we assume a medium average dwelling size of 3.77 rooms per dwelling and site areas of a sufficient size to accommodate the various forms of mixed develop- ment which provide the basis of our costing. In deciding on what types of solutions to consider, we have had necessarily to work to certain principles. These are: (1) that a limited proportion of the cars can reasonably be accommodated in the amount of space around buildings provided in present layouts without unduly affecting amenity or using up space required for other purposes; on the basis of experience of present layouts, we have taken it as a working rule that it is reasonable to use not more than about 10 per cent of the space around buildings for cars (2) that, as far as possible, space for the car should be closely related to the dwelling. This means that we have not considered solutions that would involve concentrating very large numbers of the cars in one place. (The importance of this factor will, of course, vary with the density and the size of the site). Basis of the assessments of costs For the purposes of costing we have made the following assumptions: (1) that in all cases the overall housing density would be held constant, i.e. space would not be made for the cars by putting fewer dwellings on a site; (2) that the present layouts, on which we have based our estimates of “‘extra housing cost’, were good average mixed developments, reasonably econo- mically designed, without an excessive proportion of high buildings; and (3) that no car accommodation would be provided in present layouts. By making these three assumptions we have concentrated our attention on the worst case. Granted that there must be no loss in density, the extra costs may still in some circumstances be lower than those that we have quoted, either because more than adequate space around buildings has been provided in present layouts or because provision for cars on a considerable scale is already being made. The approximate constructional costs of the types of car accommodation which we have considered are set out in Table I below. These costs include all surfacing and access roads to the accommodation (other than estate roads as provided in present-day layouts), and are based on average provincial prices in mid-1961.