Forgotten land, forgotten people

The final piece of the puzzle of my postgraduate journey at UCL will be undertaking a major research project, where I’m looking to combine various interests of mine to tackle an urban problem, and devise an urban design solution. Over the past year or so I have been jotting down ideas to explore, recently I noticed a pattern emerging. All my ideas seemingly revolved around the following areas:

• Making the most of under utilised land within the context of the need for additional housing in the UK
• Enabling people to build their own houses through innovative companies such as Wikihouse
• Exploring how the urban environment and the process of change in the built environment can foster social benefits, rather than solely economic gain, in particular the circular economy
• Looking at the urban environment through a different perspective like we did during Urban Experiments Hack Day at City Camp Birmingham
• Working with housing associations to help issues such as homelessness, which is a particularly prominent issue in Birmingham city centre

These interests alongside conversations around the office led me to one final idea, already titled Forgotten Land, Forgotten People, set within the context of our current housing crisis, which is characterised by often poor quality, unsustainable and inflexible housing which necessitates huge levels of debt, that for many renders housing unaffordable.

In short, the project will look at reclaiming garage sites on post-war housing estates and putting them to better use as self-build accommodation for housing associations and local authorities. These sites are often underused: too small for large developers and often associated with anti-social behaviour, when instead they could accommodate vital homes as well as providing a practical means of upskilling residents in a manner that could turn people’s lives around.

I hope to explore this in depth using case studies from housing associations operating in the local area that currently own underutilised garage sites. It is my hope that the research I develop will be able to be used practically to help housing associations and their residents and that by developing a principle in practice, that this model of regeneration could potentially be used more widely.