Cambridge East: Creating Quality Time, Reducing the Commute

Town centre skyline.

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Cambridge has been phenomenally successful in stimulating growth and has built a large knowledge-based economy, resulting in some 40,000 people commuting into the city from surrounding towns, villages and beyond. The city needs to accommodate significant growth in housing to create a more sustainable balance between people's place of living and work. To meet this challenge we were appointed to work closely with our client to develop proposals for the largest single expansion of the city since Victorian times on the site of Cambridge Airport, a high density urban extension for 12,000 dwellings plus supporting facilities.

We contributed to a major review of the Green Belt and were subsequently commissioned by Marshall of Cambridge to produce an initial development framework for the site, working with the City Council, South Cambridgeshire District Council and other key stakeholders. This was followed by the preparation of an Area Action Plan (AAP) and a Spatial Masterplan.

The vision is for a new urban quarter, enhancing the city and protecting the setting of the adjacent villages. Cambridge East will be a balanced community within which it will be possible to develop a travel culture of low car dependency, due to its excellent accessibility to the city centre.

We are working to bring the scheme as close as possible to BioRegional and WWF's One Planet Living principle. A wide range of initiatives are being considered including energy centres, which may be CHP units, and constructed wetlands providing leisure facilities, enriched habitats and local grey water treatment.

In addition to housing, the plan delivers 5,000 jobs; over 90 hectares of open space and structural landscape; a country park; a range of educational, retail, leisure, health and community facilities and space for major city uses. The scheme will create a town centre for those living in and around Cambridge East, complementing, but not competing with, the city centre.

The aim of the scheme is to allow people to live closer to the many employment opportunities in Cambridge, reducing travel and leaving more time for enjoying activities with friends and family while creating a successful community framework for the environmental challenges ahead.