The release of small publicly owned sites needs political support and public land made available to enable independent SME developers to rise to the challenge and provide much needed homes for Londoners.
Solidspace is leading a campaign to unlock more of the small sites which are overlooked by volume housebuilders, and suited to independent developers, which could make a huge difference in delivering the number of high-quality new homes so desperately needed. In 2015, Solidspace founder Roger Zogolovitch published his book Shouldn’t we all be developers? which acts as a call to action for this new movement, and in November 2019 we hosted a small sites roundtable with Local Authorities and small developers in London to move it further forward.
At the roundtable, we launched Small Sites: Unlocking forgotten land for housing – a publication using our own analysis from our development site finding to define the quantity of housing that could be built on a sample of small sites that we have appraised over the last 24 months. The concept schemes reinforce the suitability of our volumetric split-level DNA adapting to different site conditions.
Together, our ‘discovered’ sites could supply Londoners with 238 new homes. All of these sites are in desirable locations with great transport connectivity, decreasing pressure on Green Belt development and encouraging more cycling and walking. They give back to their local community by hosting architecture that is contextual, and homes that are attractive to owner-occupiers and renters who will use local services, be it a cafe, a dry-cleaners or a library.
If you’d like a digital copy of the publication, please contact us to request a copy to be emailed to you.
