Poundbury failing?

Photo via the Guardian. Photographer: Tim Graham/Corbis Sygma

An article in the Guardian from last month seems to point to an increasing amount of difficulties at Poundbury in Dorset. Poundbury is the incarnation of Prince Charles’ views on architecture and planning and tries to emulate the traditional English village. It is characterized by its New Urbanist inspirations and traditional architecture.

I visited Poundbury last year and the place really struck a chord with me for some reason, however this article appears to suggest that seven years on from the completion of the first stage, many residents are growing unhappy with their town. Many appear to be unhappy with the building quality of their homes and horror stories of collapsing roofs due to bad insulation and damp and cracked walls surely points to a real problem in the quality of workmanship.

However, this is not the only issue, the article then goes on to describe that the choice of gravel to cover the footpaths is a particular problem: cats use it as toilets, flip flop wearing is now excruciatingly painful, and it is impossible to clear from snow in the winter. Parks and pavements too become smelly if dog owners do not pick up after their pets, flip flops and gravel may not be best suited but come on!; and considering none of the areas intended for heavy car use and snowplows in particular are graveled, most of these issues appear to be nitpicking. The network of alleyways that aims to make the town more pedestrian friendly also seem to be causing problems as can be seen in this quote:

"I find them really scary and dangerous. They're great in the day but at night the kids come and bang on the door and then run off down them. I'm frightened to walk them by myself at night." She darts back into her house as a group of young men with a box of beer walks past on the way to the park.

I don’t consider myself to be menace to society, but I too happen to sometimes walk back from the shops with a box of beer, I am even some times armed with a French stick. May I also suggest that kids knocking on doors and running away, although a pain in the rear may in fact be a sign that these places are actually pretty livable. Perhaps keeping a pretty powerful pump action water pistol by the door would be a solution but I might also suggest that this person tries to get out a bit more.

One important issue that was raised however, was the appearance of a “them and us “ divide between the new residents of Poundbury and the original town of Dorchester. Perhaps this was to be expected with Poundbury attracting an entirely new demographic.

With a survey by the Oxford Brooks University finding that 86% of the residents of Poundbury were glad they moved there, the journalists may have just been trying to justify their trip to Poundbury.