What makes a good neighbourhood?

Discussion of ‘Neighbourhood Well Being’ gravitates around local empowerment and adequacy of investment, but that there is a clear physical environmental link too. Whilst Neighbourhood Planning is in itself a form of local empowerment, it can also facilitate the delivery of some of the key elements of good neighbourhoods: access to services and facilities, a physical structure that promotes neighbourliness, ease of maintenance, community safety, and good design.

A conceptual statement to guide the NDP policies could therefore be as follows:

Access to Facilities
✓ Essential every-day facilities and services (eg Shop, café, post-box) within 5 to 10 minutes walking distance
✓ Health, educational, financial (ATM) and well-being facilities accessible on foot/bike or short bus trip.
✓ Formal gathering places such as community halls within 20 minutes walking distance
✓ Cycle routes and parking spaces
✓ Clear signage
✓ Disabled Parking spaces
✓ Adequate disabled access
Environment
✓ Informal gathering and play spaces within the public realm
✓ Small open performance spaces
✓ Public wifi
✓ Seating
✓ Trees and planting
✓ Urban allotment opportunities
✓ Simple recycling facilities
Maintenance and Cleansing
✓ Well maintained buildings and street scene furniture
✓ Clean and visible playspaces
✓ Excellent street cleansing
✓ Minimal dereliction, underutilised and under maintained spaces and places
✓ Good air quality
Community Safety
✓ ‘ Design out crime’ – good visibility, no isolated spaces,
✓ Balance activities which may be crime generators such as bars, night time uses, restaurants and entertainment venues in terms of scale, size and local context
✓ CCTV as necessary,
✓ Well defined and purposeful open spaces.
Design
✓ Human Scale – walkable, eye-level, tactile, pleasant smelling, quiet.
✓ Distinctive and unified design that gives a ‘sense of place’
✓ Use of colour and texture to give definition
✓ Respecting scale, height, volume, site coverage and distance from and effect upon, adjacent buildings;
✓ Equality Act 2010 (DDA) compliant
✓ Community Spirit
✓ Spaces that support good ‘Social Capital’ – networks that people are involved in and engaged with others in informal, social activities; membership of groups and associations

More discussion is in the attached note:

WHAT MAKES A GOOD NEIGHBOURHOOD NOTE