Every so often, you hear about an ambitious project to create a new town or neighbourhood. Sometimes they’re in the middle of disused fields, like this one near Bicester, and sometimes they’re in the middle of a city, for instance this one in west London. That’s impressive, but it’s nothing compared to what’s being planned for the ‘Ox-Cam corridor’.
The scheme aims to connect two of the south’s major cities – Oxford and Cambridge – with a series of brand new towns, and an entire forest. Millions of trees will be planted in order to prove that mass-housebuilding can be eco-friendly, in response to backlash from activists who say that planning deregulations would be harmful to the environment.
Mary Creagh, the nature minister, told the Guardian that these new corridor towns are an attempt at ‘creating places and spaces where generations of people are going to build a home’. She says that these will be spaces where people want to live and ‘where nature can thrive’. The homes will all be within a short walk of the forest, and within commuting distance of both Oxford and Cambridge.
Creagh explained how nature is at the heart of the entire project, saying that developers will ‘use trees to essentially build communities’. The concept, she says, was inspired by post-WWII ambitions for planned towns like Welwyn Garden City and Letchworth Garden City.
Instead of gardens, the current administration hopes that forests will ‘bring nature closer to people, green jobs closer to these new communities and help us tackle climate change’.
In making access between the towns easier, the government wants to turn the region into the ‘UK’s Silicon Valley’, which Chancellor Rachel Reeves reckons could add £78 billion to the UK economy within a decade.
The new towns, making room for loads more people to settle down and work in the area, are just part of wider plans to make Oxford and Cambridge attractive to developers. £120 million is going into the return of the Cowley railway line as upgrading public transport infrastructure is a priority, and a new development just outside of Oxford is already seeing interest from start-ups, including one backed by the ultra-wealthy American entrepreneur Larry Ellison.
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