In Bicester, a mixed response to their new status as a garden city
I still feel that the revival of garden cities misses the importance of investing in housing in the established rural places they seek to recreate – why re-invent the wheel when an imaginative approach to incremental growth in rural communities themselves could make a bigger difference? Some residents of Bicester seem to agree as this article indicates:
Pulling into the Oxfordshire town of Bicester from the M40, there are few pretty Cotswolds cottages to be seen. Instead there are coachloads of Chinese tourists flocking to a retail park, next to a building site soon to become a development of 1,000 homes.
Advertised in China as a discount destination for Burberry and Barbour lovers, Bicester is already one of the south of England’s fastest growing towns. And that speed of change is only going to increase after it was selected by the Coalition as the site for a new garden city of 13,000 homes.
Retired local couple Ed and Angela Hamill spoke for many in the town, however, when they attacked the plans for their neighbourhood to become part of the answer to Britain’s housing shortage