by Jonathan Hiskes
Sim Darcy: An illustration of the Welsh urban villageCourtesy The Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment Coed Darcy is an
oddly named urban village that’s going to be built from the ground up over the
next 20 years in southern Wales. It’ll have an impressive 4,000 compact homes,
plus commercial space and 1,300 acres of parks and greenery. It’s also got a
high-profile engineer—the Prince of
Wales, whose Foundation for the Built Environment is building it on a brownfield formerly occupied by a BP oil refinery.
The idea is to unite
the best of British village traditions with 21st century sustainability
principles. The BBC has a well-produced video with glitzy simulations of the completed
village and an interview with Prince Charles about his commitment to “a return
of human values to architecture.” Sadly, it’s not embeddable, but it’s available
on Youtube.
Most of us will never
live in new towns built from the ground up. And they certainly have a spotty
track record (see the latest
trouble for Abu Dhabi’s Masdar City). But these sorts of projects—from the
sleepy, pastel-hued Seaside,
Florida, to the futuristic, $35 billion Songdo,
Korea—can show us what’s possible, and they’re fun to think about. There’s something
useful in the way these things appeal to people’s pioneer spirits, or at least
their inner SimCity nuts.
The Prince’s focus on
the built environment also complements the many-pronged
Welsh clean energy project.
(Hat tip to Kaid Benfield at
Switchboard)
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