Gilston! Women’s Safety! And… Placemaking Guts!
Or, why it takes 50 years to build seven villages but only ten seconds to realize the pavements are too dangerous to walk on
“Gilston is more than just a construction site – it is a test of whether Britain can still build communities that last.” – Jamie Grierson
Grab a mug of weapon-grade coffee, folks. We’ve had disappearing women, the scourge of pickup trucks and now… an ode to active travel within a tale of seven villages.
I can report that we’ve finally had a breakthrough in the Gilston Seven-Village Build saga. After a twenty-year journey of legal wrangling and planning bottlenecks, the first bricks are about to be laid.
Gilston is being hailed as a “proof of concept“ for the government’s planned new towns and a “rebuke to cookie-cutter estates.” It’s going to be a 10,000-home network of seven interconnected villages nestled in 1,600 acres of parkland. But before we break open the organic Prosecco and start living the dream of being able to walk our kids to school, let’s look at the transport-shaped elephant in this particular room.
The vision here is garden town philosophy with a big emphasis on infrastructure being front-loaded. We’re talking seven primary schools, two secondary schools and health centres.
So far, so good.
It sounds lovely.
Plus, Gilston claims to reject the “car-centric model of the late 20th century.” They want kids to ride bikes and people to walk where they need to go.
Again, so far, so good.
But for this to work, where is the mention of the delivery of safe streets?
Have the people working on this project checked the draft NPPF lately? You know, the one that recently failed to mention the safety of women and girls even once? If these seven villages are linked by 5km2 of parks (equivalent to about 700 rugby pitches), who is overseeing the lighting and the maintenance of the landscape and footpaths? Who is ensuring these landscapes don’t become areas of concealment that make 72% of women want to shrink their world the moment the sun goes down?
Women in Milton Keynes – a new town, don’t forget – “have called for safer, better-lit paths and underpasses to encourage more people to walk, cycle or run after dark.”
This isn’t just about repairing the street lamps if they go out.
It’s actually about keeping them switched on after dark in the first place.
For some women, the fact that councils up and down the country are dimming or switching off street lights to save money is serious cause for concern, particularly when they would rather walk in the middle of the road than potentially get trapped and attacked on the pavement. Let’s face it:
“Streets aren’t made with women’s safety in mind – especially at night” – Emmie Harrison-West
If women just don’t feel safe going down streets on their own, let alone ones that are badly lit, where does it leave the building of these new towns and villages?
We’re told the Gilston villages will be “nestled within woodland.” “Nestled” is the kind of cozy word you might find in a marketing brochure. For a woman trying to get home from Harlow rail station at night, “nestled in woodland“ translates to “riddled with blind corners“ and “bloody dangerous.” Good luck with that.
If a woman or girl living in Gilston “Village One” wants to visit a friend in “Village Three”, how will she get there? Is active travel a realistic option? Or will she quickly come to realise she’d better get a car or a reliable taxi firm on speed-dial, or else?
The amount of parkland sounds great but the bulk of it isn’t going to be used the majority of the time. This isn’t going to create a 21st-century utopia; what I’m afraid we’re going to end up with here is a very green, very expensive obstacle course for anyone clutching their keys like a weapon. And it remains to be seen if the sustainable transport corridors I helped develop back in c2017 are actually going to get built, with the big emphasis on active travel and the bus rapid transit serving the Gilston villages.
It’s gonna take a lorra, lorra guts from the planners, urban designers and politicians to get this utopian vision of safe, inclusive travel off the ground. The schools and health centres are of course important elements of infrastructure. But what of the infrastructure that actually enables you to get to these places?
Add to this the fact the entire project won’t be complete until about 2050. Reed himself admits he won’t be here to see the finish line. I just hope there’s enough powder in the vision cartridge to ensure we don’t end up with high-end silos linked by parks that look great on an iPad but are deserted after dark.
Let’s face it, Gilston has much to do if it’s going to successfully provide the proof of concept for the government’s 1.5 million-home target. But if it takes 20 years to clear the legal hurdles and another 25 to finish the job, hopefully without the value engineers getting their mitts on it in the meantime, we aren’t solving a crisis, we’re now managing a multi-generational legacy project.
In 2050, will we all be walking, cycling or running without a care in the world through tenure-blind new town neighbourhoods, or, will we be wondering who switched the lights off?
As Saoirse Ronan once said, “Amirite ladies?”
Question: Gilston wants to link 10,000 homes with parks the size of 700 rugby pitches. Is this a breathable oasis or just one more thing for women and girls to have to worry about?
#gilston #placemaking #newtowns #janejacobs #womenssafety #urbandesign101
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