Valuing Sustainable Urbanism (2007)

Statistics inform us that the United Kingdom covers 94,526 sq miles (244,820 sq km), less than half the size of our nearest Eu neighbour France (at 211,209 sq miles) with whom we have broadly compatible population and GDP. With approximately 60 million inhabitants to accommodate at the new millennium, the British have for many years placed a necessary premium on our scarce land resource and, accordingly, have hotly debated the ways this land should be developed. We are fortunate that so many dedicated and enlightened politicians, professionals and passionate activists have, through the years, doing what they can in design, planning and policy to preserve the country from despoliation through overdevelopment; in current estimation, something like 12% of the UK land mass is identified as developed. Many imagine the figure must be higher; in a recent CPRE poll, a cross-section of population questioned had the idea that over 50% of our surface area was urbanised. Some argue that our success in protecting the landscape leaves us room now to sprawl as if the husbandry of past generations can all be spent in this one.

This report contains the results of research undertaken by Savills Research in the second half of 2006. The research was designed to do two things; first, to define and then to measure the physical characteristics of sustainable urbanism. Second, to look at the economic characteristics of sustainable urbanism in terms of present total development value and to identify any differences in other forms of value generation and residential value growth between it and other forms of urbanism.