LDA Design on how sustainable travel is to be helped by landscaping at Waterbeach, Cambridge

Image: CGI of cycleway and landscaping at Waterbeach courtesy of LDA Design

In a first for development at this scale in the UK, Waterbeach New Town East in Cambridgeshire will create neighbourhoods that place cyclists and pedestrians ahead of the car.

South Cambridgeshire District Council has granted planning permission for 4,500 homes with 30 per cent affordable housing provision. The new town brings significant employment space, plus schools, healthcare and sports facilities.

LDA Design’s landscape-led masterplan for Waterbeach New Town East creates a series of small neighbourhoods, or ‘steads’, which will create intimate, convivial places with cars pushed to the edges.

According to LDA Design 'each residential stead will be fine-grained with its own character, landmarks and facilities. Sociable Streets will have the feel of intimate green linear parks with space for communal activities from children’s play, to eating together, to tending community vegetable growing spaces.'

The new town will be well connected by rail. Waterbeach Development Company, a joint venture between Turnstone Estates, Royal London Asset Management and Aquila Investments, has previously secured consent for Waterbeach Station to relocate and re-open by 2027 on a site as convenient as possible for the existing community of Waterbeach village.

LDA Design has led the vision, master-planning and co-ordination of the EIA, and provided landscape and heritage advice as part of a small strategic leadership team.

Waterbeach is held within a compelling landscape where views to the horizon, under vast Cambridgeshire skies, and the patterns of the surrounding fens inspire its character. There will be over 35 hectares of open space. The gentle meandering alignment of an ancient Droveway will connect the new town to a new 20-acre country park in the north and to a bustling town centre and new train station in the south.

Frazer Osment, Chair of LDA Design says that the vision is for an enterprising community, a place to work as well as to live.

“Establishing a new town is a social endeavour. Waterbeach will be no isolated dormitory town, but rather a place for businesses to thrive, a place alive with play, and a place where it is easy for all residents to meet and get to know each other.”

Click here for more on Waterbeach New Town East.