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By Eshe Nelson
Nelson spent several days with citizens and officials in Northstowe and other spaces in Cambridgeshire, England.
On a warm July afternoon, Firouz Thompson was driving proudly down the newly paved road toward Northstowe, a new town about six miles northwest of Cambridge, England.
“This is where the new town center will be,” Northstowe resident Ms. Thompson said, pointing to an empty lot that will feature a market, convenience store, library and gym. Nearby there is already a first-class school and a specialized school for all ages. A nursery school will soon open its doors.
By 2040, this former World War II airfield will be redeveloped and converted into a thriving city with 10,000 homes and about 25,000 inhabitants. Or at least that is what the British government, regional officials and citizens hope.
Today, Northstowe has just 1,450 ensembles in a mix of low-rise buildings and single-family homes, surrounded by fields, structures and newly planted trees that offer no respite from the heat. Almost a decade after its construction, Northstowe has set an example of how slowly Britain is resolving the housing crisis.
“The United Kingdom has had a worse housing crisis than most of its peers, and for longer than most of its peers, whether in Europe or North America,” said Anthony Breach, a research fellow at the Center for Cities, an urban policy think tank. . deposit. Britain, which had some of the housing stock in Europe after World War II, had fallen behind, he added.
To meet the growing need for housing, the ruling Labor Party has promised to “unchain” progress and build 1. 5 million homes in the next five years, a pace of house construction seen in the 1960s.
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