Disruptive Proactivity

What would the proposed DevCo do differently if it expected people to want to come and live here after the devco ends in ~25 years? What if the devco was expected to be around for 800 years?

What I said in the Cambridge Development Corporation consultation is below.

Consultation questions are here – those who live around Cambridge are encouraged to respond.

1. There has been some progress, but more and better to do – the ratio of house prices to researcher salaries has returned (just) to single digits for a couple. Still not good, but better than it was. Took decades to cause, and will take decades on continuous improvement to repair.

2. Cambridge has existed for hundreds of years as somewhere people wanted to come and then stay. It is the duty of those here now, and the devco, to ensure that it is true for the next hundreds of years. 

5. There should be an exclusion zone around the devco boundary to avoid a second devco being directly adjacent and entities being able to play regulatory games. No other devco should exist within 2 miles of this boundary.

The Forest City at Six Mile Bottom is still a vision rather than real, but it appears that this devco boundary will cover only part of the envisaged area for the Forest City, and it’s unclear how that can interact simply.

8. Democracy requires democratic accountability of decisions. Decisions by the devco should be laid before the new Unitary Council with a single step approval of the whole new Unitary council, in the same way the House of Lords signs off on secondary legislation.  The political manoeuvring of the current Cambs-wide Mayor to constrain the actions and funding to the areas of the Unitary show that the blatant opportunism of party politics will infest the devco unless there are checks and balances.

Taking the example of affordability, the proposed devco will not have sufficient interests on its board to ensure that the city becomes more affordable – that insufficient input should either be broadened (as Cllr Thornburrow points out) or the Unitary should retain some powers.

Transport

The proposed Forest City talks about public transport to Cambridge, which means railways. Whether the Forest City (at Six Mile Bottom or elsewhere) happens, and even if it doesn’t, the railway into Cambridge from the South is absolutely dependent upon the stretch from Shelford junction to Cambridge. The devco series of investments should include the option for a branch line off the Cambridge-LiverpoolSt line, branching north of Whittlesford and curving to join the Newmarket line (joining in both directions), to ensure that Cambridge is not cut off by an inconveniently located incident at or north of Shelford Junction – it may be that the devco wishes to safeguard the route for future work. It may create the option for new stations, in addition to a new station at Hinxton:

This consultation would have benefitted from a map with the various large projects marked on it.