What will become of new housing developments?
Bradley Stoke now has schools, a health centre, a leisure centre and regular social events, including a festival and a Christmas pantomime. Yet memories remain of the late Eighties when it was Europe's biggest housing estate but had no community centre, few shops and no schools. Hence, the almost Pavlovian response, whereby instead of drooling at the sound of a bell, a collective howl about lack of community facilities ensues at the words "new town".
In fact, the proposed £2.5 billion scheme for 10,000 homes at Ashton Park, south of Long Ashton, is supposed to include a community centre, two district shopping centres, five primary schools, a secondary school and a business park.
But the South West Regional Development Agency isn't happy, and amid references to a possible "Bradley Stoke mark two", concerns have been raised about the "sustainability" of the plans. Maybe it is a fair point, although I'm not sure how building on green belt land can be sustainable anyway.
Personally, I wish there had been more concern about the sustainability of some developments approved in Bristol in recent years. But building on brownfield sites doesn't tend to arouse the same sort of passionate protests as construction on rural sites, such as that proposed for Ashton Park.
However, if any more pubs, shops, petrol stations, churches, schools, libraries or swimming baths get turned into flats in Bristol, there's a danger that parts of the city will start to resemble Bradley Stoke, circa 1988.
The difference is that Bradley Stoke initially only had lots of new properties but later gained community facilities – while in some parts of Bristol, long-standing local assets are being replaced by blocks of new flats.
Ironically, it can now be easier to walk to the local library or swimming pool in Bradley Stoke than it is in some long-established areas of Bristol. So much for sustainable city living.
In the area where I live, the nearby library is earmarked to be turned into flats, the local swimming baths are set to become a development which will include flats, and the former secondary school was the subject of a consultation on the basis that it would be turned into flats. Meanwhile, a pub has already been turned into futuristic-looking flats.
Property companies are not entirely to blame for this. It's not their fault some churches attract low congregations, nor that many shops have to contend with competition from the internet, or that some pubs are no longer viable – with 48 closing in the Bristol area in the past four years, according to figures published this week.
However, many developers are guilty of building high-density flats on land which could instead have been used for mixed schemes of homes with gardens, as well as some flats.
I'm beginning to wonder if this tendency to develop incongruous blocks of modern flats amid historic streets could be affecting the sustainability of some developers.
Take a look at the property websites for Bristol, and it would appear there isn't so much a slump in the housing market but rather a crisis in a particular sector, namely modern flats.
I certainly haven't noticed any family homes within a few hundred metres of a decent Bristol state school remaining unsold for long.
By contrast, there seems to be a significant supply of new-build flats. Could it be that while cramming in as many flats as possible made sense – and lots of profit – on paper, it hasn't added up for some developers because people have been reluctant to buy what are perceived as featureless high-rise rabbit hutches?
If there's one possible benefit of the present difficulties in the housing market, it might be the end of the flat-building frenzy that has seen new developments springing up over the city like a brick-coloured rash.
Maybe one of the reasons there is perceived to be a market for 10,000 new homes at Ashton Park is the fact that most of these will be houses rather than flats. The problems of Bradley Stoke some two decades ago might have been a lesson in the need for a community infrastructure in any new development. But recent years seem have shown the importance of developers building places that people want to buy, instead of focusing on theoretical profits from blocks of high density flats.
For if there isn't much of a market, then developers won't see much in the way of profits – and risk suffering another type of sustainability problem, by becoming commercially unviable. Or, to use a phrase associated with Bradley Stoke during the property slump and negative equity of the early Nineties, they could end up "sadly broke".
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