In April 2023, a multidisciplinary Place Research team set out from Define to gain some insight into the key aspects that define how well The Garden City of Bournville has stood the test of time..

The Place

Bournville was formed in the 1890’s by the chocolate company Cadbury’s, envisioned a model village that followed and informed the emerging principles of the Garden City Movement. Over a 30 year period, they built a new neighbourhood that would transform the living conditions for many of their employees. This enabled a move from city centre slum housing to a spacious, green neighbourhood with parks and gardens. Design was tied to an Arts and Crafts approach, which critiqued the dehumanising effects of industrialisation and mass production. There was a push to return to a more nature and health focused planning combined with artisan architectural and landscape forms and materials.

Today, Bournville stands as a unique neighbourhood in immediate contrast to the wider post-industrial city of Birmingham. Like other model villages, such as Port Sunlight and Saltaire, its legacy is still inspiring new-Garden Cities across the world. In modern times, the Garden City movement model has been critiqued as unable to react to modern pressures, such as motor vehicle and a need for housing density. Our analysis set out to take a fresh look at the strengths and weaknesses of the approach implemented in Bournville .

Neighbourhood

Bournville has expanded over the years to form a larger area than originally laid out, all of which is managed by Bournville Village Trust. To allow focus we looked at the original centre as was formed by the Cadbury's and is closest to the original model. Starting at the neighbourhood scale, the following analysis summarises the key planning and design factors which we felt to have have had strategic influence the sense of place and level of social-interaction.

Strong character is formed by 2 main types of tissue, generally low density two story, semi or detached properties, plus a few low rise flats.

1. Strong Townscape, highly distinctive, both dynamic and consistent form and material language

2. Majority, original rectangular block structure, some 1960s-70s infill added in specific areas: tower blocks / cul-de-sacs

Highly permeable network, with strong relationships to active travel corridors. However, the primary corridors are not designed for the contemporary level of traffic: being narrow, residential focused streets, lacking separations or buffers in the roadway.

3. Linden Road, is the primary route often intensively congested, but it’s design feels like it should be a quiet secondary street

4. Public transport regular and aligns to key corridors

Clear, distinct socio-economic centre, with clusters of use. Cultural requirements have changed over time.

5. The original landmark buildings still function, if not all as originally intended. Some adapted for new use, for example Post office > Coffee shop

6. Focus on adaptable (undefined) lifestyle functions within the landscape, lacks provision of range of wider, or more specific functions

Range of park types and features, aligned to natural landform and features

7. The Reservoir, boating lake and River with natural edge treatment, provides a unique utility, contributing to the open ‘countryside’ feeling of many green spaces.

8. Green-space forms significant volume of land use, including, internal private green spaces, within blocks, including gardens, including ecological hotspots aligned but not dominated by human utility

SPACE – The Village Green

A placement and adjacency to the ‘high street’ shops, means this central area functions more as a plaza than a typical green space. The characterful, rich aesthetic harks back to the traditional green as found in many an English village. While the central seating area is well used, the wider spaces are much less certain, regularly sliced awkwardly by pathways. The shape of open grass areas this creates, often lack purpose, space definition, or sense of enclosure. This is especially the case for the whole Western edge which aligns to the often traffic laden Linden Road.

Space Analysis - Bournville Park

As is a common occurrence with Victorian era parks in the current age, a combination of open, undefined multi-use space, sees practical placement of more modern additional fixed elements, e.g., the play area, tennis courts. As a design, these could have more sensitive design integration to maximise overall area definitions and park function. The open spaces see popular and regular use in the place where they adjoin to paths and access points, but several less connected areas are underused. For a brief period following the end of School, the park sees a huge increase in numbers around the play area and its adjacent space. There would be great opportunity to see these and more kinds of activities further incorporated and emphasised through deeper consideration of space functions.

STREET - Bournville Lane

There is a strong dynamic character of Architecture and boundary Landscape which is typical of many streets in Bournville. These are great qualities which are, unfortunately, heavily spoilt by the width of the roadway influence. It has unseparated, generic design which emphasises the negative impacts of the car, in speed and dominance.

Summary

Strengths

The consistently rich, dynamic architectural, landscape and hard and soft material palette creates a unique character of experience. Functionally, it caters for a range of low-density housing typologies, with large private garden space for all residents. Strategically, it is highly supportive of those traditional healthy living activities. The abundant greenspace and network enable healthy, happy places, through promoting walking, cycling, gardening and access to integrated natural features.

Reflections

As a masterplan, it lacks overall clarity of arrangement, with inconsistency in street orientation/connection, uses and various alignments. As an approach that looked back to tradition, there was little consideration of motor vehicles. The narrow, homely primary roads subsequently suffer particularly from the negative effects congestion (noise, air pollution). Similarly, true for the highly car dominant parking approaches throughout. There are minimal measures for integration or mitigation and not much room to implement them.

More broadly, as a model for Urban Living today, with pressure of population increases, such low density is broadly unfeasible, especially within a city. If built now, would we even describe this place as being Urban. Can we call it a ‘garden City’?

Place Research - Bournville