Ikea plans to build entire neighbourhood

The company bought 26 acres of land in Stratford in 2009 and hopes to gain permission to build the homes – 40 per cent of them large enough for families – next year.

Amongst its selling points, “Strand East” will be traffic-free, except for buses and ambulances. Rubbish will be removed from homes by a series of underground suction tunnels, and the neighbourhood will be powered by a hydroelectric plant.

It will also have almost 58,000 sq m of commercial office space and a hotel.

Around 25 per cent of the development will be open space, including a riverside park and communal courtyard gardens.

‘IKEA land’

The developers hope that providing shared and public space will encourage people to interact with each other and nurture a sense of community.

Although the project is unlikely to be able to disassociate itself from the furniture part of the company – it has already been dubbed ‘IKEA Land’ – a spokesperson told Channel 4 News that there would not be an Ikea store on the site and that the homes themselves would not be “flatpack apartments”.

If the bid is successful, it will represent the company’s first UK real estate investment through its property arm LandProp.

But it’s not just the provision of new housing that interests the company. It also aims to control the type of neighbourhood created, and plans to veto betting shops and internet cafes, while encouraging farmers’ markets.

“We would have a fairly firm line on undesirable activity, whatever that may be. But we also feel we can say, okay, because we’ve kept control of the management of the commercial facilities, we have a fairly strong hand in what is said in terms of the activities that are held on site,” Andrew Cobden of LandProp said.

The issue of designing communities in a way that influences behaviour has been embraced by many planners and architects, but it has also come under criticism from some urban design professionals who see it as social engineering.

Wayne Hemingway, co-founder of fashion label Red or Dead and the urban design practice HemingwayDesign, introduced communal open space into the Staiths SouthBank development in Gateshead.

Communal barbecues

Mr Hemingway insisted that you have to get people out of their houses if you want to encourage them to mix. He told Channel 4 News that the communal bins, barbecues and picnic benches that it included in the development have worked very well.

“You can’t guarantee to create a sense of community because can’t force people to do anything. But you can plant some seeds that can attract people who might be pillars of the community and you can put things in place that allows people to mix more easily.”

Children’s play areas are located centrally and parking on each block is pooled in order to promote interaction. Mr Hemingway said that a series of small, complex things work rather than one single thing.

“The easy way out is to think a community centre will sort it,” he said. “But they have got to be well thought out and have money pumped into it.”