YoCo Reseach Agenda - call for collaborators

A YoCo workshop exploring how to Grow Our Own Mix-Use Neighbourhood.

We’ve always seen YoCo as action research - trying to explore collaboratively what this new part of York needs to be and working out how to navigate across different governance, funding and decision-making structures to make it happen. Here we set out our current research agenda, as part of a search for research collaborators. If any of this sounds of interest drop us a line at yocoinformation@gmail.com

York Central – how can we build a model neighbourhood that could be replicated in high land value economies?

York Central is often cited as Europe’s largest brownfield site (though it is not the only site that makes that claim). It is to the west of York Railway Station and was previously used as railway sidings, carriage works and railway-related businesses of various kinds. The land is owned primarily by Homes England and Network Rail and a partnership of the two major landowners plus City of York Council and the National Railway Museum (‘York Central Partnership’) have secured outline planning consent to build 2500 homes and to create a commercial quarter, which is hoped to create 6500 jobs.

The future of York Central: As imagined by 1000s of people who live and work in York

In 2018 Helen Graham (University of Leeds) and Phil Bixby (Passivhaus architect, with a background in community self-build) were commissioned by York Central Partnership to run a large-scale public engagement process called My York Central. Over a month we ran 40+, mostly co-produced events, alongside an exhibition at the National Railway Museum. This led to Big Ideas, a Vision for York Central and Principles for ongoing community involvement. There is a comprehensive archive of all of the conversations, with all events blogged for greater narrative and detail.

The My York Central Big Ideas and Vision did influence the masterplan in some specific ways but the more holistic ambition and transformatory ideas generated by the public were either not fully reflected in the masterplan and outline planning consent or were are not foreclosed. In order to steward the public vision created by My York Central into a built reality in 2019 we worked with others we met along the way to set up YoCo: York Central Co-Owned (company limited by guarantee). Since then we have been turning the My York Central vision into a plan, which we published in 2021 – following a collaboration with Demos – as the YoCo Community Plan for York Central.

York: A high land value city of growing economic and housing inequalities

York is the most unequal city in the north of England (Centre for Cities 2018) – it has significant housing inequalities exacerbated by the city’s tourist economy. York Central is owned by public landowners. But we are often told that York Central is, and will be, expensive land due to remediation, infrastructure and other costs of development. York Central is also perceived to be likely to create expensive homes (beyond the 20% affordable homes required by the outline planning consent) and expensive commercial space because it is next to the railway station with fast train links to London and Edinburgh and with regular train links to Leeds and Manchester. The clear steer from the My York Central public conversation was ‘Homes for Living and Not Investment’ – how can we create genuinely affordable homes rather than holiday lets?

A vision into reality: a 15 min co-owned, mix use neighbourhood

YoCo is intending to build a carbon zero 15min co-owned, mix used neighbourhood in an early phase of the 20 year build out of York Central – as a model to be replicated across the site and that could be used in other high-land value cities. The neighbourhood is defined by a vision of how it feels and sounds. You can hear birds singing from the wild green spaces. Children are playing in the street. People shop, are working, are hanging out or are weeding the community growing spaces. People can afford to live there without stress.

The neighbourhood is underpinned by a series of active choices. To have children playing in the street…

·       cars are elsewhere (in multistorey car parks at the edges of the site, where residents pay full rental costs for parking).

·       the streets are active, with eyes on the streets to make them safe (which means people are working here, there are a mix of people of different ages and engaged in different types of economic activity from caring to traditional paid work, there are generous balconies on all flats)

·       families of all kinds, shapes and sizes can afford to live here (low rent; low running costs) in ways that give them leisure time and where childcare and support of different kinds are embedded or available.

·       disabled people, learning disabled people and older people get the care and support their need to live thriving lives (possible through carers co-ops that are enabled because people doing caring work can afford to live in the centre of York). 

To hear bird song…

·       green spaces, including trees, are integrated

·       growing spaces are close to where people live

·       traffic noise is minimised (again by keeping cars to the edges, by encouraging walking and cycling and by well networked to public transport)

Economic design

To realise the vision for the co-owned neighbourhood on York Central we will need to take a very creative and active approach to economic design. The research projects we are looking to initiate would be to research how to create a 15 min co-owned and mix-use neighbourhood underpinned a redistributive community-wealth building approach to redistributive economic design in high land value cities.

The elements to this economic model might include:

·       Dynamic local economy: Starting now to grow our own community-wealth building economy via meanwhile Incubator space in collaboration with a local CIC SPARK (proposal already developed).

·       Community investment through share issues: The have’s in York’s ‘tale of two cities’ potentially have capital to invest. There is track record of community share issues in York – YorSpace – and beyond, e.g. Headingly Community Development Trust, Leeds Community Homes.

·       Co-owning the means of tourist / conference production: York Central is expensive because of its location. Rather than selling that location to someone else to extract profit, we want to explore community co-ownership of Air BnBs, hotels, hostels, conference and meeting space and redistribute that profit to enable system change.

·       Exploiting the benefits of high density: The outline planning consent sets out building heights as well as the potential for an economic mix in different % across the site. By stacking activity – with economic uses on ground floors and homes on higher levels – we can cross-subside and reduce housing costs. By minimising the space consumed by traffic and parking, we can provide more value, at the same time making the neighbourhood easier to move around on foot or by bike.

·       A mix of housing tenures for forever affordable housing: There is a likely need for a mix of housing tenures to make the initial co-owned neighbourhood work, including market sale, co-owned rental and co-ownership. But all of this is in service of expanding the % forever affordable housing in York.

·       High efficiency housing for low housing costs: Living here affordably will be possible in part because of low or no energy costs. For those with higher incomes this will free up income for other forms of future community investment.

We would like to meet economists, technologists, environmentalists, specialists in play, disability and social care and active transport planners to help us design, plan and build the neighbourhood and create a model for subsequent refinement and use. If this sounds interesting, get in touch: yocoinformation@gmail.com