p and down Britain, there is talk of regeneration — but in name only, says the urbanist Nicholas Boys Smith. Councils, landowners and government bodies write vision statements, pay overpriced experts for top-down master plans and perform “quasi-mendacious” public engagements that fail to ask the most important question: what places do people like and why, he says. “If they did, they would do something different.”
They would do what the French did in the impressive new Panorama district in Clamart, an old town in the Parisian suburbs. “It is better urban regeneration than anything done in the UK in my or my parents’ lifetimes,” Boys Smith writes in a report from his think tank, Create Streets.
About 30 minutes by Metro and then tram from central Paris, this vibrant new lakeside district has sprung up in less than a decade. After a new tram stop opened in 2014, the area’s mayor worked with architects to redevelop the 35-acre brownfield site, which used to be an energy research centre. Now homes there sell for 15 to 20 per cent above the local average.
The central lake adds a significant premium to properties
What makes the Panorama district so good?
