Giving people choice
Choice is all about making a conscious decision about what you want and what you don’t want. Too often in life, we are faced with the same thing.
The shape of our lives has changed dramatically in the last hundred years, yet the shape of our living accommodation has changed hardly at all.
New Islington’s designation as a ‘Millennium Village’ has afforded us scope for innovation in form. The pleasure is to invent new ways of living. It has also vested us with the responsibility to handle the existing residents’ needs and integrate them into our proposals.
We are challenging preconceptions by:
- Keeping some of the existing terraces
- Building new two and three storey homes
- Building townhouses
- Creating tough, factory homes
- Putting urban barns on stilts
- Building apartments
- Converting lofts (not the one in your attic)
The fundamental principle is to offer people choice.
It is an ambitious aim, especially given that we want the same choice to be on offer to social tenants as incoming purchasers.
But that is the only way that we can achieve our ultimate objective of seamless tenure. We hope that the inability to tell whether your neighbour is paying a subsidised rent or has purchased their flat will begin to break down barriers – which is really ambitious.
By partnering with Manchester Methodist Housing Association and the diligent use of public funds, we believe we will be able to deliver on our ambition, we already are.
