Poor Doors and Planning

The Kilburn Times had a front page recently on a "poor doors" development in Kilburn.  Pretty much everyone agrees that mixed communities with different sorts of tenure together are best for social well being.  Nye Bevan put it well in the famous words:

"It is entirely undesirable that on modern housing estates only one type of citizen should live. If we are to enable citizens to lead a full life, if they are each to be aware of the problems of their neighbours, then they should all be drawn from different sections of the community. We should try to introduce what was always the lovely feature of English and Welsh villages, where the doctor, the grocer, the butcher and the farm labourer all lived in the same street … the living tapestry of a mixed community."

This is why Brent's planning policies encourage on site provision of social housing.  A strict poor door arrangement such as the one cited in this Guardian article works against this.  Dave Hill explains some of the reasons why poor doors can nonetheless happen.  He doesn't mention that some housing associaitions actually prefer their properties to be lumped together for easier management.  However, I recall in the past, the Planning Committee has chosen to ask that social housing be pepper potted around the estate, as it did in the Barham Park development for example. 

As with so many planning discussions, there has to be compromise between different objectives, but there are plenty of examples in Brent where social and commercial housing co-exists without being noticably segregated.  For instance, Dairy Close in Kensal Green is mostly social housing with individual doors, but the block at the front is commercial housing.  Just up Harlesden Road, the social housing facing the Roundwood Park side is not noticably different from the commercial housing along Crossway.  Segregation can be avoided through good design.