IDP submits planning applications for sustainable and transformational urban village extension

Our architecture, urban design and landscape teams are extremely excited to have submitted two parallel planning applications for a transformational and sustainable urban village extension, to the thriving City of Peterborough for our amazing clients at AEPG.  This is a project where vision is everything, and AEPG had an exciting and unusual brief to create a unique mixed-use urban village addition to the city.  This project is founded on the vision of enabling healthy lifestyles and fostering community cohesion.  The project brings together a leisure and entertainment quarter, with mixed tenure housing, a care village, and extensive sports facilities to deliver a unique and walkable landscape-led masterplan.

At the heart of the plan, the existing 5000 person arena building forms an imposing structure on the landscape by means of its bulk and sinuous exo-skeleton.  Certainly not the usual constraint to find within the site for a major residential project.  But this building and its associated activity is where the ‘Life’ starts for this project.  We worked carefully with AEPG and a passionate consultant team to develop a vision to ‘bring the fun’ into a place to live by setting housing amongst a wide range of leisure, entertainment, sports, and workplace facilities, spinning-off from the starting point the arena building commences.  The structure of the plan creates highly direct pedestrian / cycle links into the existing neighbourhoods and sets these through extensive linear parks which also act to integrate SuDs networks, informal play and growing space.

The approach also proposes a wide mix of tenures to deliver a highly mixed community.  Alongside the apartments and family housing for sale, the plan incorporates an extensive retirement / care village for older people, located to benefit from views over existing parks and wetlands and locate residents at the heart of the neighbourhood, where access to amenities and open space is immediately available.  The project will deliver extensive affordable housing and proposes significant opportunities for higher density Build to Rent homes, where residents will gain the benefit to be located directly in the heart of a vibrant and healthy place to live, work and play.