Another piece on the “IKEA Town” in East London:
On a brownfield site in East London, a division of the Swedish retailer IKEA has started building a largely pedestrian-scale community called Strand East. Announced last year, the project is expected to be a distinctly urban, mixed-use creation … 1,200 housing units, a 350-room hotel, shops (but no IKEA store), 480,000 square feet of offices,
and a public space overlooking a canal—all of this on 26 acres.
This jumped out:
A model depicts Strand East as a dense collection of buildings—many of them organized around courtyards of varying shapes—on land bordered by waterways. Some of the housing will be in 15-story towers, but about 40 percent of the residential units will be three-bedroom mews homes, according to the London Evening Standard.
But there may be a big flaw …
(1,200 units x 40%) x 3 (what? bedrooms/unit?) = 1,440 bedrooms? I am not following the flaw. My guess is you are suggesting this creation will be too low density?
I think it is something I had said on this blog before:
On their website, it is “Over 40% of our 1,200 new homes will be high quality apartments and mews-style townhouses with three bedrooms or more”.
For matter of comparison, in the recently approved Rize rezoning. about 4% of the 241 “homes” will be 3 bedrooms (and no 3+).
In other way 4% of the Rize offer is addressing family needs (there is an interior courtyard, ideal playground for kids, none of the 3 bedrooms is at grade with this courtyard…they are in fact luxury Penthouse at the top of the tower)
So now…Do you understand better why families can’t afford Vancouver?
PS: Don’t expect that was the ground for the opposition from the Nimbies, it wasn’t at all a concern for then – on the contrary, they have successfully obtained the removal of original affordable housing component (for very marginal height reduction). That is kind of pathetic, isn’it?
yes, you’re right, the opposition ironically made the tower worse in one way, because when they cut eight stories from the tower they increased the floor height, making the building height reduction almost non-existent and each unit likely more expensive. Opponents of the tower, however, mostly saw right through the tactic by Rise and publicized the information in opposition. City council, unfortunately, didn’t care. Figures.
I didn’t think Rize originally had any affordable units. I know it had STIR units that were cut out.
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Octavio
Some critics believe the elevated walkways proposed to connect the buildings may be a big flaw …