We need to talk about SLOAPs: Sites Leftover After Planning
The Developer's PodcastAI Summary
→ WHAT IT COVERS Soam Deh and Valerie Baron examine SLOAPs (Sites Leftover After Planning) on UK housing estates, arguing these fragmented green spaces represent 30-40% of estate land that could be retrofitted for biodiversity, food growing, and community use. → KEY INSIGHTS - **Quantifying wasted space:** Desktop research reveals 30-40% of housing estate land sits unused as defensible open spaces between buildings, sometimes totaling the size of a football pitch per estate, yet residents pay management fees just for grass trimming without meaningful purpose or community benefit. - **Access barriers:** Ground floor residents lack direct street-facing doors due to defensible space design, creating inactive streets that feel unsafe, which perpetuates a cycle preventing conversion of adjacent leftover spaces into accessible private gardens or communal amenities that residents could actually use and maintain. - **Retrofit menu approach:** Different sized leftover spaces require tailored interventions—hard standing pavements become rain gardens or linear swales, small square patches transform into mini ponds, creating a connected network of green infrastructure patches and corridors that address flooding, biodiversity, and food security simultaneously. - **Community stewardship model:** Successful projects like Edible Estates in Bankside (thriving 16 years later) and Hammersmith-Fulham's EU-funded climate proofing demonstrate that combining community engagement, local skills training, and resident ownership of design processes creates sustainable management without relying solely on stretched council budgets for maintenance. → NOTABLE MOMENT The realization that housing intensification projects focus entirely on adding rooftop extensions and infill development while completely overlooking the improvement of existing communal landscapes, despite residents expressing anxiety about inadequate social spaces for incoming populations and their own daily interactions. 💼 SPONSORS None detected 🏷️ Urban Planning, Housing Estates, Green Infrastructure, Community Engagement