Author Archives: Cambridge Town Owl

This is from one of the submissions (I wrote a guide on how to explore this here) in the call for sites a few years ago. Above – a concept map for North Cambourne – east and west “Nice of the owners and developers to do a large public engagement exercise before drawing up theirContinue reading “Someone snapped up the rights to build on fields north of Cambourne ages ago”

Which could be an interesting one for the incumbent MP for South Cambridgeshire to debate with the voters at the next general election – only he’s staked his political career on opposing such large housing developments. You can see the table below – one which I threw in at the end of an earlier postContinue reading “Cambourne’s population to rise to 55,000 people by 2050 according to East West Rail technical report 2023”

Developers for the proposed North East Cambridge site (where the sewage works currently is) were at the Strawberry Fair – and so were Save Honey Hill campaigners opposing them, as this year’s event reflected a rapidly-changing Cambridge If you want to get a feel for Cambridge’s radical edge, go to the Strawberry Fair. The firstContinue reading “Honey Hill and Hartree at the Strawberry Fair, Cambridge 2023”

A rallying call from former UK diplomat Alexandra Hall Hall (she has an interesting family tale about the origins of her double-surname) matches those coming from the communities and local government sectors about overhauling our internal institutions, how we are governed, and how we hold accountable those who do the governing. The context is nationalContinue reading ““Let us begin our process of renewal and growth where it always should have started – here, at home, among ourselves””

…which was on all things music and belonging…but then I had one chest/shoulder pain too many that lunchtime and spent the rest of the day at Addenbrooke’s having various tests done before they gave me the all clear. The last time I was in A&E I was in the major injuries/severe illnesses bit. …so itContinue reading “I was due to go to the sixth Kate Pretty Lecture at Homerton College”

Creating and voting through transport plans were supposed to be one of the main reasons for creating combined authorities in the first place. Yet today’s CPCA Board Meeting demonstrated yet again that the institution was broken from the start. It was item 6 of today’s Combined Authority Board Meeting. You can watch the meeting ofContinue reading “Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority fail to approve transport plan”

Several of you have been asking about this, so let’s have a look. Essentially this is the proposal from the CamBedRailRoad campaign which opposes the southern route into Cambridge in favour of a northern route. And inevitably there were those that preferred what ministers have now chosen is their preferred option – the southern routeContinue reading “What about the northern entrance into Cambridge for East West Rail?”

Going back through some old notes, I found some things I wrote down after the first lockdown on what community recoveries might be like. Having some sort of positive future vision for neighbourhoods to aspire and work towards was one of them. I was at The Junction in Cambridge earlier this morning for their regularContinue reading “What could five year social plans for neighbourhoods be like”

TL/DR? We used to have regional plan / regional spatial strategies. They got bogged down in bureaucracy and Eric Pickles zapped them when the Coalition came in. But we’ve seen the impact of a lack of co-ordination. So what can we learn from the last one from March 2010? You can read the draft EastContinue reading “Not everything needs to be in Cambridge – so what’s the plan to share things out locally & regionally?”

And Cambridge’ overheating economy, broken governance systems, and huge inequalities are set to continue without some big changes in government policy In my previous blogpost I pointed readers to the long-awaited reports on East West Rail’s route into Cambridge, and to the consultation results from the proposed Sustainable Transport Zone for Cambridge (AKA the GCP’sContinue reading “The Chancellor’s life sciences strategy is broken at source without an integrated regional (electrified) rail”