AFTER winning a £250,000 prize for a design to turn Oxford into a “garden city”, Nicholas Falk said his job has just begun.

His consultancy, URBED, won the second annual Wolfson Economic Prize, which asked: “How would you deliver a new Garden City which is visionary, economically viable, and popular?”

Using Oxford as a case study, Dr Falk, who studied at Oxford University, proposed building thousands of new homes in four planned extensions to the city.

These would be north of Abingdon, south of Blackbird Leys, East of Headington and north of Kidlington.

The 19th-century garden city movement championed balanced urban planning with green space.

Dr Falk said: “I love Oxford and I care about its future.

“Oxford has a desperate need to grow, so one can almost take the city council’s support for granted.”

Oxfordshire’s five district councils have calculated they must build 100,000 homes by 2031 to meet targets.

A recent study – called a Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA) – shows that Oxford needs 28,000 homes by 2031.

However, the city’s executive director for regeneration and housing David Edwards said the city would only be able to fit in 8,000 of these.

  • See URBED’s full plan at policyexchange.org.uk
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