Phase one of Barking Riverside has been designed by Sheppard Robson. The 45 hectare scheme consists of 1,400 of the planned 10,800 homes. The total area covered will be 140 hectares

If you head out of London east down the river Thames, it becomes apparent that not too far from the city centre are acres and acres of derelict land and buildings that were once used for industrial purposes or landfill. To most people, it doesn’t make sense why this apparently unused land isn’t being developed into housing to solve the housing crisis – it looks like a simple solution. This week’s What We’re Hearing collects together a selection of articles about the issue of brownfield housebuilding by The Economist. The first,Full metal riverside, looks specifically at Thames Gateway where, for example a new four-bedroom house on the Barking Riverside estate sells for £270,000. And the second article, The brownfield delusion, is a blog update on the subject more generally – about how difficult it is for housebuilders to use brownfield sites, because of treatment work and location attraction problems. The articles also point to more in-depth research carried out by the LSE Spatial Economics Research Centre’s Paul Cheshire in How to Kill Nightingales and not Build Houses: Insist on building on brownfields. Cheshire argues against the use of brownfield sites as a quick fix solution to the housing problem by pointing out their benefits to wildlife.