Future living

Central Bedfordshire has 113,000 households, expected to rise 26% to 2035.  People are living longer, and we have more single households which means we need more homes and different types of homes.

How will we meet this demand for homes?

The way we build homes has not changed significantly for a number of decades, with the majority of new houses produced by large house-builders and sold on the open market.

There are emerging trends for new approaches to housing delivery, from self-building, to “build-to-rent” where housing is built expressly for long-term rental, to new ways of constructing homes from sustainable materials – or even 3D printing.

There remain a number of questions around the future of housing that Central Bedfordshire should start to consider including:

How might we live in the future?

• Do people want to live in different ways – will more people be building their own homes in 2050? Will people be living more co-operatively?

• Will we have resolved the affordability issue?

• Should we be building new communities to provide new homes, designed around sustainable principles and new technology?

• Should we be building new homes around public transport, walking and cycling to avoid the need to travel?