Could Intergenerational Living Become the Next Major Regeneration Model for UK Towns and Cities?

Over the course of this series, we have asked some fundamental questions about intergenerational living.

• Why, when the benefits appear so compelling, have we delivered so little of it?
• Why do we continue to treat it as a housing product when its success depends just as much on how a community is operated?
• Can it work commercially?
• And, what does a successful intergenerational neighbourhood actually look like?

For this final article, we want to ask a bigger question.

Could intergenerational living become an important new regeneration model for our towns and cities?

We believe it could.

Not because every development should suddenly be labelled “intergenerational”, nor because this is another fashionable property sector waiting to be created. Quite the opposite.

We believe its potential lies in bringing together things that the property industry and public sector have traditionally considered separately: housing, health, community, ageing, economic activity, public realm and long-term stewardship.

And perhaps that is exactly what regeneration now needs, particularly in rethinking of our town centres and its relevance to communities.

We believe there is a need for the Government to look at the future housing provision holistically and consider how the way people live can contribute to reducing the Treasury’s / local governments commitment to care and at the same time contribute to regeneration objectives, especially in town centres. For example, the Government has looked at housing and the environment holistically for some while; it’s now time to look at the impact of housing on communities, health, ageing, social care, economic activity etc.

Regeneration has changed

We face a situation where the UK’s welfare and health bills are becoming unaffordable as a society as a whole. We therefore made an analogy with town centres and retail.

For decades, town and city centre regeneration was largely driven by retail. Build the shopping centre. Attract the department store. Increase footfall. Investment followed.

That model has fundamentally changed. The department stores have disappeared from many towns. Retail footprints have contracted. Offices are evolving. Public finances are constrained.

Yet our town centres still contain enormous amounts of infrastructure, transport connectivity, public services and underused property. All of which can help make successful communities.

At the same time, we face another set of challenges:

• an ageing population;
• a housing shortage;
• loneliness and social isolation;
• pressure on health and social care;
• younger generations struggling to access appropriate housing;
• economic inactivity; and,
• communities where people increasingly live alongside one another rather than with one another.

Perhaps we need to stop looking at these as separate problems.

Start with the place

Those familiar with our thinking around ‘Place First Economics’ (a Whatif... Framework) will recognise the principle.

Too often regeneration starts with the property and asks: “What can we build here?”

We prefer to start with the place and ask: “What does this community need to become more successful?”

That difference matters.

If we create healthier, safer, more connected and more interesting places, people want to live there. Businesses want to locate there. Investment follows. Property values respond. Development viability improves.

The economics become the consequence of improving the place rather than the sole reason for intervening in it.

Intergenerational living fits naturally into that thinking, especially in town centres but frankly throughout urban areas.

Imagine a different town-centre neighbourhood

Imagine taking an underused part of a town centre and not simply filling it with apartments.

Instead, we create a genuine mixed-age neighbourhood:

• young people starting careers;
• families;
• key workers;
• older residents wanting to downsize without leaving their community;
• people working from home; and,
• people entering retirement.

Different generations living independently but sharing the same place. Around them are the things that make everyday life work:

• health and wellbeing services;
• green space;
• places to eat and meet;
• workspaces;
• community facilities, including retail;
• children playing;
• activities and events;
• good public transport;
• perhaps some childcare; and,
• perhaps opportunities for learning, volunteering and mentoring.

Most importantly, there are reasons for people to leave their front doors and encounter one another.

That is not simply housing, it is social infrastructure.

The health opportunity could be enormous

One of the themes running through this series has been health, particularly looking upstream and people’s lives to look at wellness.

The APPG’s work on Creating Intergenerational Communities has helped put the relationship between housing, ageing, loneliness and community firmly on the national agenda.

We increasingly understand that health is shaped long before somebody enters a hospital or GP surgery:

• where we live matters;
• whether we walk matters;
• whether we feel lonely matters;
• whether we know our neighbours matters; and,
• whether we have purpose matters.

Intergenerational neighbourhoods can create the conditions for more active, connected lives:

• an older resident might help a neighbour with childcare;
• a retired professional might mentor someone starting a business;
• a younger resident might help an older neighbour navigate technology; and,
• someone living alone might simply have people around them who notice when something isn’t right.

None of this replaces professional health or social care. But it can strengthen the informal networks that help people remain connected, resilient and independent. After all a person able to live in their own home has many advantages to their wellbeing. Early entry into care or the health system is detrimental to the individual and comes at a cost.

And, if we are serious about prevention and reducing costs on health and welfare, that surely deserves much greater attention, especially by policy makers.

There is an economic argument too

This is where the conversation becomes particularly interesting to helping address our wider societal challenges.

Intergenerational living is often discussed principally through the lens of social value. We think that understates its potential.

A mixed-age population uses a town differently:

• different generations leave home at different times;
• they use cafés, shops, leisure, health and community facilities differently;
• they create natural surveillance, therefore helping tackle anti social behaviour; and,
• they create activity across more hours of the day and more days of the week.

A successful town centre intergenerational neighbourhood could therefore become much more than a residential development. That matters enormously in places trying to rebuild sustainable town-centre economies.

It could become an economic anchor.

But it still has to work commercially

None of this matters if the development cannot be financed, valued, built and operated.

That has been one of the central arguments throughout this series. Good intentions do not make viable developments. Planning needs to support innovation:

• funders need confidence;
• valuers need evidence;
• developers need an appropriate return;
• operators need sustainable income; and,
• residents need affordability.

Somebody has to take responsibility for stewardship after the development is completed.

This is why we don’t believe intergenerational living will succeed if it becomes another specialist property silo.

Its strongest future may be as a mainstream development model with intergenerational principles embedded within it, including:

• mainstream homes;
• flexible tenure;
• adaptable design;
• great public realm;
• shared social infrastructure, where it adds value; and,
• an operating model capable of sustaining the community.

That is potentially much more scalable.

The public and private sectors need each other

There is another reason why this model feels particularly relevant now.

Neither the public nor private sector can solve these challenges alone. A central theme of the Whatifgroup… beliefs are that the public and private sectors can both stand to benefit by working together in genuine partnership and recognising each other’s core objectives:

• local authorities (LA’s) understand their communities and control many of the levers around planning, public realm and services;
• health organisations and LA’s increasingly understand the importance of prevention;
• LA’s and housing providers understand residents;
• developers understand delivery;
• investors provide capital and need a return;
• operators understand customer experience and stewardship; and,
• landowners often control the opportunity.

The breakthrough comes when those interests are aligned.

Not through endless complexity, but around a simple proposition:

Can we create a place that delivers a strong commercial return because it also creates better outcomes for the people who live there?

That is ethical capitalism in practice. It is also common sense.

From cost to investment

Perhaps one of the biggest changes required is how we think about community infrastructure:

• public realm is often treated as a cost;
• community space is a cost;
• stewardship is a cost ; and,
• health interventions are a cost.

But what if some of these things protect or create value?

If better public realm makes somewhere more desirable to live, it has value. Also, there is potential to look at how we can utilise and commercialise public realm.

If stewardship improves resident experience and creates a more resilient community, it has value. Our ambition is that inter-generational stewardship should quickly move to a sustainable, voluntary based leadership; although it may need facilitation in early years.

If healthier residents remain independent for longer and can live in their own homes, that has value to the individual and society.

If more people living in a town centre support shops, cafés and services, that has value. The challenge for the next generation of regeneration is finding ways of recognising and capturing more of that value.

That is where we believe some of the most interesting innovation will happen.

A new anchor for town centres?

Retail used to provide the anchor. In some places it still does. But perhaps the future town centre will have multiple anchors:

• health;
• education;
• culture;
• leisure;
• work; and,
• increasingly, residential communities.

Intergenerational neighbourhoods could connect all of them.

Rather than importing footfall for a few hours, we create a population that actually lives there. People with a reason to care about the place every day.

That changes the economics. But more importantly, it changes the place.

So, could this become the next major regeneration model?

We think the ingredients are there.

• Demographic change is forcing us to rethink how people live.
• The health and social care systems have to become increasingly focused on prevention.
• Town centres need to reinvent themselves and look to new uses.
• Investors are looking more closely at long-term social and environmental performance. ESG counts to investors.
• Local authorities need regeneration models that deliver more than physical development.
• And, communities themselves are searching for greater connection.

Intergenerational living sits at the intersection of all of them. But there is a danger.

The property industry is very good at taking an interesting idea, giving it a label and turning it into another sector. We shouldn’t do that with intergenerational living.

Its real potential is much bigger.

It isn’t about creating an “intergenerational asset class”. It is about changing the way we think about places.

Where do we go next?

This is the final article in this series, but for us it feels much more like the beginning than the end.

The first challenge was making the case. The next is proving it:

• we need landowners who want to improve their communities and this includes LA’s (best consideration does not necessarily equate to best price);
• we now need developers willing to challenge conventional models;
• investors prepared to think beyond the first transaction;
• LA’s willing to use their influence and powers creatively;
• LA’s and health partners prepared to recognise place as part of prevention;
• operators who understand that stewardship creates value; and,
• landowners prepared to ask not simply “what is my land worth today?” but “what could this place become?”

Because perhaps the greatest opportunity in regeneration isn’t finding another use for redundant property. Perhaps it is creating places that make people healthier, communities stronger and investment more valuable at the same time.

That sounds ambitious. We think it is entirely achievable.

The question now is who is prepared to prove it.