The New Forest
Fixing the housing crisis by fixing the flooding crisis—and vice versa
When I started at the Catapult in 2014, one thing I wanted to transform into a project was a ‘sketch’ I’d called The New Forest. In short, the idea was to fix the UK’s housing crisis by fixing the UK’s flooding crisis, and vice versa. We build and retrofit houses from machined timber, with wood supplied from forests carefully reintroduced to surrounding landscapes, such that the absorption capacity of these new forests help to mitigate against flooding rather than exacerbate it, in turn generating material and jobs to build sustainable settlements which address carbon and biodiversity (alongside the multiple further benefits of timber buildings). These two powerful drivers—housing, flooding—positively counterpoint each other.
Aside: It’s an example of a lever strategy, a technique that should’ve been in my strategic design vocabulary, Dark Matter & Trojan Horses. The lever is created by connecting previously disparate forces and deploying one in order to positively affect the other and vice versa. Another classic problem, equally difficult, would be connecting healthcare and urban planning i.e. improving…
