Across most UK villages, towns and cities, new housing developments are being built as the Government looks to address the nationwide housing shortage. But what can be done to ensure the residents of these new homes have access to the infrastructure and services they need? We have layered our proprietary LDC retail points of interest data over Edge Analytics’ insight on housing development plans to identify where areas of over- and under- supply of services can pose risks and opportunities for a range of organisations.
Using Manchester as an example, there are 23 development sites which have already gained planning approval and will add almost 10k new homes across the area. The largest is the Downing Living development, which is expected to deliver 1,236 apartments by 2027, alongside a gym and a café. Based on the 15-minute city theory, which dictates that certain services should be within a 15-minute walking time of residential catchments, we have produced a plan of how the new developments across Manchester perform in terms of supply within the proposed area.
Figure 1: Map of planned developments across Manchester LAD (Source: Edge Analytics)
These insights are valuable for town planners, retail and leisure occupiers and commercial property organisations to understand where current and future opportunities lie.
For this analysis, we used the below categories to group occupiers and services defined by Yang et al in their paper ‘Walkability Measurement of 15-Minute Community Life Circle in Shanghai’, focusing on the commercial, living facility and medical care categories.
Figure 2: Occupier and service categories to assess amenities within a 15-minute walk (Source: Yang et al)
Using a 15-minute walking radius for each new development, we have benchmarked the surrounding provision to the national and regional averages to identify areas of undersupply around each of the main proposed developments across Manchester.
To get to the detail of missing retail amenities, these broader groupings can be broken down into categories as defined by LDC’s retail and leisure classifications. For example, Figure 4 shows a clear lack of provision in department store retailing, butchers & fishmongers and grocery retail, compared to the regional and national averages.
We can perform the same analysis on important community services, for example, post offices, banks and health stores, to name a few. This can be cross-referenced with other demographic characteristics of an area. For example, locations with an older age profile may need care facilities in the area, increased medical provision or access to bricks-and-mortar banking services. Other important services include doctors' surgeries, pharmacies and automobile garages.
This analysis can be extrapolated to include a wide range of services for which a brand or business may need to identify areas for expansion or restructuring. It can be used by councils who are monitoring the expansion of services for their growing catchment, or by developers who are looking to understand what provisions they will need to accommodate for when planning new large-scale developments.
For more information on this analysis and how it can support your business planning, please get in contact with us at team@localdatacompany.com.