A darker shade of green

If green is good, the five-year-old Slateford Green housing development in the Gorgie district of Edinburgh is a paragon of virtue. The 120 super-insulated flats contribute to cutting global CO2 emissions by taking heating and hot water from a communal system. The homes are oriented for maximum solar gain and are set around a pond that filters surface water run-off. And, boldest of all, cars are banned at Slateford Green, and residents and their visitors forced to park elsewhere.

In fact, Slateford Green is so proud to be green it wears the colour on its sleeve – in vivid bands of green rendering on its facade. Shame then, that a development sporting the green strip of Hibs’ football team is actually located in arch-rival Hearts territory. “The colour was a bit of a hot potato when the development first went up,” concedes Fergus Allan, project co-ordinator at developer Dunedin Canmore Housing Association. “But now people think of it as a landmark rather than taking offence.”

But are the developer’s claims to be green as misleading as its football allegiances? In 2002, an evaluation commissioned by Scottish Executive agency Communities Scotland applauded the scheme’s innovations, but noted that it had not been assessed under the BRE’s widely used environmental measurement system, BREEAM, and that there was a lack of monitoring to assess cost and energy savings over the lifetime of the building. Now, five years after completion, Regenerate accompanied Allan (and his car) on a revisit to ask whether the green really does go deeper than the facade.

Energy efficiency

Designed by local architect Hackland and Dore, Slateford Green offers a modern take on the traditional Scottish tenement. Flats are grouped around shared stairways, each of which provides bicycle storage, a design feature that is now written into Communities Scotland’s design standards. The building is arranged in a curving tear-drop configuration, and most flats have either a south-facing sun-porch or balcony. Timber-frame construction packed with Warmcell insulation has given the homes a high energy efficiency rating under the SAP system.

Car-free is good for the kids, but it can be a hassle if you’re expecting a delivery

Tracey Whitelaw

Whereas many designs would have grouped the homes around a central car park, Slateford Green has a large pond surrounded by dense planting. The pond takes surface water from drains in the perimeter road, filters it through reed beds, then channels the clean water back into the Water of Leith.

As well as environmental sustainability, the scheme aims to foster social sustainability. A tenure mix of 69 flats for social rent, 39 for shared ownership and 12 for outright sale has been successful, with a low turnover of social renters but a healthy trade in owner-occupied or part-owned flats. Thirteen homes have been sub-let to charity Deaf Action, which also has a permanent office for support staff in one flat. A community centre provides a forum for everyone to meet their neighbours. The flats have been built to Lifetime Home standards, with wider than average corridors and doorways.

The scheme originally owes its car-free status to Edinburgh council, which shares a growing congestion problem with most UK cities. To help mitigate the problem, it identified development sites that could function without cars. The commercial housebuilder that had been interested in the Slateford Green site – a former railway siding located between two arterial roads leading into the city centre – envisaged its buyers disappearing as fast as their Mondeos could accelerate, and pulled out of the deal.

It’s good for the kids and the environment. You can get buses into Edinburgh every two minutes – there’s no need for a car

Alan Wood

Parking policy

Dunedin Canmore HA, seeing a rare chance to develop in the heart of the city, took up the challenge. Residents and their visitors are not allowed to park in the development, and must park in neighbouring side streets or a nearby supermarket car park. A barrier prevents cars and delivery vehicles from gaining access. But there are some concessions: refuse lorries use a perimeter road, as do minibuses that transport disabled or elderly residents to social centres and workplaces. There is also a parking bay for disabled drivers and doctors or health visitors.

The impact of the policy has possibly been felt less in Slateford Green than it would be elsewhere, thanks to the site’s excellent transport connections to the city centre and the residents’ income profile. According to Alan Wood, the scheme’s on-site concierge, no more than 20 tenants out of 120 flats own a car. “It’s good for the kids and the environment. And you can get buses into Edinburgh every two minutes – there’s no reason to have a car,” he says.

Allan adds that one or two buyers bought homes in Slateford Green specifically because of the car-free status. But he concedes that there has been a low take-up of facilities offered by the Edinburgh Car Club, a car-sharing system where members pay an annual membership fee and an hourly rate. “It hasn’t been taken up here, the charges are quite high. But it is slowly taking off in Edinburgh generally,” he says. The housing association has borne the cost of providing four parking bays with lockable bollards for car club users.

On Regenerate’s visit, a random poll of residents suggests that the car-free policy has proved an irritant even to those who don’t own cars. “Car free is good for the kids, but it can be a hassle if you’re expecting a delivery,” says resident Tracey Whitelaw. “It’s annoying if you have visitors with a car and they don’t know where to park,” agrees Gemma Valentine. But Kim Florence, a co-ordinator for Deaf Action, is more positive. “It’s good for our tenants, from the safety aspect. And now that the minibuses have a pass to get past the barrier, there isn’t any hassle.”

It’s good from the safety aspect and now that the minibuses have a pass to get past the barrier, there isn’t any hassle

Kim Florence

Responding to residents’ mixed reactions, Dunedin Canmore tenancy services director Graeme Russell says that “the vast majority have bought into the car-free concept”, and argues that a degree of compromise over the policy is the price paid for roomy flats and the miniature urban oasis provided by the pond. “There’s a trade-off between living in a pleasant environment with higher space standards, and that’s no parking. If you want a green environment, you can’t have your car parked at the front door.”

Recycling – up to a point

But if the pond is part of a trade-off, the benefits to residents, the housing association and the environment aren’t as great as they might have been. The original aspiration was that reed beds would filter grey water from wash-hand basins and washing machines and use it to flush toilets. However, this plan was abandoned when the client looked into the legal and financial ramifications of ensuring that no contaminants got into the system, as laid down by the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency.

According to property services manager Simon Campbell, even the compromise of filtering surface water has proved “difficult to manage over the years. We made lots of alterations to those water features, we had to install silt-traps and pumps for filtration because the residents wanted to put fish in it. It has cost in excess of £10,000 over five years, but we’ve borne that and not passed it on to tenants.”

And given its limited use in recycling water, the pond seems greedy for space that could have been used for other facilities, such as a play area, or a wildlife garden to promote bio-diversity and balance the extensive hard landscaping. But the housing association’s Allan defends the decision. “The kids would say they’d rather have a climbing frame, but the adults like it – it’s nice and quiet in the evening. The living rooms look over the pond and a lot of people prefer the sound of running water to kids playing.”

People come from a wide area and a wide social spectrum. They can talk to each other and integrate

Jessica Bazzarelli

The scheme’s communal heating system is another example of compromise. Architect Hackland and Dore came up with an innovative plan to warm Slateford Green by pumping waste hot water from a nearby distillery on the other side of the railway line to a heat exchange pump at the edge of the site. But the plan foundered on the legal technicalities of which party would pay for bridging the rail line, and the distillery’s unwillingness to guarantee a 15-year supply of waste heat.

Dunedin Canmore turned to the second-best solution of a communal system powered by four boilers that deliver a constant supply of hot water to the kitchens, bathrooms and central heating systems. Campbell says maintenance costs are lower than in a conventional development powered by 120 gas boilers. “You don’t have the complication of landlord safety certificates and annual servicing,” he says. However, he was unable to provide figures on maintenance costs, energy consumption, or reduced CO2 emissions at Slateford Green compared with a conventional development.

Residents are charged a flat fee as part of the overall management charge, with different rates for one-, two- and three-bedroom properties ranging from £21 to £35 a month. Alan Wood pays £26 a month for his three-bed flat. “Before I moved I was paying more than double that for the same-sized house,” he says. He has heard gripes from some tenants who feel that they use less heating and hot water than their neighbours, but are charged the same amount. But Tracey Whitelaw and Kim Florence aren’t among the dissenters, saying that the system works well and has proved economical.

Slateford Green shows that achieving an environmentally sustainable lifestyle is harder than it looks. On the other hand, the development seems to have proved a success in terms of social sustainability. The community centre is used every day of the week – for playgroups, Church of Scotland events, birthday parties and meetings of the 12-strong residents’ committee. It has also been used to hold sign language classes to help hearing residents communicate with deaf neighbours. Tracey Whitelaw runs art classes, and another resident offers dance classes for adults and children.

Twice a week, it hosts Cafe Boo – a not-for-profit cafe for local mothers and their pre-school children. “People come from a wide area and a wide social spectrum. They can talk to each other and integrate – the space somehow lends itself to that; it’s relaxed and welcoming,” says co-founder Jessica Bazzarelli.

Outside interest

Slateford Green itself has been very welcoming to outsiders. According to Russell, so many journalists, housing professionals and academics from the UK and other countries have been attracted to the scheme’s innovations that “at one point we put a moratorium on visits because the residents were getting fed up”.

If their experience was anything like Regenerate’s, the visitors will have found a scheme that residents enjoy, with architecture that sets a high standard for social housing.

The car-free experiment has worked well, and it would be unfair to criticise a housing association for not taking on the risks associated with the distillery heating plan or grey water recycling. On the other hand, the lack of hard evidence to demonstrate claims of energy efficiency leave the scheme’s green credentials looking more faded than its Hibs’ strip. Green is good, but proving it is even better.