Mike Sergeant shares news of five finalists in a design competition to design a new garden city in England. The Wolfson Economics Prize, as its called, will award £250,000 to the eventual winner. The five finalists include entries are from: design consultancy housing charity Shelter; Barton Willmore; Chris Blundell; David Rudlin; and planners Wei Yang & Partners.
The competition was created to search for answers to the United Kingdom's housing shortage: "The number of households in England is expected to grow by about 221,000 every year this decade….But the number of homes being built is lagging behind - with the construction of 112,630 completed between April 2013 and March this year."
According to an earlier report from the BBC, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg promised to build three garden cities, each with more than 15,000 homes. The garden cities will fended with "an existing £2.4bn pot will be made available for developments being built up to 2020."
