There are many reasons why this is a bad plan.
The sites are right next to the A14 and neglect the well known impact of the road on the residents. Noise pollution is known to cause blood pressure problems, and this is in addition to air quality issues. The solution is to keep the current noise barriers which reflect the problem onto the residents of Impington and make an unwelcoming, ugly and forbidding entry to the city.
The buildings already planned for the site will already stretch King's Hedges Road and Northfield Avenue to breaking point.
The lost of community resources and employment space will make Arbury Park a much less pleasant place to live and less sustainable. Indeed they acknowledge that there is no space for reasonable open space and propose taking development money to be spent elsewhere in the district: on the other side of the A14.
Arbury Park residents are already dismayed at the lack of community facilities for this new development which has also left them with unfinished pavements, no street signs and lighting and parcels of land being developed separately without a cohesive Master Plan.
Everyone believes this area will become the responsibility of Cambridge City Council following a future boundary review between South Cambs and Cambridge City, and given other sites they identify are mostly in North West Cambridge except for two smaller sites, it would appear that the attitude of South Cambs is to put all the housing on this side of the A14 and then hope the City picks up the pieces.
Recently Cambridge City Council congratulated South Cambs DC on doing a review of Arbury Park and the lessons to be learned from mistakes on the development, including the lack of a quality urban design. Too soon it seems.
I will be opposing this proposal, as will the rest of the City Liberal Democrats!
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