Our master plan proposals for Mill o Mains are designed to help create a popular sustainable neighbourhood. To do this we need to make Mill o Mains a place where people choose to live, a place that is desirable in Dundee.
We believe that this requires significant change. The existing layout is confusing and unsafe with its separate network of footpaths and cul de sacs. The flats are largely unpopular and should be replaced.
The area is isolated within the city and suffers from stigma as a result. The existing open spaces are of poor quality. Our plan proposes to change all these things, creating a new place that is better connected to the rest of Dundee, with family housing with private gardens on conventional streets in a neighbourhood characterised by high quality open space.
To do this we have gone beyond the simple approach of just building new housing on the footprint of the old flats. We have realigned roads, created improved open spaces, greatly increased the proposed supply of new family housing and attempted to look beyond the boundaries of the existing estate, considering how local shops will function in the future and how public transport can be encouraged to serve the area effectively.
This proposal is considerably more expensive than simply building some houses on the open spaces left over by previous demolitions, but we believe it will also bring about long term benefits. We intend to fund part of the increased cost through ‘cross subsidy’: selling houses on the open market and using the profits to fund improvements to Mill o Mains. We propose that a proportion of the houses we build will be private housing for sale. As we also intend to replace existing flats with new houses with gardens, we need to increase the area of land that is built upon. This means building on existing open space.
Building on these spaces is necessary to bring about the degree of change needed to make Mill o Mains a sustainable, popular neighbourhood, and should be seen in the context of the quantity of open space that Mill o Mains currently sits within. Building on these spaces will allow us to fund the large scale improvements we propose, and will help connect Mill o Mains to its surroundings. We propose to retain and improve significant areas of open space, in Mill o Mains, along the Dighty and in the adjacent Mill o Mains Park.
The proposals balance competing factors in an attempt to create a new place. There will be different kinds of high quality open space for different purposes. There will be popular family houses, for both subsidised rent and private sale, in a safe and well connected neighbourhood. The image of Mill o Mains will have been changed, leaving a regenerated and desirable area of suburban Dundee.