ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE
Take a look around the University of Cambridge’s ambitious, eco-friendly new neighbourhood
s Cambridge races to keep up with its own exuberant growth, gleaming new developments are
springing up all around the city, but the latest, Eddington, is attention-grabbingly unique for a number of reasons. For starters, this latest extension to the city – which will eventually include 3,000 homes – has been conceived and delivered by Cambridge University. A decade in the making, Eddington is the realisation of an ambitious project by the university to help secure its long-term future through creating homes for key workers and academics. In the face of rising property prices and a shortage of affordable housing, the development is part of a campaign to stem the ‘brain drain’; to keep Cambridge appealing and viable to the postgrads and staff without whom the university cannot function. Eddington is the first phase of the north west Cambridge development, which occupies a vast 150-hectare site, located between Madingley Road and Huntingdon Road. Of the 3,000 homes in the pipeline for development, half will be allocated to those associated with the university, alongside an additional 2,000 postgrad student beds, and the other half will be privately sold to the general public. The sheer scale of the development is another marker of its uniqueness – close in size to 90 football pitches, this new suburb for the city represents the largest investment by a university in a new community. A colossal £1 billion project undergirded by an admirable commitment to sustainability, it encapsulates not just housing, but 100,000 sq m of research facilities, 50 hectares of green open space, the University of Cambridge Primary School and a variety of community facilities.
EDDINGTON IN NUMBERS
150 HECTARE SITE
3000 HOMES
2476 TREES
ISSUE 03 62
cambridgecatalyst.co.uk
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