carfreehousing.org: some nice information, but difficult to find.

http://www.carfreehousing.org/ provides information on carfree housing developments in London, and in South East England.

Unfortunately, this information is not very well organized. As it is, the web site is useful only for one group of people: those who already live in London or those who have decided in which area of London they would like to live in.

Imagine a person living in Croydon and another who has decided to find housing in Bexley, because the office where she now works is in that area. Both would like to know what carfree housing there are within their borough. Simple enough: click on the appropriate name on the front page, and have a short summary for each borough. In the case of Croydon, the page http://www.carfreehousing.org/boroughs/croydon.html gives some succint information about a scheme for rough sleepers. For Bexley, we are informed that "currently it does not have any car-free developments built or proposed for planning permission."

Now imagine a person who wants to have information about the best carfree quarter in the whole of London or even in the whole of SE England, either because they plan to move there, or, like in my case, because they'd like to investigate what is done in other countries, looking for examples of best practices in terms of carfree quarters within a city. This web site, even though it has overall little information, does not make it easy to find it. Your only recourse then, is to click on each Borough, one at a time, and eliminate all the ones who don't have anything relevant, and make a short list of those with interesting projects, either completed or planned.

It is by looking around that I finally found one carfree housing project worthy of attention: the Millenium Village in Greenwich: http://www.carfreehousing.org/boroughs/greenwich.html . Still, it doesn't have that much information, but some nice pictures, and enough of a summary to make one want to know more.

On a separate page, you have the same navigation (limited) facilities for South East England as we just saw for London: http://www.carfreehousing.org/cfdinthese.html.

As far as the rest of the site is concerned, the news section lets one wonder if the site is still being updated: there is no indication of year, not even a date, so the news may be either fresh, or... a few years old. All in all, it's still the page with links to other sites that offer the most useful information http://www.carfreehousing.org/links.html.

The site can be much improved, but as for anything, it takes time. With a few London volunteers, much more information could be added to it, and the navigation much improved. There is definitely a need for a highlights page, with description of the best carfree housing that London and SE England have to offer.