Personally, I think affordable housing should be of a higher design specification than “market” housing, since this is the design that members can control. The embarrasment factor may then force developers to increase their own specs, rather than keep to the lowest and safest levels of design the market will bear. Of course, a lot of the early Arbury Park sales went to the “buy to let” purchasers, who don’t mind much about standards, so long as they can squeeze high enough rents out of their multiple tenants. I was puzzled as to why affordable housing should strain resources like schools and health facilities, until I realised that those units would in fact be occupied by ordinary families with children, rather than by multi-households of single people and by working couples (who will presumably try and move somewhere nicer when they start their family)

Incidentally, Richard, I am not sure what is wrong with the concept of estates developed purely for university staff. Many of the streets of central Cambridge were originally built for college servants - and of course other streets for railway workers etc. Now, no-one working in such low paid jobs would have a hope of buying or renting in those areas. The only way to create any mixed communities is by rigorously interfering with the market as much as possible. If everything is sold for half a million, your community will be remarkably homogenous (and the next thing you know, will have gates around it).