IKEA is building a town

It will be a neighborhood stretching on 11 hectares in East London and it will feature a total of 1,200 homes, office buildings and even a hotel. All in the traditional IKEA style.

There will be bus lanes, pedestrian walkways, squares and public areas, and beneath, underground parking, to keep cars off the interior streets.

"We are in keeping with the Ikea philosophy: We don’t want to produce for the rich or the super-rich; we want to produce for the families, for the people," says Harald Müller, the head of LandProp, the property-development branch of Inter IKEA, the company that invests the profits from the furnishing giant.

"Our approach must be to get the right housing and office prices while delivering very good quality at the same time," he added. "We want to be smart enough in our design that we can offer the product for a reasonable price."

The Globe and Mail | via