Christopher Beaumont & Swen Lorenz: Sark. Past, Present & Future
“If you speak to urban planners, they will tell you that to have a viable, sustainable community, you need 1100 to 1300 households. That’s a rule of thumb in that industry. A household in the UK is 2.4 people, so you can come to a figure. Very importantly, we are not saying that we actually know what the figures should be for Sark. It could be something very different and we haven’t come into Sark with a proposal to do X, Y, or Z. Specifically, we said we want the population to tell us what it is that they want, and what they feel is worth protecting, and what they feel should be changed. And we’ve done a bottom-up exercise, and we are now crunching the numbers based on that feedback“
On today’s podcast, I’m in discussion with two gentlemen involved in the self-governing island of Sark which is located just off the coast of Normandy.
Christopher Beaumont, the 23rd Seigneur of Sark, and Swen Lorenz, a Sark immigrant who recently helped revitalize public interest in the island by creating the hugely successful ‘Move To Sark’ repopulation campaign, sat down with me in the Czech Republic and we talked everything Sark.
This is a fascinating conversation with these two Sarkees who are deeply involved in creating a long-term masterplan for this little-known Crown dependency. We discuss the past, present, and future of Sark in a thoroughly informative conversation.
Thanks to Christopher and Swen for taking the time to not only speak to me on the podcast but also for presenting the project to the Free Cities audience at our annual conference.
Enjoy the conversation.