Forest City 1 describes *We Can Build A City* as the feasibility report proving that its proposed city of up to one million people can be delivered. Its website marks the feasibility phase as complete and says the study found "no existential blockers."
We have reviewed the 296-page document, including its delivery, economics, nature, water, transport, housing and technology sections.
Our conclusion is more limited than FC1's marketing. The report adds detail to the promoters' vision and some chapters acknowledge important constraints. It does not provide an integrated business case demonstrating that the city is deliverable, fundable or consentable.
In several places, the report says so itself.
What kind of document is it?
We Can Build A City combines an introduction and executive summary with six principal reports:
- an initial economic assessment;
- natural infrastructure proposals for forest and water;
- a transport vision and cost estimate;
- a four-bedroom home cost exercise;
- a future technology review;
- appendices covering land, strategic planning, mortgage viability and farming mitigation.
It is a substantial collection of material produced with contributions from a large number of volunteers and advisers. The breadth is useful. However, the chapters differ considerably in method, depth and presentation, and they have not been combined into one financial, engineering and delivery model.
That distinction matters. A collection of early studies can help define what needs investigating. A feasibility case must also test how the assumptions interact, who carries the risks, what the programme costs over time, which approvals are required, and whether the whole scheme remains viable when assumptions change.
The report's own delivery plan places feasibility work later
The Delivery Overview, on pages 34 to 38, is one of the clearest guides to the document's actual status.
It says the purpose of the company behind FC1 is to lobby for and assist in creating a development corporation. It also says that detailed business cases, masterplanning, site surveys, transport and utility studies, land options and further feasibility studies belong in Phase 2.
The report defines the intended end of Phase 1 as receiving tacit or explicit support from the Secretary of State. That support was supposed to allow the promoters to proceed to a detailed masterplan and raise the proposed £250 million planning fund.
The public position is now very different. In June, the Housing and Planning Minister told Parliament that FC1 had failed the new towns programme's deliverability objective, that the Government was not exploring a development corporation for it, and that no business case had been produced to his knowledge.
FC1's website nevertheless labels Phase 1 "Done."
This is not simply a disagreement over wording. The report's own delivery sequence treats the detailed work required to establish feasibility as a future phase, while the website presents feasibility as already proven.
The economic case is an order-of-magnitude estimate
The Initial Economic Assessment, on pages 39 to 55, is the source of the widely promoted claim that Forest City could generate £53 billion in annual gross value added at full build-out.
The chapter describes itself as an "initial assessment" and says it is "not a full programme appraisal." The figure is an order-of-magnitude estimate based mainly on assumed employment levels and productivity benchmarks from other places.
It does not model the complete cost and benefit of delivering the city through time. Values are presented at current prices without discounting. The chapter says that a comprehensive business case would still need:
- detailed delivery phasing;
- discounted cash flows;
- sensitivity analysis and risk quantification;
- complete infrastructure costs and a funding strategy;
- site analysis and environmental baselines;
- a masterplan and land-use strategy;
- an Environmental Impact Assessment;
- a full Green Book cost-benefit analysis.
The £53 billion figure describes a possible steady-state economy if a city of the assumed size, employment and productivity exists. It does not demonstrate that the investment required to create that city is affordable or that the assumed jobs and productivity will materialise.
The transport chapter is a vision, not a completed appraisal
Transport occupies roughly 140 pages and is the largest technical section. It proposes rail links towards Cambridge and Stansted, internal mass transit, highways, greenways, freight hubs and demand-management measures.
The chapter estimates the core transport infrastructure at between £8.6 billion and £16 billion. It deserves credit for presenting a range and discussing optimism bias rather than offering a single precise figure.
However, the chapter opens by saying that much of its content consists of concepts with some supporting analysis. It says costs are subject to change as the project moves "from idea into feasibility," and later describes itself as an initial framework and starting point.
The cost range is based on reference-class comparisons with other schemes. The report records medium overall confidence, early-stage scope uncertainty, limited samples for some infrastructure types and no final alignment or specification.
The Delivery Overview also states that the tram and railway extensions will require feasibility studies and designs during Phase 2. The transport section therefore identifies a possible network and a broad cost envelope. It is not a transport business case, demand model, option appraisal or consented programme.
The affordable-home target is not demonstrated
The housing chapter, on pages 228 to 241, tests the ambition of building a four-bedroom home for £200,000, or £250,000 including groundworks, so that it could be sold for about £350,000.
Its midpoint baseline for a 150 square metre timber-frame house is approximately £427,500. Meeting the target would therefore require cost compression of around 40 per cent across multiple work packages at the same time.
The chapter finds no clear evidence that conventional market procurement can achieve the proposed cost while maintaining mortgageable, warranty-backed standards. It says delivery at the target under current market conditions would be exceptionally difficult and that the target should be treated as a test condition, not an assumption.
The proposed route to a lower cost depends on possibilities including greater standardisation, manufacturing control, different ownership structures, scale purchasing and further supplier engagement. Those possibilities may merit investigation, but they are not yet a validated production model or priced supply chain.
The chapter concludes that further work is needed to determine whether the target is realistic or whether the size, scope or commercial assumptions must change.
That is difficult to reconcile with FC1's July public statement that its £350,000 four-bedroom home is "fully on track."
The water strategy requires every major option
The water chapter, on pages 74 to 86, assumes a population of one million and very high water efficiency. It relies on universal metering, extensive reuse and the use of all proposed supply options.
Those options include:
- a new off-river reservoir near Great Bradley;
- an extension to the Cambridge to Rede pipeline;
- a possible long-distance transfer linked to the proposed south-east reservoir system;
- covered storage;
- new water treatment and advanced treatment works.
The report estimates their combined capital cost at £4 billion to £4.5 billion. Several elements depend on later hydrological modelling, abstraction licences, environmental assessment, other regional infrastructure and regulatory approval. The long-distance transfer option would not be available before 2040 under the report's own timetable.
The chapter therefore identifies potential components of a water strategy. It does not establish a licensed source, agreed transfer capacity, delivery body, funding package or operating agreement capable of supplying the proposed city.
The nature proposals precede the ecological baseline
The nature chapter proposes a 12,000-acre reserve, habitat restoration, biodiversity targets and legal covenants. These ambitions form a prominent part of FC1's public case.
However, the report says its existing ecological work is at a very high level, based mainly on maps with some site visits. It says much more detailed ecological surveying will be needed and that reserve boundaries may have to change when important habitats are identified.
It also says that exact standards would need to be negotiated with Natural England and that detailed ecological guidance and site-by-site surveys would follow later.
This is a set of principles and aspirations prepared before a comprehensive ecological baseline. It cannot substitute for an Environmental Impact Assessment or demonstrate the net effect of constructing a city, transport system and reservoir across the wider area.
Presentation and document control
The public PDF is approximately 208 MB and is not optimised for online viewing. It has no document bookmarks and is not tagged for accessibility. The contents pages omit page references for the appendices.
The layout moves between large promotional pages, endorsement quotations, dense technical text and differently styled working papers. Some sections are carefully structured, while others read like material assembled from separate contributors without a consistent editorial or technical review.
These shortcomings do not disprove an engineering or economic claim. They do make a very large public document unnecessarily difficult to navigate and assess. For a report presented as the evidence base for a nationally significant project, accessible tagging, bookmarks, consistent formatting, revision information and a complete contents structure should be basic document-control requirements.
The presentation also reflects the report's larger structural problem. The chapters remain separate studies. There is no common baseline programme showing how transport, water, housing, land, nature, power, public services, finance and approvals interact over the proposed 30-year build period.
What the report does and does not prove
The report does provide:
- a clearer statement of FC1's ambitions;
- an initial catalogue of infrastructure concepts;
- broad cost ranges for parts of the transport and water systems;
- acknowledgement of serious housing-cost and delivery challenges;
- a useful list of work that would be required in later phases.
It does not provide:
- a completed business case;
- an integrated cost and revenue model;
- detailed phasing and discounted cash flow;
- a fixed site and surveyed environmental baseline;
- secured infrastructure capacity or regulatory approvals;
- a validated housing production and mortgage model;
- committed anchor employers, delivery bodies or Government support;
- a tested strategy for cost overruns and downside scenarios.
Describing the document as worthless would be unfair. Describing it as proof that the city is feasible goes beyond what its own chapters support.
The most accurate description is a collection of preliminary studies and advocacy material which defines many of the questions a real feasibility process would still have to answer.
The next evidence FC1 would need to provide
A credible next-stage case would need to bring the separate workstreams into one independently examinable model. It would need to show:
- a defined site, land strategy and environmental baseline;
- a realistic delivery programme with dependencies and decision points;
- full capital, operating and lifecycle costs;
- sources of finance, revenue and public-sector risk;
- tested housing costs, mortgageability and market absorption;
- agreed water, energy and transport delivery routes;
- sensitivity analysis showing what happens when costs rise or delivery slips;
- the statutory body and democratic process through which the proposal could proceed.
Until that work exists, *We Can Build A City* should be read as an opening proposition, not a completed feasibility case.
For the latest position on FC1's attempt to enter the strategic planning system, read Forest City 1 changes route after government setback.
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