The Badenoch and Strathspey Local Plan allocates land east of Aviemore, for a new community to meet the growing development pressure in Strathspey. The new community would provide a range of homes with associated community and business facilities and infrastructure provision over an estimated 25 year period.
The concept for the new community aims to revive the Highland tradition of ‘planned villages’, set within an attractive landscape of woodlands, lochs, rivers and hills on the edge of the Cairngorm Mountains. The strategy also involves refocusing Aviemore towards the River Spey with the creation of a major parkland corridor along the Spey between Aviemore and the proposed site. A key strategy of the masterplan was to define buffer zones around the new community and establish a comprehensive landscape framework which structures and organises the road and development pattern. From a central community core, a gradation of density of built development extends to the periphery, through the allocation of courtyard, terraced and detached housing models.