Where are the real people?

Cambridge is not a city, it is a social, economic and scientific triumph. A phenomenon. Yet because of its success people can't afford to live, work or travel there.

You may think that Cambridge has very little to worry about. It is that rarest of things in Britain - a real success. The gown-town has become a boom-town. All this and great architecture too.

The people of Cambridge are not shy about noting any of this. Some may say they were a bit smug, but perhaps there is reason to be. The university is seen as outstripping Oxford these days. The town has attracted 1,100 hi-tech firms, with 35,000 rather good jobs to go with them. The county has been the fastest-growing in England for the last 20 years and is expected to be so for the next 20. Why, even Bill Gates is a tourist when he comes to Cambridge.

It is called Silicon Fen, but the locals have a better name for it: the Cambridge Phenomenon. People use this phrase a lot. They do not bother to explain it because it is assumed that you know. But now there is Trouble in Phenomenon Land. The first hint of this is the fact that people are obsessed with the price of housing. And this is not a middle-class thing. This is a survival thing.

A two-bedroom terraced house in the not-so-nice part of town is going for pounds 100,000. Flats costing pounds 160,000 or so are talked of in wonderment and horror. "It is almost as bad as London," they say, but in fact there is no "almost" about it.

Cambridge has brought this on itself. In the Fifties, the architect William Holford had the vision that Cambridge must keep itself special. It must not become humdrum. That meant no smokestacks, like dirty old Oxford, and no fringe development. The town has stayed true to the Holford Plan of 1951. Any newcomers who wanted to live in a reasonably priced family home were politely shown the way to a nice semi-detached out in the Fens. But not everyone obliged, and so housing prices kept climbing and the social mix became more extreme.

"Only the very poor and the fairly rich can afford to live in Cambridge nowadays," says Alison Quant, a local county planner.

It has been a wonderful life, but will not be so for much longer. The Government has told Greater Cambridge that it needs to build 71,000 new homes in the next 20 years. This is a lot. Cambridge itself has only 45,000 now. But everyone agrees that the boom must not turn to bust. The Phenomenon must not fail.

So where do you put the houses? Cambridge itself is full up. And so the big debate has begun. Last week's public consultation exercise attracted 23 people on the panel alone. Everyone agrees on one thing: Cambridge must not become Berkshire. This prospect is viewed with horror. There is therefore talk of a New Town, or even two.

There are always the Fens, of course, but even one more commuter on top of the current 37,000 is too many. The green belt is truly in danger this time. "The green belt is not beautiful," snaps one businessmen. "It is bloody flat and boring!"

I drive through this flat, boring, beautiful land on my way in to Cambridge. You can tell where it ends, because the green turns to brown and there are diggers everywhere. Here a science park, there a factory. Every project is flagged up as something like "innovation". It feels rather American. But only for an instant. Then I join the traffic queue that is crawling towards the town centre. The roads get smaller as the architecture becomes more spectacular. It is claustrophobic. Soon it is like driving inside one of those ship-in-a-bottle things. There is nowhere to go: escape is always just another street away.

The next day I take the train there. The station is a good hike from the city centre and I'm told this is because the colleges did not want it any closer. When you own most of the land in the city centre - as the colleges do - you can decide such things. The colleges seem to get the blame for much of what is wrong and right with this town, and with good reason. Some, such as Trinity, are not just rich but fabulously so. They have taken the land given to them by one King Henry or another and done extremely well. Trinity developed the booming Science Park and St John's founded the Innovation Park on land it has owned since 1534.

In a neat trick, the colleges have become mini-development corporations, ancient institutions of learning and hugely influential landowners all at once. "There is no point in allocating land for building in west Cambridge, unless the colleges want to build on it, because they own it all," says Alison Quant. All of it? She thinks for a moment. "Yes, except for a few bits."

Planning is not a sexy topic ordinarily, but everyone in this town, from the richest venture capitalist to the poorest of men, talk of it with real passion. Hermann Hauser, the founder of Acorn Computers and the head of the Amadeus Fund, is positively aggressive about it all.

He says that the graduates of Stanford University in California have generated business worth $1 trillion , MIT graduates can lay claim to half a trillion but Cambridge graduates would barely claim to have generated $20bn. I am taken aback by such astronomical figures and say that many people seem impressed enough by Cambridge as it is.

What about the Cambridge Phenomenon? "In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king," he says.

Mr Hauser says no growth is simply unthinkable. Walter Herriot agrees. He is the manager of the Innovation Park, which is a launch-pad for new businesses. Mr Herriot says there are 20 millionaires on site as we speak. The ethos feels American in its studied casualness. Mr Herriot is not wearing a suit. He comes out to meet me. He makes his own coffee. He says they try to be as American as possible. It is a can-do country and Cambridge needs to be more can-do too. Mr Herriot wants another 37,000 new jobs here. He wants Cambridge to be the knowledge-based centre of Europe in the 21st century. And that means houses, sooner rather than later. The green belt, he says, is a noose.

Mr Herriot says that people whinge too much. He comes from Liverpool. Now there is a city that would love to have Cambridge's problems.

"If you went back to the 19th century and there were such controls then, the Industrial Revolution would never have happened in the UK. So, at this point, we would have lost two world wars and would probably be a tourist economy having to take our clothes off, paint ourselves blue and run around trying to attract others to see us in our rural idyll."

Michael Flood lives in a different Cambridge - a bedsit in the east of the city or, in fact, half a bedsit. I find him ferreting around in a rubbish bin in a little park just off St John's Street, in the heart of the ancient centre. He says he is looking for bread to feed to the birds, and will speak to me only if I give him pounds 5. I agree.

Some tourists go by, who look as if they might take our picture. Mr Flood says he cannot work and is very ill, leukaemia being the worst of it. He looks worn beyond his 56 years. His eyes are rheumy. He has been on the council's housing list for five years. Once a day or so he has a meal for pounds 1 at the charity Overstream House.

Mr Flood says that housing is something that the poor and homeless often talk about over this meal. The ordinary working man cannot afford anywhere to live in Cambridge and that needs to change. He names some specific sites for housing, but then stops. "The universities have all the property in Cambridge," he says. "They need to provide houses for students. Where I live, if somebody advertises a room, a student takes it. The ordinary, average working man has got no chance."

Cambridge has to crack its "grow or die" problem, but so far there is too much talk and not enough sense. The surrounding necklace of villages are full of Nimby types and the townspeople simply feel lucky to have homes that are worth a fortune.

I need a wise man, and I find him in Professor Marcial Echenique, architect and professor. He formed Cambridge Futures at the request of the mayor and the vice-chancellor. Now it has produced a report showing seven different ways that Cambridge can grow; in each case the impact on the social mix, economy and environment are examined.

The only option that won't work at all, he maintains, is no growth. Then, he says, Cambridge will become a "Laura Ashley" town full of wealthy people who won't be able to get their shoes repaired. He sees the current dilemma as being just important as the one in 1951.

"It is crucial. Clearly the Government sees this as a test case. We could become a museum, or we could spoil the town with too much development. Or, if we are clever enough, we will find a combination that works." But, I say, surely Cambridge is full of clever people. He shrugs. "Yes, well that is what they claim."

I leave and get stuck in the traffic. I shrug. After all, it's just the Cambridge Phenomenon.