Create Streets have a nice little video setting out what we might call their mission. It's very good, easy on the ear and sets out a remarkably clear view on how we should approach development, communities and housing.The core of the proposals is a thing called "gentle density" which sounds lovely until you consider what it actually means (and the extent to which is conflicts with the other things that Create Streets promote like more use of private gardens).
This gentle density thing is illustrated with images from inner London's majestic Georgian, Regency and Victorian terraces, from Amsterdam's canal front and from Venice. Wonderful imagery but not reflective of how most people live, or even how most people want to live. Create Streets define gentle density:
Woah! Seven storeys high? Is that really 'gentle' or is it just a block of flats? I know that, when we look at those grand terraces in big rich cities, we go 'wow isn't that gorgeous', but a few seconds later we remind ourselves of the inadequacies and impracticalities of such an approach.
But first, why this 'gentle density' and not, for example, an approach based on good suburban streets, the sort where many of us grew up. Here's mine:
What Create Streets say they want to do (not in the video obviously) is take places like this and wave the magic 'gentle density' wand over them. Instead of semi-detached homes with gardens, we'll have blocks, 3-7 storeys high, facing onto the street - beautifully designed maybe but, nevertheless, no longer meeting the desires and expectations of people who what a house with a garden like the one in which they were raised.
Create Streets tell us how bad density is for health and well-being:
There's a straight relationship between housing density, overcrowding and things like poor mental health, isolation, crime and impaired child development. People are happier, healthier and achieve more when they get to live in the sort of places Create Streets want to build out of existence - good old suburbs. It's as if they're set on a single model that looks like this:
What we have here is an environment that has few private gardens meaning chidren are either cooped up in a flat (remember all that stuff about 'impaired development') or else taken to formal environments for purposeful activity (Create Streets use words such as 'purposeful lives' and 'sustainable' a lot). No chance of Mum just kicking the kids out from under her feet into the garden or to play safely in a street with the neighbour children. It's an environment designed by adults with the idea of a tidy adult existence not a messier life with children growing up. Like so much of modern thinking around planning and housing, children are an afterthought, an inconvenience to be managed, rather than - as they are for many people - the main reason for having a life.
And, Create Streets, seconds after they propose seven storey blocks of flats, tell us about urban greenery and how we should have private gardens. Except they don't because they slip in the word 'communal' as somehow an acceptable replacement for 'private'. In Create Streets' carefully manicured and precise world, you're not getting a garden with your sixth floor flat, you're getting a communal space that is either managed collectively or, more like, run by a committee of officious worrywarts who'll spend most of their time thinking up new rules to stop you doing things.
And even a well-managed communal garden isn't like having your own space. You can't leave the toys out in that communal garden, they'll likely not let your children undertaken a Roman excavation or charge around playing space hockey. Because such noisy, messy things are not what the adults want (most of whom, in these gentle density developments, adhere to the 'children should be seen, not heard' view - often without the 'seen' part either).
I'm not setting out here to suggest that there shoud be none of this 'gentle density', just that it doesn't reflect the perfect compromise that real suburbia represents. Trendy folk at places like Create Streets like to sneer at suburbs, will mutter about cars and the distance to the shops. But if we want safe, friendly, family-oriented places then we will need to build at the densities that we built in the 1930s when thousands of people decamped from the sort of places Create Streets want to build and moved into three-bedroomed, semi-detached houses with a nice garden. The communities Create Streets now want to turn into mansion blocks.
So much of what we're getting in planning right now is designed to appease the minority - a very loud minority - of people who don't want development at the edge of existing developments. There are a myriad of reasons given why we shouldn't build new suburbs but all of them amount to little more than "I don't want my view spoiled or a load of people with funny accents not from round here to move in". The amount of land we need to meet housing needs - remember less that 5% of England is 'concreted over' - is tiny, less that half of 1%, and will have zero impact on agriculture or the precious countryside. Nearly everywhere existing schools, health services and highways can cope with development and, especially in the South East, there really aren't very many places without decent access to a station with regular trains to London.
What Create Street propose sounds lovely but stripped away of its talk of beauty, we hear the same language that gave us walk-up blocks, maisonettes and duplex flats on top of shops. The very properties that, if you speak to people in social housing, are hardest to let and the most problematic to manage. 'Gentle density' doesn't cure the problems caused by super-density, it just spreads them out a little - it may even make them worse. And taking lots of soft focus photographs of ancient towns doesn't change anything about the reality of living in a flat especially when the likely reality of that 'gentle density' will be very different from the rose-tinted, breathy description from Create Streets.
...
4 comments:
«There are a myriad of reasons given why we shouldn't build new suburbs but all of them amount to little more than "I don't want my view spoiled or a load of people with funny accents not from round here to move in".»
The main reason seems to me to be "I want the price of my property to keep going up".
«The amount of land we need to meet housing needs - remember less that 5% of England is 'concreted over'«
Given that only people of independent means can to live where there are no jobs and persistent government policy to attract and keep businesses and jobs to the M25 area, a clear definition of the goal is simple:
*Build 5-10 million 3 bed semis with garden for sale at around £150,000 each, within 30 minutes travel time from central London jobs, in leafy areas with plenty of good schools, services, shops.*
Because that is what pro-family, non-apartment living means, and if it were available as described probably half the population of the rest of the UK would move to the M25 area.
How much land would that take around London?
«is tiny, less that half of 1%»
Alternatively, let's put those 2 million new buildings on cheap unused land in Northumbria. What is the objection to that?
To make some of the points in my previous comment more explicit:
«will mutter about cars and the distance to the shops. But if we want safe, friendly, family-oriented places then we will need to build at the densities that we built in the 1930s when thousands of people decamped from the sort of places Create Streets want to build and moved into three-bedroomed, semi-detached houses with a nice garden.»
Every english affluent middle-class family of course wants to live in a scaled down replica of a manor house (apartment living seems to be very compatible with family life in many other countries), the issues as always are affordability and most importantly location:
«Nearly everywhere existing schools, health services and highways can cope with development and, especially in the South East, there really aren't very many places without decent access to a station with regular trains to London.»
Regular trains to London is not enough, wishful thinking must include a 30-60 minute total travel time to a middle-class job, and a cheap (less than £2,000 per year) season ticket, and reliable and not overcrowded commuter trains, because *obviously* suburbs don't have many good jobs, or else they would not be exclusively residential and thus so nice.
Currently London has 3.5 million dwellings, if there were affordable (e.g. 3-4 times median family wage, or around £150,000) 3 bed semis with gardens *within 30-60 minutes travel time of London middle-class jobs with a reasonable cost season ticket* there would be demand for around 5 million of them at least. Not many families would want to live in most of the rest of the UK, if 3 bed semis in middle class suburbs and season tickets at Merseyside prices were available with reasonable commutes to jobs with London salaries (which would of course fall a lot if some million families moved to within commuting distance).
Even assuming just an extra 2 million 3 bedroom semis, where is the land to put them within 30 (maybe up to 60) minutes travel time of zone 1-2 jobs? Nearly all such existing land was taken up by decades old suburbs that now have as a consequence very high housing prices, and season tickets are very expensive too.
It was indeed possible “in the 1930s when thousands of people decamped” to have it all, cheap semis in suburbs with quick and cheap access to jobs in town, and lucky them and their heirs, they won both the property price "lottery" and the "access to middle-class jobs in London" one, by effectively cornering, also thanks to immense government subsidies, the "desirable location" market.
So a tl;dr: there are four main ways to "solve" the housing boom in the south-East
* wishful thinking: just like in the 1930s, build millions of affordable, spacious 3 bedroom semis with gardens within quick, cheap commute distance of London middle class jobs, thanks to the power of magic.
* gross profiteering: just like in Hong-Kong, increase density and congestion within the M25 area with access to London middle class jobs, resulting in very expensive shoebox flats.
* make incumbents very happy: let existing urban apartments and suburban houses continue to boom in price as the Treasury and BoE continue to spend enormous amounts to attract and keep more jobs and buyers/tenants to the London area.
* make incumbents really angry: encourage the move of a lot of middle-class jobs out of the M25 area to areas where housing is cheap, so everybody can afford a spacious 3 bed semi with garden within quick and cheap commuting distance of middle class jobs.
I tried below the video suggesting that they might want to look at Milton Keynes, someone responded that Milton Keynes is too car friendly which I fear sort of misses the point and the 21st century and where technology a la Mr Musk is taking us.
Post a Comment