Urban densification isn't the answer to Britain's housing crisis, it's a sop to the NIMBYs

 

Gentle density

 

There is an element of the town planning world that, for all sorts of reasons, believes it knows better what sort of places people want than do actual people. This is the tradition of Le Corbusier whose ideas encompassed super-dense high-rise cities filled with well-behaved peons. A tradition that, when put into practice by the great man's adherents, gave us America's urban housing projects, crime-ridden tower block estates in South London, and the worst of Paris's banlieues. Contrary to the sociological evidence, town planners and architects persist with the idea that other people would be better off in very dense urban environments than in the suburban places those people say they prefer.

In doing this these planners and architects project their own biases onto the system. Often this amounts to single, well-paid, middle class graduates telling less well paid non-graduate workers with families that living in a flat in "gentle density" is so much better than the four-bed detached home in a good suburb the families aspire to. All of this will get mixed up with the current, almost religious, views on climate change - "suburbs are bad for the planet, you know" is the message used to shame aspiring young families out of buying that smart suburban home near good schools. We're told we have to live fifteen minutes from everything and that the motor car is the source of all development evils.

As the pandemic plays out its course, we approach a huge political crunch between the desire to spread out (and in doing so reduce the risks from contagion) and the efforts of planners, urged on by NIMBYs, to squeeze us into ever smaller spaces. On one front we have ideas that embrace space and suburbia:

The pandemic has served as a hammer deconstructing our cities, our neighborhoods, our homes, and our lives and allows them to be reconstructed in productive ways. The year in 2021 will be the start of a new, more flexible, more productive, and happier year. The year will be enhanced by corporate leaders providing their employees more freedom and flexibility. The year will be enriched and made safer by elected officials allowing their constituents to spread out their activities. Neighborhoods will flourish and cities will thrive if city officials and planners embrace Organic Urbanism, emphasizing the natural rhythms and desires of how and where people want to live and work.

And on the other the continued urging towards urban density, apartment living and a sort of ultimately purposeless anti-family existence.

In short, the correct post-pandemic response may be to urbanify the suburban communities that have thus far been spared the brunt of COVID-19. Yes, that might mean greater risk for community spread the next time we find ourselves in a similar crisis—but we should nonetheless strive for the widest, most inclusive outcomes. The infrastructure we invest in—more housing to drive down rent prices, rapid transit to decrease car dependency, and more grocery stores to mitigate food deserts—would go a long way toward aiding our most vulnerable communities.

Meanwhile, as evidence connecting crowding and contagion grows, we are told by density's advocates that, of course, their sort of density won't have the problems of crowding and exposure that characterised the old forms of density. The model such advocates like - and bizarrely present as deliverable - is streets of five-story, Georgian pastiche. Roads filled with the same sort of anti-family environment as the skyscraper homes built in the last couple of decades except with a prettier front door and some lonely street trees.

Governments seize on the idea of 'gentle density' or proposals to "urbanify the suburban communities" because they allow a new justification to act in the interests of another influential community - activists on the urban fringes who oppose new housing, the NIMBYs. As one pro-NIMBY politician, Neil O'Brien put it:

"...infill is the type of development that attracts most opposition. That’s unsurprising: it means building right next to people. And specifically, to people who chose to live on the edge to get a nice view."

To indulge the narrow interests of these people (who have the time, money and votes to worry politicians everywhere) planners draw in concerns about regeneration or the environment to rationalise the campaign to stop new suburban housing. My favourite is one dreamed up by NIMBY campaign group CPRE: "if London was at the same density as Milton Keynes it would cover the whole of East Anglia". The thing is that most of Milton Keynes is green - either gardens, public open space and protected marginalia or else undeveloped farmland. To house 8 million people at suburban densities (around 40 homes per hectare) would need a lot of land but probably only a third of Suffolk not the whole of East Anglia. And nobody's proposing over three million new homes in one location.

"It'll be different this time" seems to be the mantra of planners and architects. Unfortunately, if we build high-rise tenements, terraces and walk-up blocks, all funded by generous government grants for social housing, and then fill them with the poor, it won't be any different from any other occasion when governments did this sort of development. And again, people like Neil O'Brien promote such housing development as 'regeneration', providing a rationale for plonking it on surface car parks and former factory sites in the inner city - literally dumping the poor in the worst places. The real rationale for O'Brien (and politicians from every party), of course, is that we can't have those sort of people coming to live in smart, suburban housing, I mean listen to those accents, look at what they wear, it'll spoil the area, it'll cost me votes.

Less that 5% of England has houses on. And to meet the needs of those in substandard housing and the desires of aspiring families, we need to develop about 1% more. This development should be on the urban fringe, in extensions to existing places rather than grand new town schemes or in expensive and unpleasant inner city 'regeneration'. Increasing the size of a village or a small town by 15-20% doesn't destroy it's nature but it does help to sustain the social infrastructure that makes these places work - the doctors surgery, the chemist, the post office, the village hall or community centre, convenience shopping and a couple of pubs. Stopping hew housing because a minority think they own a view - the Neil O'Brien proposal - is at least honest. It's far worse to squeal 'climate emergency' and block those much-need homes on the back of not liking cars or myths about suburbs being less 'sustainable' than high-rise inner city developments.

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