Drop the architectural hippy dreams - people want homes with a garden

Yes this is our garden

Earlier this year, in the teeth of the pandemic, the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors polled its members – pretty much all of the UK’s real estate agents – on likely trends post-coronavirus:

More than four-fifths (81%) of those surveyed across the UK believe there will be an increased desire for properties with gardens or balconies.

Nearly three-quarters (74%) predict an increase in demand for homes near green spaces, such as parks, and just over two-thirds (68%) think properties with more private space and fewer communal areas will be more desirable.

At the other end of the spectrum, 78% think there will be a fall in the appeal of tower blocks and 58% believe properties in urban areas which are very built up will be less appealing.

A clear finding and one that conversations with estate agents will confirm – well-priced, semi-detached properties with gardens are selling like hot cakes. In London a new term, “upsizing” has arrived as buyers look to buy bigger properties even if that means a less exclusive (more suburban) location. It’s obvious to almost anyone thinking about the fall-out from Covid-19 that, for real estate, the pressure will be on delivering more space. Working from home doesn’t just mean having a home office, it also means more time with family around, and this places a premium on that space.

We know that, even before the pandemic, people’s housing preference was for homes with gardens (not everybody, of course, but the majority – over 80% in that New Zealand survey). It should, therefore, come as no surprise to find that the whizzo architects given prizes to “…make the next generation of housing estates greener, healthier, better for elderly people and quicker to build…” have decided that gardens are a terrible idea:

Patrick Usborne, the director of Perpendicular, which oversaw another winning entry using wood panels made from British-only timber, said: “There’s an English perception that owning your castle needs its own land. But if we are to improve community cohesion we need to remove the ubiquitous rear garden and bring together external spaces for the community.”

The proposals contain all sorts of wonderful, gimmicky ideas for shared space that simply don’t reflect the reality of sharing, even in comfortable suburbia. I remember my Russian teacher describing the reality of her ‘sharing’ upbringing with personal things chained to walls and fences to prevent others simply walking off with them. The experience of the communal spaces on 1960s and 1970s council estates wasn’t great – a mixture of ‘No Ball Games’ signs and the appropriation of space by intimidating groups. And, for every communal space that works well (as residents in Spanish complexes will tell you) there’s another one plagued by dispute, debt, and poor upkeep.

The desire to reimagine the suburban, mass-produced home isn’t anything new – I saw a presentation on this by Red or Dead designer, Wayne Hemingway (in a fancy place on the front at Cannes, obviously) nearly 20 years ago. Those three- and four-bedroom detached homes squeezed onto small plots – for American readers, where you get four homes to an acre, we get at least 15 and often 20 – remain the core housing product because they are popular. Only rich people buy architectural gimmick, the rest of folk buy the right amount of space – and this includes a garden.

Usually that garden is a square patch of grass and paving – big enough to sit out in when the sun shines, to fire up the barbecue, to put in a paddling pool or trampoline for the kids, and maybe a fancy shed. For some this becomes a pride and joy planted with flowers and shrubs while, for others, it’s just an outside room, somewhere to thrash about in with more abandon that you’d tolerate in the living room.

The communal spaces proposed by the latest batch of anti-suburb architects will not meet these needs. Regardless of how laissez-faire the initial thinking seems, any communal space will come with a set of rules (remember those ‘No Ball Games’ signs) varying from the times you can use them – the prize-winning architect with a proposal for a bookable garden is having a laugh – through to the activities permissible while you’re using them. If the shared spaced is co-owned, there’s a company to manage, agents to appoint, maintenance contracts to issue and rents or charges to collect.

I’m all in favour of places being greener, healthier, and better for older people but this can be achieved without getting rid of private outside space, with dumping the garden. But there’s little hope from these architects – here’s Chris Brown from Igloo:

“After Covid-19, people will want their towns and cities back, to make beautiful places where home schooling and working from home is designed in – not an afterthought – and where the climate, nature and community are prioritised over profit.”

I know hippies make up a big chunk of the boomer generation but somehow, I doubt we’ll want to live in some rich person’s make-believe little commune even one designed by super-cool architects. And, you know, rich fund managers like Chris Brown won’t be living there either. Nor will anyone be building anything if there's no profit to be made (as I'm sure Aviva, who fund Igloo will explain if Chris needs help).

Homes need outside space – a balcony, a terrace, a veranda, a garden. Shared space is great, but it does not substitute for private space. This latest little indulgence of trendy urban design will, like all those before it, fall before the good sense of developers who will want to impress their potential buyers a long time before they’ll bother with ethical investors and architects with silly, unrealistic ideas about communal living.

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Places aren't made by government, they're shaped by enterprising, creative people

The places we love (and indeed the places we don't love but which are loved by others) are shaped by hundreds of influences. Most important, of course, it is shaped by what Kipling called "mere uncounted folk, of whose life and death is none report or lamentation". These are the men who built the houses, the carts and horses guided along tracks and by-ways that became our roads, the farmers, cattlemen and shepherds who set the fields and styled our landscapes. And amidst all these are the people who wanted it to look good, who did little things of beauty, planted gardens, erected memorials and raised churches. In our towns those people built little walls and fences, tended allotments, carved their love into features of homes and built the pavements, roads, sewers and bridges.

Our world is shaped by what we do not made by the actions of planners. Yet such people - planners, directors, councillors - persist in believing that places are, in some way, made by their actions: by the instructions of the benign state without which all would be untidy, unsafe, chaotic, crazed. Here, in a modern mash-up of this hubris is Local Government Association along with assorted plan fans:

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH), Local Government Association (LGA) and Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) have launched Future Place: a joint, two-phase initiative which will unlock place-making potential at local level through quality in design, future thinking, and knowledge sharing.

The programme has been designed to promote best practice and the potential of innovative delivery, design and funding models, cross-sector collaborations capacity building, and knowledge sharing at a local level.

At the heart of this 'two-phase initiative' is the idea that places are made bu architects, planners, housing officers and town clerks - here is this delusion encapsulated:

...we invite local authorities to put in writing their overarching vision (emerging or finalised) for an area and how they are currently working across their programmes to deliver the wider ambitions of the local authority by creating great places

Here these grand organisations are asking for local councils to peer into the future's mists and craft a magical vision that "Future Place-Makers" can then deliver. We are reminded that planners, architects and government prefer the directed and ordered not the organic and creative. For all that such folk talk about Jane Jacobs or Saul Alinsky, planners and urban designers real love is Baron Haussman who destroyed thousands of homes to allow a straight road into Paris for the government's cannons and horsemen. For sure these days there's a nod to liberty and organic development through the canard of community consultation but governments with their planners and officials still believe they know best.

The problem is that places made by government - council estates, America's 'projects, the worst of France's banlieue and that hideous East European 'Stalinist baroque' - are failures because those planners, architects (like the dreadful Le Corbusier who wanted to knock down France's old towns and replace them with tower blocks) and government officials think they know better then real people what real people want. These are people who don't understand that things are where they are because that's where they are and that moving them somewhere else destroys them however lovingly you craft exciting designs.

The task of planners isn't to lead on place but rather to support the real shapers of places - entrepreneurs, artists, flaneurs, seekers for the new and different. Instead of drawing up visions filled with coloured arrows, creative quarters and anchor institutions, these future place makers should be more modest - present a space for the real creatives, the actual place shapers, to weave the magic once again. Government's job is not to make places but to help people who love where they live to shape those places.

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Can we build family homes not factory farms for hipsters?

You'll hear it from time to time - "London is the least densely populated mega-city", "we could build higher and more denses to solve the housing crisis". I've a problem with this argument and it doesn't matter whether it comes from the anti-development CPRE or the trendily pro-development London YIMBYs, because it doesn't reflect what people want. And, while we can all have a laugh about the things local councillors say at planning meetings (certainly the twitterati had a field day here) but these guys in Leeds have a point:

“This is a very dense development.

“I look at that and think there is no public or amenity site on the development.

“There are odd days in the year where it’s nice, warm and sunny, and there is nowhere in this development for people to go outside and sit.

“It seems like you are trying to cram a lot onto this site with very little amenity space. If you had children you wouldn’t want to live here, because there is no space for them at all.

“I really don’t like this (application), and the more I think about it, the less I like it."

This is a proposal for 242 tiny flats that are said to have "co-living space" making it all fine, I guess. The problem is that Cllr Colin Campbell, who words are above, is spot on. Providing a laundry room and free (or 'included in the service charge' sort of free) wi-fi doesn't fit the bill. There are a lot of reasons why dense, high-rise developments of this sort are anti-family but they are also sub-optimal for any long-residency.

Spain famously has some of the most population dense cities in Europe - living in flats and apartments is normal for much of the population and generations of Spaniards were brought up in these sorts of places. But there's something important Spain gets right that we are failing to do - people need an outside. Not a tiny little balcony you can squeeze two tiny chairs onto if you jiggle them nor just access to some sort of communal garden or open space but a decent-sized outside where you can do something - from sitting and lounging to having a long lesurely dinner with the family.

"What about the weather" will come the obvious reply and, it's true, Spain does enjoy more sunshine and less rain than Leeds. But is it really beyond the wit of architects and designers to create places that have an outside - a roof garden, a terrace, an atrium - while providing for everything the British weather can throw at them? Whether it's the glass curtains that so many Spanish flats acquire or awnings, or part-covered spaces there is a way to give people the outside they want, a personal space where there's fresh air (or not so fresh in the case of some city centres), a view and the chance on a good day of some sunshine.

For densification to work in our cities it has to provide the things that people want from a family home. And a private outdoor space is one of those things (as are dining space, living space, good storage and car parking) yet we're building thousands of flats that fail to meet this requirement simply because the designers think outdoors is a luxury not an essential part of a home. So, for all that I'll grant developers the right to build soul-less and depressing bunny-hutches, it's time we recognised that this simply isn't meeting demand at any level beyond "have I got a roof over my head". At their best these high rise developments are factory farms for hipsters while their worst is as a sort of holding pen for society's flotsum and jetsum. It's family homes we need and what people want, perhaps we should build them instead?

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Do cities need to be less conservative?

Aaron Renn asks (knowing, of course, that city government - especially large city government - is more-or-less a conservative-free zone):

Political conservatism is all but extinct in cities, but the conservative impulse is alive and well. That is, a desire to prevent change in the name of preserving something that people find of value is still a powerful motivating force.

Historic preservation is an example of the conservative impulse.

NIMBYism is an example of the conservative impulse.

Anti-gentrification advocacy is an example of the conservative impulse.

In fact, it strikes me that cities are more conservative now than they were in the past. Previous generations were much more willing to engage in massive, radical projects of change than today’s residents and leaders. Not all of those previous projects were good to be sure, but many of them are what created the very cities as they exist today.

I've a feeling - and I see this in my own city of Bradford - that the governments of cities are stuck in an old economy model and with the idea that what's here now needs to be preserved at all costs.

I also feel they're wrong and Will Alsop was right.

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Meanwhile in Venezuela the left remind us of their weird priorities...

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So Venezuelan people don't have food in the shops, they have to queue for loo paper and the government is taking over businesses right, left and centre just in case they might actually be trying to make a living. It is an object lesson in the stupidity of the left's obsessing with fixing prices.

But you'll be pleased to know that the Venezuelan government is on the case and sorting out the problem:

Last year, Venezuela became an urban laboratory for architects and urban designers who believe in the implementation of participatory processes and collaborative design techniques in order to change communities who live under threat.

The Venezuelan firm PICO Estudio in hand with the National Government of Venezuela organised Espacios de Paz (EDP) (Spaces of Peace); an urban journey where professionals, students, local residents and public entities worked together to benefit their cities and people. This initiative activated urban processes of physical and social transformation through architecture, using self-building techniques in public spaces located in conflictive urban contexts.

The result of the project is some pretty funky and brightly coloured community spaces and buildings - you'll be familiar with these because they feature that slightly manic style of design beloved by community action groups.

These 5 projects were conceived as spaces of encounter, where a local community can gather together, developing different activities, meetings and workshops under beautifully designed, colourful roofs. Projects included basketball courts located on a rooftop; shadowed spaces built for promoting dialogue among residents; spaces for learning and debating; and orchards, playgrounds, amphitheatres, viewpoints, and so on.

It's all terribly sweet and lovely - introducing us to a world of happy, smiling faces as communities work with 'agencies' and 'professionals' to put lipstick on the abject poverty their government's policies have created. It is the finest example of how the left's approach to community development is typified by going into these communities, giving them a great big hug and saying 'there, there, it'll all be OK'.

The truth is very different - as even Venezuelan government figures tell us:

According to this measure, the number of Venezuelans classified as poor shot up in the last year by 1.8 million people. Roughly 6 percent of all Venezuela’s 30 million people became poor in the last year alone. The situation is even direr when one looks at extreme poverty, i.e., the number of people whose income cannot even buy a representative basket of food and drink. In the last year alone, the number of extremely poor Venezuelans rose by 730,000. They now reach close to three million people, or roughly 10 percent of the population. 

And of course the happy professionals will return to their achingly trendy offices in places where you don't have to deal with the reality of living in Venezuela's slums. It's not just the lack of basics but increasing levels of violence - 25,000 homicides in 2013 (this compares to 15,000 in trigger-happy USA with ten times the population) including over 200 police officers.

Still I guess that creating "...social dynamics which invite new ways of living in communities, modifying categories that rule the daily life, transforming vacant plots into powerful spaces for their inhabitants..." is absolutely the way to make Venezuela's economy and society better!

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