Whose idea of beauty is it? Thoughts on why new homes don't look great.

My friend and former colleague, Huw Jones is your go to man for knowing about back-to-back housing and, in particular, the plethora of such housing in Leeds. It looks like this:



Most of these homes were thrown up to house the poor in Leeds and over 20,000 of them remain. Outside West Yorkshire (Bradford, Calderdale and Kirklees all retain them albeit not so many as in Leeds and stone not brick) all the back-to-backs have gone except for a few specially preserved historical relics in Liverpool and Birmingham. Leeds, however, is the only place to have back-to-back housing built after 1909 (indeed the most recent of Leeds' back-to-backs date from 1937). There's a reason for this, of course, because the Housing and Town Planning Act of 1909 prohibited the building of back-to-backs. Leeds found a loophole by claiming that the homes already had approval at the time of the Act.

When we look at these homes and especially those built, as in the picture above, in long streets, we see the classic image of England's inner city slums - narrow streets, homes opening straight onto the pavement, shared middens and little fire safety. But as Huw Jones was wont to observe, as a built form, these homes use land efficiently, were built well enough to last longer than many homes built more recently, and provided a not unattractive street scene.

This isn't an argument for us building back-to-backs again but rather a chance to raise a question as to what constitutes beauty in housing and to ask further why so many of the homes built today by mass house-builders are at best boring and at worst downright ugly. Here's some built, unlike the back-to-backs in Leeds, to house people well enough off to afford to live hard by the RHS gardens at Harlow Carr on the edge of Harrogate:



When I posted this image and asked these questions on Twitter, I received a variety of responses pointing to potential causes - greedy developers, planners and the planning system, the clunkiness of building regulations and that consumers care little about beauty preferring functionality. The thing for me is that, for all that these things might be causes, there is a depressing similarity between cheap homes for the poor built using a loophole in regulations and new homes for the middle classes in North Yorkshire.

Just as some people look immediately to the supposed greed of these developers, my instinct is to look at our planning and land supply systems. Builders cut corners (my Twitter question produced a lot of 'forget what they look like, look at how badly they're built' responses), use cheaper materials and have 'cookie-cutter' designs because it's the only way they can build the homes at a low enough price. Most of the development cost is sunk into buying the land, getting planning permission, paying exceptional costs demanded by planners or regulations and coughing up for the new development tax, Community Infrastructure Levy.

But there's another thing here - what we're told is beautiful (or great architecture or brilliant design) is what we believe is beautiful. And beauty matters because, as Richard Florida says, beautiful cities are more successful. But what is beautiful?

I go on to explain that they’ve been so propagandized to see it as the quintessential work of art that they never really look at it. “Do you know what ‘sfumato’ is? What makes La Gioconda (what its called in Spain) better than this (I toss up a portrait by El Greco) to you?” The classroom usually breaks out, mildly, into chaos, as students actually begin to think about what they are seeing.

Our aesthetic judgements are, like so much else, guided by received wisdom. And the received wisdom for the design of cities isn't the anonymous developers who built Parkside Terrace in Cullingworth:



No, our urban aesthetic is set by architects and those who write about architecture. Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe and the Smithsons - advocates of pragmatic, functional, utilitarian buildings. This approach - most obvious in America's ubiquitous 'prairie style' housing - is what we're seeing in those houses built in Harrogate: functionality, utility, value. To return to our example, it's not that the Mona Lisa is objectively the greatest painting but rather that we've all be told (over and over again) that it is the greatest painting.

The article with that Mona Lisa comment goes on to argue that places (Rational Urbanism uses is Springfield, Massachusetts) need to argue for their own beauty not simply try to copy the received idea of beauty. We're told that New York is more beautiful and that the weather's better in Florida but never step back and ask if this is really the case.

So perhaps the reason for those Harrogate homes is that design guides, the architects and planners beliefs - that received wisdom - lead us to this look: pragmatic, functional, utilitarian homes intended to meet the needs of middle-class homeowners in terms of parking, storage, heating, room layout and garden space. The consumer is not buying frills and don't worry about there being no chimneys, no bay widows and a more-or-less eaves free (and therefore sparrow and swallow free) roofline.

The way in which building design evolved in the 20th century led us to this place. It is driven by the manner in which Le Corbusier and others took an entirely functional view of humanity - folk to be stored, moved smoothly from workspace to homespace. The aesthetic wasn't scaled at a personal level but with reference to masses - how do we house millions efficiently, how do we make workplaces for thousands, not how do we make great homes for Mr & Mrs Smith. The result of this is our obsession - straight from Le Corbusier's soulless authoritarianism - with density and the sacredness of the countryside. Even when, as is the case with those homes in Harrogate, we take a small part of that sacred green belt, it's done as a minimum and as densely as possible to meet the dominant aesthetic yet cater to actual human desires.

The irony in all this - and the failure of the utilitarian approach - is that, given a choice and the opportunity, most people don't want to live in dense, crowded, impersonal spaces:

...the main finding of nearly every survey on the subject is that millennials mostly want to live in suburbs, and as they grow older that preference increases. There’s hardly any evidence at all suggesting that there’s a huge pent-up demand for city living that’s going unmet.

To better meet human needs and to repersonalise housing and development, we need to look again at the dominant aesthetic and perhaps to step away from the internationalist, skyscraper style that dominates our ideas of urban goodness. We need to stop speaking about sprawl and ask again how we build suburbs - you can call them garden cities if you wish - that work with the natural environment as well as with most folk's desire for a house with a garden somewhere nice. And that somewhere nice will, in our minds, look and feel more like those Leeds back-to-backs or Cullingworth terrace (for all their lack of outside private space) than it will resemble the great modernist towers that are their modern equivalent.

If you've to consider beaty in the built form, does it have to look like this?

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Why we probably won't be moving to Kensington

So Kathryn and I are window shopping in South Kensington and, since this is the nature of high streets, we're peering through the glass at property for sale. Unlike most normal places, there aren't any actual houses for sale, just what seem to be identikit flats - some studio, some one-bed, some two-bed. All with white walls, wood (or wood-a-like) flooring, glass dining tables, uncomfortable looking sofas, and, if you're lucky, some singularly naff art. Plus a price tag north of £2 million quid.

What struck us (other than that stratospheric price tag) was the sameness, the lack of soul, the impression that no-one actually lived in any of these flats. But this isn't new build, these are apartments hacked out from a beautiful Georgian town house in a leafy London square. We meandered from estate agent to estate agent seeking out some property that looked like it was a little bit loved - perhaps with a rug to break up the monotony of wood-effect flooring (whatever happened to carpet), maybe something wooden like a coffee table or an antique chair.

Perhaps this sort of uninspired, bland and plain decor is what passes for style these days down in South Kensington. Maybe people are too busy doing all the other exciting things London offers (or else working all hours god sends to pay the mortgage on the £3 million pad off Queensgate). Or maybe this is what estate agents think sells flats - hard edges, pushed back furniture, minimal colour and devoid of life. None of those things we'd expect elsewhere - a peep of greenery, a bookcase (with books on), a mish-mash of art on the wall, things that show off or feature the age of the property.

Or maybe the sort of besuited, hard-nosed, driven men who work in South Kensington's estate agencies know their market and that anything looking like life, community and continuity will put off the sort of international whizz-kids who've got the brass to buy that South Kensington flat.

Had we a few million spare, we'd certainly consider a bolthole in London - it's a fantastic city. But I'm not sure that what we see in Kensington - and it's probably little different anywhere in Zone One - is inspiring, interesting or presented in a way that appeals. The housing is gorgeous - London's Georgian terraces are among the wonders of the world - but the flats hacked out of those gorgeous buildings seem to have killed the sense of age, heritage and tradition preferring instead a boring, pale, hard image that owes more to the international hotel than a real London living style.

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So what is beauty? A response to Res Publica.

Centrist think tank, Res Publica has put forward the idea that a 'right to beauty' should be enshrined in primary legislation:

Our report argues for a ‘community right to beauty’ to be introduced via primary legislation. The policy recommendations set out a range of new powers and incentives to support the democratic discernment of what makes a neighbourhood beautiful, and communities’ ability to independently create, shape and improve their locale.

It all sounds fabulous but, yet again, it starts from the premise of inequalities rather than any attempt to be objective about what we mean by beauty. There are several worrying questions that arise here - the democratisation of beauty (apologies for the ugly language), the presumption that access to beauty is limited or restricted, and the reminder that polished or preserved places represent the only beauty in an urban environment.

Let's start with an example. Is this beautiful?

It's OK, you don't have to answer the question - not everyone loves early 19th century industrial architecture. And if you visit the place pictured you'll see the sadness in its tattiness, the consequences of its redundancy and realise that all this is mixed into the gritty surroundings of terraces, traffic and litter.

Another example:

Easier this time - we all get that this is beautiful. A fifty foot waterfall setting in mature woodland - such scenes should be protected, cherished and celebrated.

The two pictures are about seven miles apart yet could be different countries. Indeed, I'm pretty sure than most of the people leaving near the first picture don't even know the falls exist. They are private, secret. A little piece of magic tucked away. There is no tourist sign, no 'interpretation', no urbanising of a wonderfully rural setting. But you can walk to it - for free.

The point of a democratic beauty is that it's determined by polls and majority opinion. I may consider that the serried rows of three-bed semis in the place I was raised contains a kind of beauty - a beauty of memory, of things done, with each corner revealing a little something that strikes to the soul, that reveals beauty. But the great and good do not consider this to be beauty, they tell us that nothing in the environment of the inner urban dweller is beautiful.

Our public poll is damning. It shows we are singularly failing the poor. A staggeringly high household income, more than £10, 000 above the national average (2), gives you better access to beautiful surroundings.”

Res Publica has gathered together a cross-party 'who's who' all proclaiming how important it is that people have 'access to beauty'. But this is beauty as defined by the great and the good not our own personal understanding of beauty. To return to access - what Res Publica are speaking of isn't 'access' but proximity. Their poll simply reflects the fact that places considered beautiful by a lot of people garner a premium for those wanting to live close by. To use urban examples, if you want to live overlooking The Stray in Harrogate or in Bath's Royal Crescent then you will be paying a substantial premium for such a pleasure.

But if I want to walk on The Stray, take photographs of the Royal Crescent or stand looking down on Edinburgh's Royal Mile then I can do so freely and without restriction for these are public places. The view from the summit of Whernside, the daffodils at Grasmere beloved of Wordsworth and the Windrush as it winds through West Oxfordshire - these views are for all of us, free and without restriction.

The Res Publica report presents an approach to beauty that is shallow and incomplete. It assumes that the "community" is more able to determine what is, or isn't, beautiful - guided of course by a new volume or two of planning guidance all carefully crafted by those appointed by the great and good rather than by communities (and due to be interpreted by the cold analysis of the lawyer). Think for a minute about the disagreements you've had with friends and family over choice of colours, buildings and vistas and then scale these up to the level of a community (whatever that might mean) - can a community determined definition of beauty ever really work?

This 'community right to beauty' proposal is simply a headline looking for an idea to go with it. But the idea isn't beauty at all, nor is it something excluded from existing planning controls - the idea is that we should protect places that work, promote the improvement of places that don't work, and, for new development, seek to build places rather than just buildings. None of this has anything at all to do with beauty - yet if we get it right we will have places loved, cared for and celebrated by their residents. And enjoyed by visitors.

Most of the tools needed for getting this right are in place. We do not need new legislation that creates a sterile definition of beauty in planning law. We have had community design guides for decades, we can create neighbourhood plans that make strong statements about the style of development and the provision of open space, and we have a local plan framework that incorporates conservation, listed structures and much else protecting heritage, ecology and environment. Most councils employ specialists to advise on design up to and including, for some places, a skilled city architect.

Finally beauty is a personal thing and should be respected as such. We spend a great deal of time and effort trying to persuade young people that there isn't some kind of perfection - a singular depiction of beauty - yet now we have people setting about doing just that for urban environments. And doing this because of a misplaced - indeed a stupid - belief that somehow such defined beauty is more democratic and more accessible. We don't need rules for planners and bureaucrats to stop things, we need to remember that the urban beauty we're celebrating - in Saltaire, in Bath, in York, on the canalsides of England - was built without planning legislation, without the great and good deciding what was or wasn't right.

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