Building millions of new homes is crucial. In the UK, we’ve had years and years of pussy footing around the issue. Governments have consistently underachieved. Promises made and promises broken. Everyone knows that turning plans into reality is difficult. Sadly, it’s always easier to delay and delay. Building needs a strategic push. That much I agree with the new Labour government. Expecting some kind of magical thinking or organic solution to bubble up is a road to failure and disappointment.
A long time ago, I sat on a planning committee that wrestled with the pros and cons of allocating land for development. It was often a numbers game. A few hundred here, a few thousand there and lots of talk of “brownfield” sites that were often purely imaginary.
All the time knowing that major developers had already bought up land that they intended to sit on until policy swung their way. This could be low grade agricultural land, even flood plain land that they could get for a competitive price. None of the pressures that existed at that time[1] have gone away. If anything, those social, economic, and political pressures have intensified.
Despite what I’ve said, I can understand the caution that is being expressed by people who have strong interest in the subject. If we look at the post-war building boom in the UK, it’s obvious that horrendous mistakes were made. Idealism and a sense of mission drove development schemes that looked great on paper but turned out to be hellish as places to live and work.
Architects and town planners of the past may have identified transport as a vital feature for new estates. What they delivered was so worshipful of the private motor car that it transcended all common sense. Digging up tram lines and closing rail lines may have had a logical foundation from the 1950s to the 1970s but now such decisions seem completely mad.
One of the biggest factors that has changed, not only since the post-war building boom but in recent times is the change in employment patterns. We are an industrialised country. Often, we don’t like to acknowledge it. Remember the 2012 Olympics. It’s topical, given how the Paris Olympic opening ceremony portrayed France. Back in 2012, the UK reminded the world that the industrial revolution started here. England’s “green and pleasant land” was transformed by coal and steel. A land where every town and city had a major employer and a major craft.
That era has almost gone. Yes, there are places where major employers dominate the landscape. Now, there are less and less concentrations of employment tied to a specific location. There’s a greater diversity of economic dependency in our interconnected world.
That’s a massive challenge. How to build homes, that form communities, which will have a source of economic stability that lasts more than 50-years. Communications infrastructure becomes vital. Even that is assuming that high-speed digital communications will continue to dominate out lives beyond 2070. Will we be freer to live where we want, with a better lifestyle, happier communities, in a future of elevated levels of automation, intelligent systems and few if any boundaries?
[1] Surrey Country Council 1993-1997.
John Vincent 