Brooklyn Re-development Deathmatch August 19, 2006
Posted by Brickonomist in America, Design, Planning, Regeneration.add a comment
Over at Environmental and Urban Economics, Matthew E. Kahn links to a New York magazine article describing the controversy over the proposed ‘Atlantic Yards‘ development in Brooklyn. While the scale of the proposed development is vast, the politics are not so dissimilar to arguments over countless much smaller schemes. For example, the article author Chris Smith notes how the development’s promoter “manages to use the phrase “affordable housing” five times in two minutes. Not once does he mention the 4,610 market-rate (unaffordable?) apartments and condos to be built”. And the concerns are about massing, blocked views, “intersections choked with traffic [and] More kids than the local schools can possibly handle”.
Matthew seems a little sceptical about the concerns being expressed:
This looks like a classic case of public choice and heterogeneity. People will disagree over whether this project is good or bad. Mancur Olson would say that a small cohesive pressure group that loses the most from doing the project (i.e white upper middle class hipsters who already live in the community) have the greatest incentive to lobby against it. It will be interesting if the “silent majority” can launch a counter-attack. This Ratner looks quite well politically connected .
The last point is important, because a small cohesive group that has the most to win from doing the project can be very persuasive too while being no more representative of the greater good. In my view, there will always be enormous disagreements over a development like this, because once it’s built there will be no going back for decades at least, and if it goes wrong it could spoil a huge swathe of Brooklyn. The temptation is always to avoid the risk by saying no, but done well a large-scale redevelopment of this kind can transform a whole city for the better. All of which is a long-winded way of saying that it comes down to whether the details are right. And from first glance I’m not sure they are: why must the proposed buildings be so massively out of scale with their surroundings? Why does a development involving several thousand luxury flats and vast office space require over a billion dollars in public subsidy? And what makes the Ratner proposal better than this one? Both may have their qualities, but only one (if that) will be built.
Megamalls, walkable cities and ‘la Londonisation’ August 6, 2006
Posted by Brickonomist in Communities, Design, Europe, London.1 comment so far
The general reaction to the interim report of Kate Barker’s inquiry into the planning system seemed to be that it was a bit of a damp squib, with much less enthusiasm for major reform than was expected. But Anna Minton worries that Barker wants to promote out-of-town superstores over small-scale city shopping on the basis of efficiency (or at least redress what Barker might see as the current bias towards the latter). She contrasts what she sees as the increased privatisation of public space in Britain with Jan Gehl’s vision of an open, bustling, diverse, pedestrian-friendly public realm. I’ve just started reading Gehl’s Life Between Buildings myself, and his arguments for a walkable cityscape are certainly persuasive. But there’s a difference, I think, between that and simply trying to preserve the state of urban commerce in aspic, as the Parisians seem to be attempting:
In Paris, French policy makers have become so concerned about the British experience that they have described the trend as “la Londonisation” and have introduced planning regulations specifically to prevent it. As a result, about half the shops in Paris will have restrictions placed on them to prevent changes of use, so that a foodshop remains a foodshop and a bookshop or a greengrocer cannot become part of a mobile phone chain.
If true, I find this policy fairly nutty. What’s good for Parisians today won’t be good for them always, and specifying the particular use of each property surely goes way too far.
Superstar hamlets? July 19, 2006
Posted by Brickonomist in Design, Environment, Housebuilding, Housing inequality, Housing markets, NIMBYs, Planning, Rural housing.add a comment
In an earlier post, I wondered whether London might one day turn into the kind of ‘Superstar City’ researchers have identified in the US. But according to today’s Guardian, it looks more like the Superstar syndrome (high income households taking over areas that are unique, desirable and feature little or no new construction) is happening in many parts of the English countryside:
It may be an over-simplification to argue that a form of social apartheid grips rural England, with traditional country dwellers confined either to the remaining council houses or the tied cottages of the big estates, rarely in contact with their neighbours – the superannuated, and rich. But the divisions are apparent.
A good place to start is the roof of England. Drive on the country’s highest road, where the lush North Pennines briefly meets a more barren landscape, and the pressures and conflicts of the countryside are soon evident. Down the winding Hartside pass, old farmhouses and buildings – which once supported hundreds of agricultural workers – have become the preserve of a new rural elite. At the bottom of the pass, and over the Eden valley on the edge of the Lake District, Kit Scott-Harden, aged 59, has farmed 300 acres on a tenancy most of his working life. With his income around £45,000 annually – 60% met by subsidy from the EU’s common agricultural policy – he’ll be lucky to break even this year.
Most farmers are now in their mid to late 60s. The industry is rapidly contracting. Farmers’ sons often leave the land. The result: empty properties. As upland farmers, and the few remaining agricultural workers struggle to make ends meet, wealthy incomers splash out hundreds of thousands for small cottages – and, sometimes, close to £1m for larger properties. Over two years ago a two-bed cottage in the hamlet next to the Scott-Harden farm went for £280,000 to an investor. “Terrifying price,” he says. “And it would be worth much more now.”
There’s usually plenty of space to build in these areas – the main obstacles are NIMBY attitudes, an over-protective planning system and inadequate funding for new social housing in rural districts.
Lord [Ewen] Cameron, a cross-bencher in the Lords and former chairman of the government’s Countryside Agency, can see what is happening from his farm in south Somerset. He is alarmed by the rigidity of a planning system blocking affordable housing initiatives. This has led to “serious demographic mismatch in the countryside”. Why, he wonders, do the authorities approve plans to convert buildings into holiday cottages, yet refuse plans for low-cost homes? He would like to see redundant farm buildings re-classified as “brownfield land” so that they can benefit from urban-style grants and incentives. “Why can’t we build, say, 50% for straight purchase and the rest for renting? That would benefit people all round.”
But, as things stand, Mark Shucksmith, a professor at Newcastle upon Tyne University, a government adviser and expert on rural housing and planning, says the countryside is becoming too skewed in favour of one class. “While people have a clear aspiration to live in the countryside, it is becoming much more exclusive,” he laments. “You have to ask that if only people with higher incomes can afford the move, how this chimes with the [government's] agenda of choice that is rooted in the context of social justice.”
As I said, NIMBYism is a big reason for resistance to new housing developments in rural areas, but it’s hard to disentangle pure selfishness from the quite justified perception of much new housing supply as ugly, sprawling and car-centric. This takes us back to the vexed questions of design quality and planning and funding new public transport, which I hope to look at in more detail in the near future.
Valley of the one-bed flats Part 2 July 7, 2006
Posted by Brickonomist in Design, Housebuilding, Housing need, London, Planning.add a comment
I posted a while ago in disappointment at the lack of family housing being planned for the Lower Lea Valley. Now it looks like the same applies to the wider Thames Gateway. That’s according to someone who should know – Eric Sorenson, chief exec of the Thames Gateway Partnership, writing in Building magazine:
What is striking in large parts of London Thames Gateway is the predominance in development of one and two-bed flats. It is as if there has been a significant over-reaction to the increasing number of smaller households …
We know from experience in Europe that higher-density flats can and do work for families. But they have to be reasonably sized, designed to be spacious and flexible, have good sized balconies, require good performance from local management and a well maintained public realm.
What we get too often here are small flats with insufficient commitment to address families’ requirements. Local authorities are becoming increasingly firm about family housing provision in their planning policies but, if there is unbalanced emphasis on housing numbers rather than the nature of the output, we simply won’t create sustainable communities in the Gateway.
I think the same goes for London as a whole, and probably the wider South East. It’s notable that in the proposed update to his London Plan, Ken Livingstone is gung-ho about a big increase in housing numbers and densities, but pretty much devoid of any effective policy to ensure those numbers consist of the family housing London needs, according to his own Housing Requirements Study.
Building in mediocrity July 5, 2006
Posted by Brickonomist in Design, Housebuilding.add a comment
Okay, so this isn’t directly about housing, but it is a scandal:
Billions of pounds are being wasted on new schools which are badly designed, poorly built and unsuitable for staff and students, according to a study by the government’s own advisers.
That’s CABE, and you can find a summary of their report here. Some key points:
- 31 per cent of schools were classified as ‘partially good’ and 19 per cent were assessed as ‘good’ or ‘excellent’. Half of the 52 schools reviewed were categorised as mediocre or poor.
- All of the good or excellent schools were completed in 2005, which suggests that overall design quality is getting better.
- Generally, schools performed best on issues of functionality and least well on build quality.
- Any procurement route can produce a good result, although schools using the private finance initiative (PFI) performed less well than other forms of contract. All but one of the lowest 10 schools were procured using PFI, whereas of the top 10 (all the good and excellent schools) only three were procured using PFI.
It’s that last bit that has me worried, because the government is in the middle of a £1.2 billion programme to build or refurbish social housing. Is there something about PFI that makes a badly designed product more likely, in housing as well as in education? An earlier CABE policy paper suggests there might be.
Quick links 15/06/06 June 15, 2006
Posted by Brickonomist in Design, Environment, Housing markets, Housing need, Overcrowding, Party politics, Planning.add a comment
Sorry for the lack of posting recently – too much work, sun and football on the telly. Here’s a round-up of what’s been happening:
- Homes to be energy-saving rated: “Every house sold in England and Wales will be given an energy efficiency rating like those found on electrical goods”. Sounds reasonable to me, but will it be introduced for rented housing too? Doesn’t seem to have been confirmed, but these people seem to think it will be.
- MPs out of touch on housing concerns: “while 98% of the public think that a lack of affordable housing is a major issue, only 34% of MPs think the same.”
- Redwood all at sea: Let’s build a new city on land reclaimed from the sea, says John. Not sure if this is meant to be more environmentally friendly but it probably wouldn’t be. Maybe Redwood has been inspired by Anthony Lau’s concept of Offshore Living, part of the Sustainable Living By Design exhibition at the GLA, which involves sticking people in refashioned cargo containers stacked on decommissioned oil rigs.
- Fancy re-designing Castleford?
- A tight squeeze: “A chronic shortage of family sized homes, planning problems and economic ‘factors’ are contributing to the growing crisis of overcrowding.”
- Beware the winds of change: “Low income households could lose out in the government’s push towards homeownership, Dominic Maxwell warns”.
Biloxi Blues for the New Urbanists May 23, 2006
Posted by Brickonomist in America, Communities, Design, Planning, Regeneration.3 comments
Here (and reproduced below the fold for non-subscribers) is a great article in the New York Times on the battle over the reconstruction of Biloxi, the Mississippi resort town devastated last autumn by Hurricane Katrina. It depicts a bunch of New Urbanists, with their elaborate plan for a neat, walkable, picket-fence New Biloxi against … well, against almost everyone else.
I’m not that familiar with New Urbanism, so I found it rather educational. I can see the attraction of aspects of their favoured designs, but when they’re so uniformly applied the effect must be stifling (as Peter Weir recognised). There’s something creepy about how carefully every detail of every building is controlled, and combined with their apparently exclusionary approach to consultation this is surely not the way to rebuild a community.
Link from Brad Plumer’s blog, a rich source of other interesting links, such as this, this, and this.
Wayne Jacobs? May 15, 2006
Posted by Brickonomist in Design, Links.1 comment so far
New entry on the blogroll today is no, 2 self, a blog by architect Rob Annable. I like his letter proposing Wayne Hemmingway as “a Jane Jacobs of suburbia”. Having been lucky enough to catch Wayne giving a pretty inspiring speech to an affordable housing conference last year, I’d certainly second that nomination.
Link: Developing [news] March 31, 2006
Posted by Brickonomist in Design, Linkage, London, Planning, Regeneration.add a comment
For a blog with plenty to say (and I mean plenty – thirteen posts today! Haven’t they heard of the nap?) about planning, architecture and housing in London, see Developing [news], run by Hana Loftus of General Public Agency. I look forward to it reducing my already-slothlike posting rate – I was going to write a post about the new Environmental Audit Committee report, only to find that Hana’s covered it nicely already.
Tear down the high rises? March 22, 2006
Posted by Brickonomist in America, Communities, Design, Europe, Housing markets, International, Regeneration.add a comment
In an oldie but goldie post over at the AHI blog, David Smith argues that “High-rise public housing never works. Never has worked, never will work”.
Overall he makes a very convincing case, and mostly I agree – high-rise housing filled with poor people has been a disaster here in the UK as much as in America or France. How much of this was down to the physical form of the buildings? Just about all of it, says David, though I think the examples he cites demonstrate that the kind of inhabitants matter too. Maybe high-rise blocks wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t populated with high proportions of bored, workless young men, for example. Here in London, some local authorities have moved the families out of their towers, refurbished them and converted them to 100% sheltered housing for the elderly, for example, so there may be some use for some of these buildings after all. As for the rest, I agree with David – tear ‘em down.
The post raises another issue for me. David quotes this passage from Christopher Caldwell in the NY Times Magazine:
If you don’t vary the housing units in a given neighborhood – if you fill entire quarters of the city with standard-issue monoliths – you condemn upwardly mobile people to constant movement. The only people who develop any sense of place are those trapped in the poverty they started in.
Again, I agree. But doesn’t this apply to the private sector too? Here in London, most new private supply consists of one or two bed flats in high-density developments. There’s plenty of demand for them (for now) and no doubt they do the job for their inhabitants for a few years, but you can’t raise a family in them. So should planning authorities do more to guide the market towards producing fewer, larger homes to keep families in the inner city? Won’t this just drive up prices for everyone? And can we really have ‘mixed communities’ if the only family housing in inner cities is for poor families? I don’t pretend to have the answers to these questions, but I think we need to be asking them.
