Is this possible? To solve the housing supply shortfall, to make new homes affordable, to meet the demand that is blocked? To permit economic growth, whether it is employment space, new infrastructure or new energy distribution structures like pylons and power turbines? Indeed, there is a capitalist argument we should also seek to meet the demand for bigger and better homes, not simply modest homes sufficient to house new households fair and reasonable accommodation needs. And better homes too. But this higher order spatial thinking is not part of this blog. My objective is simple- facing reality, and showing the way the barriers above can be overcome in England with local support.
About sixty years experience as a market player, occasional commentator and a participant in the personal housing lottery has given me insights which I hope this blog hshows are rooted in reality. Because there are barriers to growth which are so powerful they have made us all prisoners of political geography. The barriers are invisible, but they matter a lot. Our own generation’s perception of the truth is blocking the next generations potential reality. This is unwise and could dub our generation the dead-beats. Precisely what are these barriers?
Ever since the mid nineteen eighties residents in local areas have feared spatial change in their areas. Given the choice they do not support more new homes near them, or new factories warehouses laboratories pylons or turbines. In fact they want the status quo to remain, not to change. Few believe new urban areas and infrastructure can be an improvement on open countryside despite the odd fact that 90% of the countryside is privately owned and blocks access to them, excepting a patchy and incomplete network of footpaths.
Many associate new urban areas with the the opposite of what all thinking residents of this planet surely want, zero emissions.They say building adds to climate warming. They say the process of construction conflicts with zero carbon objectives. It does. The new cars will do the same too. Our nations ability to feed itself in times of need are stopped if fields have new homes on them. Valued vistas, the literary landscape of our unparalleled written heritage on the one hand, destruction of our green and pleasant land another and the loss of birds, bees and wild life on the other. They are right. We see it happening.
Many of these people are called nimbies. Half of me is a nimby. I have lived old and new, rural and urban.. Nimbies opinions about local change are formed by experience, frequently bitter experience. I am equally disappointed with the failures. But my hope and belief is that change equals bad outcomes need not be true. Because I have seen good outcomes from change too, although not often.
Here is the first clue. Change which is invited is expected. It can bring benefits to local communities and local residents. Because it reflects what informed, thoughtful and pragmatic communities want. Change which is not expected, and is forced onto local communities without an understanding of why, is resisted. Rightly so. With this resistance comes starvation of continuity vitality. Growth is no longer organic, it is driven by uncontrolled short term commercial opportunism. Of course because at the moment local communities vision for the future does not exist, but opportunists and speculators visions for theirs does. They fill the vacuum. Existing communities can generate their own oxygen of renewal. New communities must on the one hand connect their umbilical cord into the existing community , whilst the existing community must give the oxygen of life to the new community. Is this waffle or reality? It is not waffle. It is spatial planning. It is thinking ahead. It needs existing, fully informed and well briefed communities to work together for the generations to come not create divisive short lived reasons for rejecting change.
There is one other dimension. Local change without local support cannot happen if local areas do not understand the role they will play in delivering the nation’s needs for the future. Which means political parties in Westminster must work together over generations.,This is not impossible if the examples of the landed estates, the Commission for New Towns and the best examples of change offered by the Crown Estate are studied, and applied.
Later this year we will see the manifestos of the main political parties on which the general election will be fought., Which party will look across the generational divide, which party will look across the spatial divide, which party will look across the political divide. In brief, which party will show domestic leadership? Without consensus, each party alone will be unable to remove these powerful barriers to change.
Ian Campbell
8 January 2024
