Let Us Have Homes
Architect and planner KEN DAVIS calls for a public land company with statutory powers to force institutions to release unused plots for housing
Some 26 years ago, when I was studying for a Masters in Urban Regeneration, I came across the work of Manchester-based URBED (the Urban and Economic Development Group) who had worked on a number of urban regeneration projects. At that time they produced a very informative newspaper titled ‘SUN’ (Sustainable Urban Neighbourhoods), which was all about making existing urban areas more liveable, more attractive (to people and businesses), and more sustainable.
I sent copies of these newspapers to all of the then Labour Councillors at HBC because I thought they might want to see some better quality urban development in Hastings. I had not a single reply or sign of interest, and to this day do not know if this was the result of a lack of interest or if they thought I must surely be eccentric to believe that Hastings was worth the sort of betterment proposed by the work of URBED.
In the interim quarter of a century, I have witnessed some pretty appalling developments by both government agencies and private developers. Perhaps the worst aspect of all this is not only that the same basic mistakes go on being made (look at attempts to build on floodable land likePebsham/Bexhill Road, building office blocks that remain empty, unfinished roads), but also the now surely recognised absurdity of building a shopping centre at the bottom of a valley.
But long before my discovery of URBED I fell upon a wonderful article that all good local authority managers and especially town planners will know about, which is titled The Science of Muddling Through in the Journal of Public Administration. It makes the case that public bodies have, by their nature, to be cautious as protectors of public money. Such caution is also a result of the uncertainties of our political system and of public servants protecting their jobs; if unsure, then don’t do it. This leads to both very slow and very incremental change.
So how does all this help us in securing more and better housing?
Firstly, if we are to tackle climate change, and create more and better urban areas, we have to break the silo thinking and acting of our present local government models; quite simply, we have to work in more collaborative and thus more innovative ways.
Just as we now have a public energy company, we should also have a public land company which holds a ‘terrier’ or register of all public land and which has open access. Hastings Borough Council, East Sussex County Council, and public bodies like the NHS, the Ministry of Defence, and Railtrack all own land that is not used as efficiently as it could be. Efficient use would be for flats with shared amenity spaces rather than private gardens.
We are all aware of the number of empty shops in Hastings, but how do we keep an active retail offer and create more housing? Shops are traditionally of narrow frontage and deep plan. What if we turned that around and put housing behind wide frontage, shallow depth (perhaps only one isle) shops. Ok, so it’s not that easy and requires some detailed consideration and different variations, but does show what a different approach might deliver. Such innovation is held up by lack of imagination and lack of appropriate policy.
Furthermore, we all know that there are plenty of small, awkward sites in town which might become houses or flats, but there is only a very vague design policy which frankly acts more as obstruction than assistance. There are also larger sites, often in public ownership, which could be developed.
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Good article Ken but would private developers be interested in taking on such small sites? They need to turn a 15 – 20% profit and small pockets of land would not allow them the luxury of building any affordable homes as part of the project.