Really!? Gove!? and a sensible suggestion!? Inner city housing

[orangeleavesinautumn]

Gove appears to be making the first sensible suggestion of his career - more housing in inner cities, relaxing planning laws to allow this to happen.

This is desperately needed - we are in a vicious circle of needing parking because people can't live close to where they work, then people not being able to live close to where they work because so much space is needed for parking....

We need to get out of this, we need to put an end to the culture of driving in to work, and get rid of the inner city car parks, and put the land to better use.

We also need to get rid of the on street parking, and the awful concreting over of grass to park on front gardens, and start to scale back on the need and expectations of car ownership altogether.

More housing where it is actually needed is the first steps towards that - decades late, but better than nothing

But brownfield sites that were operating prior to about 1970 are often incredibly polluted. I've worked on some and there's all sorts of shit buried on the site that has to be removed and often sent to specialist landfill before the site can be used for housing. Lead, radioactive material, organic matter etc. Removing this type of stuff is very very expensive and time consuming.

On a personal note I would ADORE being able to live in the centre of London with my family, I wouldn't need a car because there's just so much to do on your doorstep, I'd use one of those car hire places if I needed to leave the city, access to great schools, food, theatre, musea, parks, shops, music venues, cinemas, libraries, etc right on our doorstep.

It would be phenomenal. But we'd need a 3 bedroom place to fit us all in. And so many people want the same that any affordable developments would immediately be swamped with applications. The limiting factor is the price for a reason. Prices are dictated by what people are willing to pay for the property, and there are simply so many people willing to pay high amounts that it will never be a reality for people like us (who earn too much to qualify for social housing but nowhere near enough to buy a house near where we rent atm).

I think instead of just focusing on cities like London and Manchester (amazing as they are), they need to properly develop more of the smaller cities in the UK, not by just adding housing estates without even a corner shop or primary school (or bus stop), but by properly developing places so they can actually support the people they house and so people aren't just living there, but are thriving and happy. Plonking houses or flats down and calling it a "development" is a total cop out.

There are so many soulless commuter towns that could really be amazing places to live if they just had more going on in their own town centres.

His suggestion of building an extra 250k house in Cambridge a city of only 140 000 people is ridiculous

^Never mind fitting it all into one city centre.
Someone has to live on the periphery, we can't house 68 million people in Zones 1-2^

And we have to remember that plenty of people don't want to live in zones 1-2 or anywhere near it. So we need to stop cramming all the jobs, opportunities and resources there. There's been lots of talk about '15 minute cities' and people are up in arms because they can't afford to live close to the amenities.

But what I thought they were talking about and what it should mean is that they build the amenities (employment, medical facilities, shops etc) close to where people now live, so they don't have to travel to a more distant city to access them (and also spread more evenly around the country, so people don't feel they're missing out if they don't live in the SE).

Plus they also need to have a lot more secure bike storage, because a lot of people will be in a similar position to what I am. I live in a village with limited facilities but there is a small town about 2 miles away. Which is a little bit too far to walk there and back in a timely fashion a lot of the time. But I could cycle, but there is nowhere secure to leave my bike when I get there, so I end up driving.

@monpetitlapin

I think instead of just focusing on cities like London and Manchester (amazing as they are), they need to properly develop more of the smaller cities in the UK, not by just adding housing estates without even a corner shop or primary school (or bus stop), but by properly developing places so they can actually support the people they house and so people aren't just living there, but are thriving and happy. Plonking houses or flats down and calling it a "development" is a total cop out.

Not just smaller cities, but what about all the run down towns? And it's not just shops and schools, people need decent jobs too. Far too much centralisation of "corporate" jobs in the big cities like London and Manchester. We need to spread people out more. The smaller cities and towns all have infrastructure and just need people, and those people need jobs. Solve that and you can start to reverse the centralisation that has served London well but ruined many regions of the country.

I'm not sure Toyko housing is one to aspire to https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190718-the-arms-length-flats-of-tokyo

@Badbadbunny @monpetitlapin - Great minds, eh?

So why is it not happening? Why is there still the concentration in investment in the SE?

What happened to 'levelling up'? There were talks of a cross rail style high speed rail line linking Liverpool and Hull via Manchester, and Leeds, but it's been quietly dropped.

@BarbaraofSeville There used to be what was known as the 'Parker Morris' standards.

Which was scrapped as a minimum standard by ... you guessed it a Conservative government.

Hmm, it's almost like Gove is trying to lower the bar even further.

@BarbaraofSeville absolutely. I was trying to point out that, although they're amazing because of all the amenities, "inner cities" aren't the be all and end all (I think I explained a bit better in my second post), and that it would be better and more sustainable for the entire population if we fully developed smaller towns and cities so people actually want to live there and spend time in them rather than using them as somewhere to kip between getting trains to work.

I want to live near the good stuff, I just don't think keeping the good stuff in one or two places and moving the people closer to it will work as well as improving local infrastructure and making more towns and cities have better amenities.

Definitely.

The whole planning system needs revisiting . I think his idea is sensible , it'll be cheaper to reuse existing buildings and stop towns from being ghost towns . If the areas were paved and a cafe culture got going with bars / restaurants I can see it being popular . Imagine strolling out your front door, after a hard days work , to a restaurant for a meal . No taxi required . Then stroll home .
I also think more needs to be done to relax planning in rural areas . Why can a barn that housed cows be converted but not a barn housing horses etc etc .
Our local council has rejected two recent applications because of this nitrates neutrality rubbish yes really no build because 5km away could be nesting birds . How does that help the economy grow and local builders etc get some earnings .

Do you really think people will choose not to have cars though? Plus we need parking for those of us who don't like in the city and need to visit, we can't use public transport because it stops too early!

@hattie43 it actually isn't cheaper to reuse existing buildings. If it was, that is what developers would do. It involves a huge amount of coordination and money to strip older buildings of things like asbestos, then they are built around older models of services so trying to cram contemporary services into an older building doesn't work well either, never mind the cost.

Gove also needs to ban Leasehold status as that's become a dirty word because of such abuse of the tenure . I'd rather rent than get caught in a leasehold nightmare .
The Tories won't though , as too many of them plus the crown make handsome sums from exploiting people

Oh that's a real shame. I know HS2 is ongoing, I have mixed feelings about it because I know the country needs it to reduce dependency on cars, but living in an area where I can see the environmental destruction they're wreaking with it, it's hard to watch it get built at the expense of the immediate landscape (and it's just so unnecessarily wide given that they don't plan any stations around here).

"Relaxing planning laws"

Grenfell anyone ?

🤬🤬

Except what Gove announced is nothing new. Brownfield housing fund & brownfield land release fund have been around for several years targeting inner city brownfield sites with visibility issues to bring forward housing. The problem is we can’t see to make inner city living with families and kids attractive or successful in the way European Cities do. Also often a lack of green spaces, schools and school places and doctors surgery again puts people off living in cities for any length of time.

Another issue is many households have 2 adults with careers
It is not always possible for them both to get a job in their subject in the same city.
This is quite often why people stay somewhere in the middle and both drive opposite directions.

Also is my work that is rural, not my home - so would still need a car even if I lived city centre

I'm absolutely against relaxing planning laws. Planning laws are there for a reason

Better to improve public transport links so no need for Cars. I no longer live in the UK and have driven 3 times in the time I've lived here because of heavy investment into public transport. We have a 24 hr bus and train system that is reliable and frequent. Every 10-15 mins

The tories will be pretending to care about the housing crisis and various other things until the next election. If they win they'll go back to not caring. I hope people aren't fooled.

I've been saying this even before COVID but it's especially true after , having seen how vulnerable city centres are if tourism/work is all they rely on. Obviously the difficulty is mechanisms to make it affordable as the land value is so insanely high. But if a way could be found to make affordable city centre housing, filling in empty spots, adding extra stories - I'm sure there would be huge economic advantages to have many more 'ordinary' people living in town centres, not having to commute huge distances, using amenties etc

The problem with large blocks of flats is the incompatibility of lifestyles. A nurse on nights doesn't want 3 kids thumping about above their bedroom and the flat with 3 kids doesn't want a noisy dinner party above them every Friday til midnight. I know it's normal in other countries (many who have better weather than us!) but I don't know how we shift that culture.

Relaxing planning laws is not the same as bad building using poor quality materials

This is a big problem. If these properties were available for local people to buy, prices would fall.

I agree that Gove is probably the most sensible member of the current government. He was a total dickhead when he was in education, but was actually quite good when he moved to Justice. That's probably why he never made it to Leader, he's much too sensible for the current Tory party.