Housing and Place
The incoming UK government is targeting the building of 1.5m new homes in England over the next 5 years. Even if resources can be found to deliver housing on this scale, developments must not diminish the sense of place in both new and existing communities.
The housing crisis
Like many other countries the UK does not have enough houses. In May the Scottish Government declared a housing emergency citing rising levels of homelessness and a record number of people living in temporary accommodation, in the context of rising property prices creating serious barriers to home ownership. This follows similar declarations by a diverse group of local authorities in Scotland including Edinburgh and Glasgow city councils, Fife and rural Argyle and Bute.
The declaration of an emergency of itself does not have immediate practical effects. Rather it draws attention to the serious nature of the problem and has led to demands for more capital resources to be allocated to the sector. The housing shortage extends throughout the UK and became a major issue in the recent general election. The incoming government is committed to the delivery of 1.5 million new homes in the next 5 years in England (housing is a devolved function to the other nations of the UK).
The debate about how resources are going to be found to deliver on this commitment is now underway in earnest. Delivery requires land, materials and skilled labor. It needs an understanding of what types of homes are required and where they are to be located. It needs to ensure that the new housing is accessible to those groups who are unable to find suitable accommodation in the present housing market, in particular to mid-market housing and in the social rented sector. It requires a planning system that can allocate sites for development which take into account employment opportunities and the infrastructure for the provision of supporting health and social services. And all of this to happen at pace.
The Westminster government has announced the creation of a new dedicated group, the New Homes Accelerator (NHA), to, as the Housing Minister put it, ‘support local authorities and developers to get shovels in the ground’.
The number of homes completed in England has been decreasing in recent years, despite the widespread recognition of the housing shortage yet the new government claims to have identified some 200 sites across England with outline or detailed planning permission for up to 300,000 new homes which are still unbuilt. Promised new towns such as Ebbsfleet south -east of London, only has a small fraction of the planned number of houses in place. One of the major tasks of the NHA will be to identify failures in the current planning processes and help local authorities and developers to find a way through the blockages to progress and fix them.
In addition to these ‘unbuilt’ houses, It is also the case that there is a significant proportion of the existing housing stock which is underused. It is estimated, for example, that there are over 600,000 empty homes In England around half of which are classed as ‘long-term vacant’ having been empty for more than 6 months. Whilst local authorities have some powers to bring empty houses back into use there is scope for stronger powers and incentives for them to do so.
‘Unbuilt’ and long-term vacant empty houses together could comprise up some 40% of the Government’s housing target for new homes. Additional homes could also arise from more efficient use of underused housing stock through downsizing (residents moving to smaller homes more suitable for their needs) or other more flexible housing arrangements. A recent survey, for example, estimated that over 40% of over-65s live in a home that is larger than they need.
Again, as working practices change and retail trading increasingly moves on-line, there are opportunities for re-purposing redundant office and shop buildings to residential use. The government holds large tracts of land, often former military sites which are no longer required, which also have huge potential for re-use for housing and new town development.
I am not aware however of reliable estimates of how much additional housing might be created by these routes, but the essential point is that, despite the huge potential of these existing sites to increase housing stock, there will still remain a need for a substantial number of new-build houses in other locations.
More houses, but better places?
Even if fixes can be found to unblock the processes of planning and building new houses to allow more rapid progress towards the reduction of the housing shortage, there are vital questions about where the new developments are to be located. It should be an objective of the housing programme to ensure not just new homes but to do so in ways which enable the new developments to become good places to live; places that are not placeless rows of more or less identical houses. Importantly, new developments should not reduce the quality of existing communities which the developments might be part of or adjacent to. New developments must not be ‘placeless’ nor should they detract from the ‘placeness’ of existing communities. Hopefully they can improve the quality of places for both their new occupiers and for current residents.
In general terms there are 3 broad categories of potential development sites. There are sites within existing towns and cities, sites which are adjacent to existing settlements, and new towns created which are separate from existing settlements. Within existing towns and cities priority is given to so-called brownfield sites, often vacated by former industrial or manufacturing plants. Sites prioritized for developments adjacent to existing settlements are often referred to as grey field sites, land of poorer quality than other surrounding ‘green belt’ agricultural land which is protected from development under current planning arrangements. Larger tracts of land for new towns away from current settlements might be assembled around features such as former military bases or major former industrial locations.
Good places
The location and assembling of these sites, which may often be in multiple ownership, can be challenging. However, if it can be done, then there is the major challenge of design and build which not only provides large number of houses, but also produces the real possibility of supporting sustainable communities which give residents a better place to live than housing provision allowed them before.
Each of the categories of development sites outlined above brings its challenges. More houses in smaller village communities may detract from the existing character of a place even if they might contribute to the viability of facilities such as local primary schools and shops. Large scale new developments adjacent to existing towns may overload education and health services and other social and cultural facilities until suitable infrastructure can be added. The facilities in new developments should complement what is already available and not draw users away, for example from existing high streets to out-of-town retail parks. Locations for new towns raise important strategic considerations in relation to national resources such as transportation links and employment opportunities in addition to local considerations of size, design and social mix.
We now seem to have a consistent view of the features of a ‘good’ place. I have written before about the place principle adopted by the Scottish Government as the basis for its policymaking. Other organisations such as PPS have published widely on the characteristics of a good place. Typically a good place offers accessibility, connectedness, diversity, distinctiveness and sustainability. It is places where people find attractive with a feeling of community; where children can play safely in the street; where cars don’t dominate; where there are facilities for walking and cycling and where public spaces encourage social activity. Good places allow access to green spaces not only as nice places for people to walk and children to play but also for biodiversity and habitat connection. A good place offers a mix of housing tenure, a mix of housing types, a mix of densities, and most importantly a mix of uses in the innovative provision of community facilities and services. Good places have designs that are flexible and allow scope for change as they evolve over time.
The delivery of places with these characteristics at the scale and speed required to meet government housing targets presents a huge challenge for urban planning and design. Imaginative solutions will have to be found to address the dilemma of denser, well-connected urban living and the desire for more space and connection to nature, all against a background of the climate emergency and demands for net-zero.
In volume terms, housing developments have typically followed a suburban model and have been criticized for focusing mainly on projects with houses on individual plots and relatively low density. In recent years pressure for the efficient use of land and demand for an increasingly urban lifestyle, particularly among younger people, at higher density and connectivity often on brownfield city sites.
Such urban infill encourages higher density development, more efficient use of infrastructure and better access to public transportation and amenities. It may also reduce the need for new developments outside existing towns and cities, and promotes sustainable growth by making the most of the land and resources already available within the cities. Developments adjacent to existing settlements on the suburban model risk greater environmental challenges and infra structure costs.
Turning NIMBYs to YIMBYs
Developments on the scale needed if there is to be a realistic chance of reaching government housing targets will bring the fundamental issue at the heart of the planning system about how to facilitate a more positive view of planning decisions within the community. There needs to be a re-assessment of the ways in which local planning authorities can win support for the new developments required and turn NIMBYs to YIMBYs.
There is a view that NIMBYs are not necessarily opposed to development, but resent not being actively involved at an early stage in the local plan process. Planning authority community consultations tend to focus on locations for development, rather than form or function. Planners will ask ‘should we develop here?’ but fail to seek views on housing density, types and tenure of housing, and the shops, amenities and parking arrangements are appropriate for their area. Such issues are frequently resolved through the application of existing building design standards and through specialist data modelling. Crucially, neither of these approaches factor-in the lived experience and personal preference of existing residents.
Understandably, this can leave individuals and communities feeling that the choice before them is a fait accompli. With community involvement at the earliest stages of the local plan process, local residents can give clear preference for the type, form and features of what could be built on available sites. Such involvement can give both planners and developers a steer and communities greater confidence that whenever a site is built over, it is more likely to meet with local approval. Experience suggests that there are many who, if offered good quality developments where they can see benefits for their community and where the infrastructure to match the provision is in place can generate a more positive YIMBY attitude to development.
Place-making and place-keeping
Whatever the location and model for development there remains the concern for the fostering of place identity and sense of community, especially when new developments are of considerable scale. Housing schemes have to be turned into places rather than simply collections of new houses. Place identity takes time to emerge and will likely change through time as the built environment ages and housing expectations change. A vivid account of the evolution of life on a major new housing scheme is provided by, for example, Lynsey Hanley in her book ‘Estates: an Intimate History’.
The design of the development must allow for placemaking activity. There is now a considerable literature about placemaking and placemaking practice.
Placemaking in major new developments relative to the size of existing communities needs to relate both to the development itself and the characteristics of the ‘host’ community. Places continually evolve, so placemaking activities must do too. The stewardship of a place through time – what might be called place-keeping – is part of this continuous process.
Place-keeping involves both maintenance and renewal to sustain the appropriateness and attraction of place-making projects. It is vital that place-keeping is extended to the ‘placeness’ of the whole new place which has emerged from the juxtaposition of older and new communities. New developments should not put at risk those features which constitute the distinctiveness of existing communities. With strong leadership and commitment from authorities to close community involvement, the coming together can enhance the lived experience of all residents and the identity of expanded places.
Further reading
Lynsey Hanley: Estates: an Intimate History (revised edition 2023