9 770954 668007
AU T U M N / W I N T E R 2 0 1 7
No.472
AU T U M N / W I N T E R 2 0 1 7
No.472
LSJ cover flat 472 print.indd 1
15/12/2017 10:22:10
LSJ cover flat 472 print.indd 2
15/12/2017 10:22:10
Est. 1912
The Aim of the Society is to stimulate a wider concern for the beauty of the capital city, for the preservation of its charms and the careful consideration of its developments.
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 1
15/12/2017 12:52:36
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
editor@londonsociety.org.uk
Editor
Jessica Cargill Thompson Sub Editor
Mark Service
Art Director
Lucy Smith, HTA Design LLP
Blog Editor
blog@londonsociety.org.uk
Picture Editor
Natalie Marsh
The London Society Registered Charity 206270 Mortimer Wheeler House, 46 Eagle Wharf Road, London N1 7ED www.londonsociety.org.uk President: HRH The Duke of Gloucester KG GCVO Chair: Peter Murray Vice Chair: Neil Bennett Secretary: Mark Prizeman Treasurer: Nick McKeogh
Executive Committee 2017 Michael Coupe Richard Harden Jonathan Manns Lucy Smith Eric Sorensen
Clive Price Adam Baldwin Darryl Chen Jessica Cargill Thompson
Staff: Director: Don Brown Administrator: Jane Jephcote Events Coordinator: Rowena Ellims
www.londonsociety.org.uk
Cover illustration & end papers: Alexandra Road by Sandy Morrison sandysdrawingroom.com
2
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 2
15/12/2017 12:52:36
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
Contents Editor’s note — PAGE 4
Polycentric cities by Sarah Yates — PAGE 38
Boom town London's past great population booms — PAGE 8
CASE STUDIES Older people's accommodation by Lettie Mckie — PAGE 42
Profile: Nikos Salingaros In conversation with Jonathan Manns — PAGE 12
Housing in Camden by Mark Swenarton — PAGE 46
Forward Thinking Mark Prizeman on future city — PAGE 18
REGULARS A London notebook — PAGE 52
A city for all Londoners Photographer Kwame Ohene-Adu — PAGE 22
Book reviews — PAGE 54
OPINION Emily Gee of Historic England on the role of the past in the future, and the strategic use of tall buildings — PAGE 30
LONDON SOCIETY Review of 2017 — PAGE 62 Events for 2018 — PAGE 64
Zoe Green argues why tech needs a place in a growing capital, and how it could have one — PAGE 32
How to join — PAGE 66 Corporate sponsors — PAGE 67
Michael Bach on neighbourhoods as the building block on which build to create more sustainable, more inclusive and resilient communities — PAGE 34
Lloyd Grossman's 2017 Banister Fletcher lecture. Report by Zoe Green — PAGE 68 APPG update — PAGE 70
John Myers of London YIMBY on making infill work — PAGE 35
To contribute to the Spring/Summer 2018 issue, please email editor@londonsociety.org.uk
3
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 3
Views expressed within the Journal are those of the individual writers and not necessarily those of the London Society as a whole.
15/12/2017 12:52:36
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
Editor’s Note Ten million. One-zero. That's how many of us Londoners there'll be by 2030 – just 12 years' time. According to figures from the GLA and Office of National Statistics, we currently number 8.9 million, and it's predicted we'll pass the 9 million mark some time in 2019. In relation to other world cities, London thinks of itself as a relatively small city: giant in stature but human in its physical scale. We're not the never ending urban expanses of Toyko/ Yokohama (33 million); the skyscraping canyons of New York; the apartment dwellers of other European capitals; or the squeezed masses of Mumbai (density 23.9 people per sq km compared to London's 5.1), much as we may admire all of those places. We are traditionally low rise and low density, with a surprising amount of green space. We value culture as much as we value commerce, and pride ourselves on being a place of both hi-tech innovation and ancient monuments. The seemingly unstoppable rush towards 10 million understandably induces palpitations. In this issue of Journal we're pausing to consider what a London of 10 million would look like. What are the opportunities of growth, and what are the caveats? Can we preserve the best of what we have while still being open to innovation and change? How can London guarantee, to borrow the mayor's term, "good growth", ensuring it remains a richly mixed city before we carpet everywhere from Uxbridge to Ilford with knee-jerk high-density housing? Will it still be recognisably 'London'? Jonathan Manns interviews influential urban theorist Nikos Salingaros, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Texas, for a global perspective on growth and successful urban forms. Mark Prizeman looks at the exciting opportunities a city of 10 million might afford, while Michael Patterson of London Historians revisits London's past population booms, recounting the effect on the city at the time and how they shaped the London we now love. Emily Gee of Historic England puts the case for planning London's past into its future, while urban planner Zoe Green argues why London must also retain its hi-tech top spot. On the practical matter of where to physically fit everyone in, Sarah Yates explains why we need to view London as a city of many urban centres that can embrace denser, mixed-use development; John Myers of London YIMBY shows how careful infill on a local level offers a painless way to increase densities without decreasing neighbourhood character; and Michael Bach of the London Forum stresses the need for including communities in the planning of their future, not leaving it to the policymakers and professionals. And for some inspiration on how to do good growth well, Lettie McKie meets the pioneering women of Older Women’s Co-Housing (OWCH), whose co-housing offers a practical housing solution for the expanding over-50s demographic, and Mark Swenarton, author of Cook's Camden: the Making of Modern Housing, celebrates some of London's best social housing. It's unlikely you'll agree with everyone – and doubtless all London Society members will have their own views on how to accommodate the magic 10 million. But the society has always been about lively debate. Where I hope we can all concur is the need for London to plan its growth rationally and sympathetically, and for the benefit of us all.
— Jessica Cargill Thompson, Editor
4
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 4
15/12/2017 12:52:41
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2 - E D I T O R ' S N O T E
Credit: Kwame Ohene-Adu
5
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 5
15/12/2017 12:52:46
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
Credit: Kwame Ohene-Adu
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 6
6
15/12/2017 12:52:50
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
A city for 10 million London’s population growth over the past 200 years has been fierce, expanding at pace during the Victorian and Edwardian eras, then again in the 1930s expansion into Metroland, before reaching a 20th century peak of 8.6 million. After the Second World War, it dropped away, hitting a low of 6.8 million in 1983. But this new period of growth has been unstoppable; in January 2015 the capital passed the 1939 peak, and carries on heading towards a predicted 10 million by 2030.
10000000 9000000 8000000 7000000 6000000 5000000 4000000 3000000 2000000 1000000 0 1820 1840 1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020 2040 London's population between 1801 and 2001 and projections for growth to 2035, derived from historic Census data and the 2012 mid year population estimates.
7
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 7
15/12/2017 12:52:53
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
Boom town While London is experiencing a significant spurt in percentage terms, it’s not the largest rate of growth in our history by any means. Michael Paterson of London Historians looks at the impact of the capital's previous population explosions
8
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 8
15/12/2017 12:52:53
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
Londinium There is good archaeological evidence of human habitation around the Thames prior to the arrival of the Romans; artefacts from the period can be seen in the prehistory galleries at the Museum of London. The first significant settlement in the area, occurred only after the Claudian invasion of 46AD, and even then it came in stages. Initially a garrison and bridge from 47 until its destruction by the Iceni under Boudicca in 60/61, Londinium wasn’t developed by the Romans as a fullyfunctioning port and trade centre until the 70s onwards. Rapid development followed for the next 70 years or so, characterised primarily by the port with attendant warehousing, but significantly also a forum, squares, temples, a basilica, amphitheatre and sundry civic buildings: in short, all the trappings of a Roman imperial centre, making Londinium de facto Britannia’s provincial capital. At its height circa 122 coinciding with Hadrian’s tour of the province, it is estimated the population of London was at least 45,000 and possibly as many as 60,000. What does this signify for that period? Rome’s population at that time has been variously estimated at between 400,000 and near to a million. Agreed, that’s a huge margin of error. Nonetheless, we can probably say that Londinium was about a tenth of the size of its mother city. That’s a significant size for the period with only a handful of others – such as Alexandria and Antioch – being larger. Archaeological evidence indicates Londinium suffered a major fire soon after Hadrian’s tour. At some stage in the late Roman period it was re-named Augusta, but this epithet for a provincial capital could not disguise the city’s decline. After the legions abandoned Britain and as the Roman Empire in the west disintegrated through the early fifth century, Londinium’s raison d’etre as a bustling port and trading hub evaporated. London’s population didn't recover its size for another thousand years. For the next several hundred years, London was little more than a ghost town, even taking into account the settlement of Lundenwic; roughly in the area of Covent Garden and the Strand today. It was not until Alfred the Great restored the City in the 880s that London began its slow return journey, first to significance and then ultimately to pre-eminence.
9
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 9
15/12/2017 12:52:53
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
Tudor London Barring the calamitous setback caused by the Black Death in 1347, London’s population grew at a steady but unremarkable pace during the late medieval period to around 50,000 inhabitants. Then, from the final years of Henry VIII’s reign until the end of Elizabeth’s in 1603 it increased fourfold, reflecting that of the nation as a whole. The period saw major economic improvements in manufacture and trade, particularly in finished goods. The foundation of independent joint stock companies and the rise of a more ambitious and confident mercantile class, personified by men such as Sir Thomas Gresham, combined to create a vibrant financial environment in London to rival, for the first time, the by now diminished Northern European cities of the Hansa. Gresham founded the Royal Exchange in 1571, London’s first bourse modelled on that in Antwerp. He and other like-minded City merchants encouraged the queen to cancel centuries-old foreign trading and banking privileges culminating in the closure of the Steelyard (a closed German trading district of offices and warehouses near today’s Cannon Street Station) in 1598. In the meantime feeding into this revitalised London, England had more mercantile ships on the high seas than ever before. Many of these were of dubious status, as we know, depending on the needs of the Crown at any given juncture. The upshot of this mercantile frenzy was largescale migration to the city both from all over England and indeed, abroad. London quickly became extremely densely populated, noisome, smelly, overcrowded. Various ordinances failed to prevent ribbon development along major trunk roads outside the walls. But for the first time in its history, London had arrived as a global city. London’s rapid population growth continued into the 17th century. Despite the English Civil War and four major outbreaks of the plague (1603, 1625, 1636 and 1665), the city’s population more than doubled to well over 400,000 by the century’s end, eclipsing Paris for the first time. London had been a fraction of the size of the French capital throughout the middle ages. That now had changed forever.
10
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 10
15/12/2017 12:52:54
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
19th Century Between 1825 to 1914 – approximately post-Napoleon to the First World War – London was the capital of the most comprehensive trading empire in history, and the world’s largest city. It saw a period of explosive population growth. From around a million denizens in 1800 it expanded over sixfold in the following hundred years. The causes were manifold. Early in the century, the national canal system finally joined up properly with London as simultaneously virtually all her main deep basin docks were completed. This process had barely played out when the railways arrived, first the great termini, then the Underground. Simultaneously, and no less than in Birmingham and Manchester, steam-driven industrialisation transformed the landscape, particularly to the east. As in previous times the demand for workers was fed by immigration rather than natural growth. Thousands flocked in from all over the country and Europe, with notable influxes from Ireland after the famine and in the 1880s with pogrom-fleeing Jews from Russia, Poland and Germany. The inevitable consequence was squalor, overcrowding, disease, pollution and widespread grinding poverty. The problem was endemic through the capital but particularly bad in the East End, St Giles, Clerkenwell and Westminster. Parishes, housebuilders, reformers or charities: nobody could outpace London’s population explosion in the Victorian era. London’s population hardly grew throughout most of the 20th Century. Although that seems to be changing, it’s highly unlikely we will again experience the huge booms of previous times.
Michael Paterson is the Director of London Historians, londonhistorians.org FIND OUT MORE London Society members can join London Historians for a discounted rate at londonhistorians.org/ls 11
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 11
15/12/2017 12:52:55
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
From particles to places View from Across the Pond A new urbanists’ view of London’s growth Nikos A Salingaros, mathematician, physicist and urban theorist, who counts the Prince of Wales among his fans - talks to urbanist Jonathan Manns about pattern books, beauty and tall buildings
Nikos A Salingaros, pictured right is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Texas, with research interests ranging from thermonuclear fusion, superconducting magnets and plasma physics to, perhaps intriguingly, the application of maths to architecture and urbanism. He is the author of six monographs on architectural and urban design including A Theory of Architecture, Principles of Urban Structure and more recently (with Michael Mehaffy) Design for a Living Planet. Thoughtprovoking and occasionally controversial, he has been listed by the quarterly American magazine Utne Reader as “One of 50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World” and ranked 11th in the American planning-related news website Planetizen’s “Top 100 Urban Thinkers of All Time”. In the UK, he counts royalty amongst his fans, with HRH Prince Charles claiming: “Surely no voice is more thought-provoking than that of this intriguing, perhaps historically important, new thinker?"
12
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 12
15/12/2017 12:52:55
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
JM: Maths professors aren’t a common sight among the world’s urban theorists. How did you come to turn your thinking towards cities? NS: My first interest was painting nature but since that was a terrible career choice I studied for a doctorate in Mathematical Physics. I’ve made a living as a mathematics professor and all this time have had a strong interest in artefacts, buildings, places and cities. As a graduate student I read a large number of architecture texts and the only ones that made scientific sense were those by the visionary architect and software engineer, Christopher Alexander. I made it a point to follow his work and when I visited Berkeley, California, for a conference, I called his home and visited him. We became friends and he asked me to help edit his monumental four-volume The Nature of Order, published between 2002-2004. What began as a fascinating side interest took over my life and thought. The more I got into the field, the more I realised there was an urgent need to prevent crazy design ideas being taken as gospel and stop the world going along with the madness. JM: "The Nature of Order" by Christopher Alexander, describes a scientific view of the world in which there are common characteristics that breathe personal, emotional and even spiritual qualities into buildings and streets. You’ve also made the case in your book "Principles of Urban Structure" that there are scientific laws underlying successful urban form, with historic design typologies coming out on top. Why do some places make us feel alive whilst others do not? NS: Scientific principles underlie successful urban form that accommodates human life but doesn’t concentrate on mechanical points such as fast vehicular traffic or maximising floor space in super-tall
13
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 13
15/12/2017 12:52:56
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
buildings. Human society has split from its connection with the environment. Before we accepted inhuman built environments, all that we ever built was guided intuitively, by processes that optimised a positive feedback from the forms and spaces. This created a healing environment in which to pursue our daily activities. This is the reason why traditional cities tend to make us–as people from a different time, place and culture, who didn’t necessarily build them–feel very much alive. Their genetic material correlates directly with our own body and psychological sensibilities. Christopher, myself and people associated with us have devised a list of tools that measure the life-giving qualities of any environment, some of which are introduced in my book Twelve Lectures on Architecture. They explain, in quantitative and qualitative terms, why some places make us feel more or less alive. The correlation with what people actually feel is astonishing and validates our criteria for measurement. It is unfortunate that this hasn’t entered the mainstream.
just absorb information to feel good. That's what tourists pay for! Beauty is a dangerous word because the general public will tell you that the place I have described is beautiful whereas trained architects will tell you that it is phoney, nostalgic and must be torn down to erect some glass and concrete monstrosity. Real-estate speculators love architects for this! Beauty is indeed linked to success but this is something only the general public understand and even they are misled by propaganda promoting supposedly modern forms of design. JM: There are nonetheless many people who admire the appearance of London’s tall contemporary buildings, as well as those who enjoy working and living in them… NS: It's one thing to admire giant shiny sculptures from afar as aesthetic objects. The problem is that it ignores what they do to the lives of those who work in and around them, and how they massively degrade the fine structure of living urban fabric. The aesthetic admiration of giant things that destroy a city's life is totally irresponsible. As for those who enjoy working and living in tall buildings, it's invariably high-net-worth individuals who can afford to jet to holiday settings in natural environments, to experience traditional architecture and urbanism elsewhere. Living in tall buildings is tantamount to sensory deprivation and so is not for the rest of us. The message I would communicate is: "Try to live and work for a year in a skyscraper without any additional architectural and urban nourishment
JM: You’re describing a scientific approach with aesthetic implications. To what extent is there a relationship between a successful place and a beautiful place? NS: A successful place is one in which thousands of daily tasks are performed with optimal emotional and physical satisfaction, which includes just "being there". A person is not a numbered machine part that has to move from point A to point B, to produce and to consume. People can stand or sit in a place and
14
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 14
15/12/2017 12:52:56
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
from traditional forms on the ground and the mixing of people: noisy and crowded but necessary for life.�
Then we can work on the living part: the first four storeys. Those have to be made welcoming, to adapt to the fluxes, flows and human dimensions of the ground. The complexity of needs, the existing footprints and urban flux will determine a rather asymmetrical base for the tall building. We have to get this right otherwise it kills the humanity of the streets all around. Egomaniacal architects, supported by present-day zoning, get this aspect totally wrong. It doesn't really matter what the middle and top look like in my approach, since those floors are used only for storage!
JM: A key element of the tall-buildings debate is how they touch the ground. Your work promotes complex, fine-grained, asymmetrical and connected urban form. What does the ideal street look like? NS: Consider tall buildings as storage for things, having nothing to do with the vibrant human life at street level. Useful tall buildings would be warehouses for goods, vertical cemeteries and prisons.
Seaside Entrance - Credit: M.Fitzsimmons (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons
15
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 15
15/12/2017 12:52:59
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
Edge of Poundbury - Credit: Marilyn Peddle [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
JM: Taking a real-world example, the City of London Corporation is proposing a new Centre for Music on the Museum of London site once it has moved to the historic Smithfield market. How should it be approached? NS: The Museum of London site is highly problematic. The design of the present building rules out human-scale connections that are absolutely necessary to make any project work. The surrounding glass-faced industrial buildings don't help either. Léon Krier has published a wonderful human-scale design for a new London Concert Hall at Great Portland Street. As an alternative, I suggest employing another classical architect such as Robert Adam or José Cornélio da Silva, with a separate team to fix the urban connection problem. We could bring cutting-edge sensor technology to design the urban space and approaches. I could coordinate
some young scientist-urbanists like Itai Palti and Daniele Quercia to optimize the flows from a human perspective, while working with a more traditional form language. JM: London’s skyline and urban form has changed significantly since a settlement was established by the Romans around 50AD. Is there any period of growth that best embodies the principles of good design? NS: Those prior to the curse of post-Second World War industrial modernism. London was a complex human-scale city with a living urban fabric. Those wonderful buildings and neighbourhoods were mixed and juxtaposed with slums and degraded pockets. That’s human society, but the flux of normal urban life has been altered irremediably. The place of the human being in the city has been erased by
16
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 16
15/12/2017 12:52:59
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
super-towers. London lost its pocket parks and small squares when everything moved to an inhuman scale.
main reasons people wish to relocate to London in the first place. The first policy that the Mayor of London needs to implement is: “Save the human parts of London from destruction!” Otherwise there will be no London left worth saving. A second, complementary policy, for all new construction, is to require that: “Any new building and urban intervention has to follow known mathematical rules for generating human-scale, healing urban fabric.” These guidelines might help guarantee a London that is viscerally attractive in 100 years’ time.
JM: Your thinking has heavily influenced the “New Urbanism” movement. Famous examples include Seaside in Florida and, closer to home, Prince Charles’ Poundbury in Dorset. What might London learn from these? NS: These highly successful developments have a much lower density than is needed for the centre of London but those who take the trouble to study the principles of New Urbanism will discover codes developed for high-density central-city urbanism, called “the Transect”. Krier, who developed the coding for Poundbury, also has appropriate density solutions. The design and planning apparatus exists for London, but not by superficially copying Poundbury or Seaside.
JM: Finally, given your own design principles, what is your favourite place or building and why? NS: My favourite building in the USA is the Carson Pirie Scott building by Louis Sullivan in Chicago, despite some nasty alterations. My favourite urban space is the Foro Romano in Rome. When experiencing them, I feel very much like I'm eating a wonderful meal with exquisite wine: the millions of details I connect with nourish my body and soul. There is no reason why we cannot strive to reproduce those feelings in everything that we build today. Only ideology, ignorance, and architectural arrogance prevent us from doing so.
JM: That being the case, with London anticipated to grow to 10 million residents by 2030 the Mayor is consulting on a new London Plan. What policies would you like to see him implement? NS: Who says that London has to accommodate 10 million residents? This projection is based on the fact that enough of older London is still standing right now to attract new residents from around the world. They are not coming for the glass towers, but for the human-scale older urban fabric. Government planners don't seem to realise that replacing this older urban fabric with new high-rises in a misguided effort to accommodate residents will remove one of the
Jonathan Manns is Director of Planning at Colliers International
17
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 17
15/12/2017 12:53:00
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
Forward thinking We need to stop seeing a bigger, denser city as a problem, and embrace its opportunities, says Mark Prizeman John Brinckerhoff Jackson in his 1958 essay ‘Southeast to Turkey’ asks students of city planning ‘that for a year they would look at no picture-books of Brave New Sweden, attend no lectures entitled “Planning for a More Abundant Democracy” (or “Housing at the Crossroads”), cease all speculating about the City of the Future, and spend the time instead deep in the heart of some chaotic, unredeemed, ancient city. Preferably Istanbul.’ London was running through its tower block phase when that was written and apart from a couple of technical issues the delivery of housing still runs on the top-down ideals of delivering the modern city, something that Istanbul has unfortunately recently learnt as well. In the striving towards commercial gain there is an implied simplification that does not have any place for architectural expression or experimentation beyond tried commercial models, but London was always able to use its
variety to temper this somewhat with its own strangulated vernacular. The planned densification of London is well underway and is visible to all: estates being rebuilt at double previous densities; towers springing up around certain infrastructure hubs; and lots of new glass balconies. A restrained ‘clean’ style and sometimes a splash of colour but otherwise culturally void and unchallenging to either the eye or soul. Even the gauche exuberance of 1980s supermarkets has gone. The 1982 film Blade Runner gave a tangible vision of a future city that was dense, vibrant and filled with a plausible urban layering. This was an inspiration to many as it showed how small and varied advances in technology would have a direct visual consequence in the streets of the future. One could imagine a future that wasn’t out-of-town shopping centres and Canary Wharf. It gave a whole new architectural vocabulary to public
18
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 18
15/12/2017 12:53:00
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
places filled with people carrying out their lives and not just commuting. It was what JBJ in Istanbul compares to Samuel Johnson describing the ‘full tide of human existence’ at Charing Cross: ‘Crowds not on their way to some place but already there – buying, selling, arguing, gesticulating, working. Everything is shamelessly open to view, and at the same time there is glimpse after glimpse of an almost domestic intimacy: a mother nursing her child on the edge of the pavement, someone thoughtfully dictating a letter to a public scribe, someone asleep.’ The real future, however, always has a habit of creating exciting new problems for the mundane planned out one. It coincided with the reversal of London’s population drain and the Big Bang of 1986, which helped drive young professionals back into Inner London, reclaim their city and escape the boredom of the suburbs. The current trend to build blocks of monocultural residential units in antiseptic anodyne architectural configurations expresses a corporate totalitarian bleakness that cities are meant to dispel. The construction of gated communities without playgrounds or any public community places is strange in a capital city that accounts for 20% of its country’s births, or is it perhaps part of the reason? Yet the human spirit adapts and our streets are now clogged with couriers delivering e-commerce and people who treat their cars as an extension of the living rooms of their cramped dwellings. Life for the future Londoner seems to promise a small flat for sleep with all other activities done out in the
street; high streets will become the living room, kitchen and dining room, a vibrant communal space. The insular suburb will have to fail. The photographic survey Tokyo Style, with its minute, carefully filled single-room dwellings shot by the photographer Kyoichi Tsuzuki, shows how people adapt to the new cramped urban living on the back of an inherited third-generation mortgage whilst retaining a fervent individuality. London has one of the lowest densities of the so-called global cities with 60% of its population living in outer suburbs served by a commuter transport infrastructure. The opportunity to reinvent London and its sense of place is not to be missed. It is clear what a planned commercial solution to increased density is by looking at tower-block-cluttered cities around the world that are being visited upon us as ‘luxury developments’. The radical ideology of Garden Cities is not emulated. There is little shift in architectural or civic vision, just careful packing in appropriate places. Looking at the Wikipedia list of the 20 most densely populated cities in the world one finds Manila at the top but none of the other suspects, such as Lagos or São Paulo,which head the most populous lists. Instead Paris in various guises appears and reminds one of the example set by Haussmann, cited by many a planner as an exemplar of how to do it. Yet this is not a people-per-acre calculation; in the 1870s London was building at 1,500 souls per acre (3,700 per ha) with an advocated density of 1,100 per acre, the net density of the inner city then was 400 per ha.
19
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 19
15/12/2017 12:53:00
A New Vision - Credit: Alexander Christie
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
20
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 20
15/12/2017 12:53:02
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
Greater London already houses 8.9 million people, according to the latest census, and so 10 million seems easy. If one rebuilt it all at the same density as Kensington and Chelsea one could house 20 million souls within the Green Belt in nice dwellings with parks, museums and a varied townscape. Islington and Tower Hamlets are both denser by dint of their adaptable terraced housing stock, but don’t have as many museums. Islington with 185 dwellings per hectare was denser than tower blocks at 110 dwellings per hectare. The super modern development at Battersea Power Station/Nine Elms is being built at 82 dwellings per hectare without any real joy in the design or manifestation of usable public space. London has spent the past century or so trying to de-densify, to remove all those warrens of humanity and provide clean air for all. This is land-hungry and the vast 20th century sprawl of two-storey suburbia around the inner core was only checked by the Second World War and the Green Belt. The pressure to extend this sprawl into the belt seems counterintuitive when one should really be thinking about what returning to a more densely inhabited metropolis should be like. London has changed and it is quite difficult to remember what it was like when there were as many boozers as there are now coffee shops, but one has to be careful not to throw too much out with the bathwater.
Londoners and their vivacity are being exported to a ring of comfortable hubs – Hastings, Margate, Southend – that are using art galleries as urban revivers and creating strangely familiar London-like atmospheres. Civilisation is the ether of ideas created by the mixing of many peoples carrying out their lives in close proximity and not by the mere act of housing and employing them. London urgently needs to allow itself to reinvent its particular way of distilling ideas in a tighter fabric of new and old places.
Mark Prizeman runs his own architects practice
21
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 21
15/12/2017 12:53:04
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
A city for all Londoners Architect and photographer Kwame Ohene-Adu captures capital treasures
22
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 22
15/12/2017 12:53:06
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
Credit: Kwame Ohene-Adu
23
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 23
15/12/2017 12:53:09
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
24
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 24
15/12/2017 12:53:11
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
25
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 25
Credit: Kwame Ohene-Adu
15/12/2017 12:53:15
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
26
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 26
Credit: Kwame Ohene-Adu
15/12/2017 12:53:19
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
27
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 27
Credit: Kwame Ohene-Adu
15/12/2017 12:53:25
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
28
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 28
15/12/2017 12:53:29
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
29
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 29
Credit: Kwame Ohene-Adu
15/12/2017 12:53:33
Opinion
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
Keep the past part of our future We must not bury the city’s rich history in a scramble to accommodate growth, argues Historic England’s Emily Gee How can the past be a viable part of London’s future? As the capital develops, it is crucial that we don’t forego its rich and deep character in the name of growth at all costs. The mayor has shown in his A City for All Londoners report that he is enlightened on the importance of heritage, asserting that ‘it is who we are’ and pledging to do everything in his power to protect the city’s heritage. The mayor has said publicly that he understands that heritage is part of local character and our collective memory, that it underpins our urban culture and infuses our shared identity. This understanding of what makes London special is an important starting point for conversations about growth. For London to remain London, it needs to protect and celebrate its heritage, ranging from major monuments to our significant estates, diverse high streets, historic parks, striking public art and eminently re-usable industrial buildings. As a starting point for how we want to live in the future, we can do well to look to history. London presents many examples of successful places with liveable densities, enduring character and suitably accommodating historic building types. We know that characterful places enrich people’s lives. They draw visitors from around the world, which stimulates our economy, and they encourage passion and engagement from residents, demonstrated by the important work
of amenity societies and community groups. Historic England is committed to helping to support good growth and our recent report on this demonstrates adaptable neighbourhoods and places that can grow and change, bring housing, jobs and amenities. Working with the existing grain, fabric and character is not only the best placemaking response, but often the sustainable response too. Historic England research on character and density, produced by architecture and urban planning practice Allies and Morrison, shows that almost all areas and building types can accommodate densification. The impressive townscape set piece of Regent Street, which comprises mostly listed buildings and is entirely within a conservation area, has undertaken a 30 per cent uplift in retail and office space while firmly retaining its architectural character and strong public realm. There are many examples of good design introducing new housing that take existing typologies and streetscapes as a design cue and support the efficient use of land. London’s most ancient areas have always been densely built and looking to these as models can support the shift to more sustainable methods of transport. We can look to more recent history for cautionary tales. London is historically a low city with cherished sweeping views. These have been captured in art for centuries, and in the hearts and minds of Londoners and visitors alike.
30
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 30
15/12/2017 12:53:33
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
Analysis of our important views demonstrates the harm caused when the wrong types of development are put in inappropriate places. While Historic England believes that well-designed tall buildings in the right places can contribute to the urban realm, when tall developments appear in particularly sensitive heritage locations they can have a wide and harmful impact. The result can be the overpowering of some of our most important buildings, landscapes and views that have long served and inspired Londoners. Inappropriate tall buildings can also distract from some of the fortuitous compositions of multi-layered townscape, and quiet places of contemplation or curated wilderness that so many Londoners seek out. Such development also risks London falling prey to ubiquity, and the individual character of London’s villages and neighbourhoods being harmed instead of enhanced.
We want to help improve the lives of Londoners by making better use of what we have, and building on our shared urban history and character to enrich our high streets, working areas and homes. To keep London special we need to keep it London, and build on its diversity, richness and character as the capital grows. Let’s keep the past firmly in mind as we plan for our future.
Emily Gee is London Planning Director at Historic England FIND OUT MORE Historic England’s 2017 report Translating Good Growth for London’s Historic Environment can be downloaded from historicengland.org.uk
31
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 31
15/12/2017 12:53:33
Opinion
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
Can tech stay on top? Innovation drives growth but as small firms and start-ups find themselves priced out of town, Zoe Green asks if London is in danger of losing its high-tech top spot
Clustering provides greater opportunities for sharing resources, knowledge and infrastructure. It also helps brand an industry, attracting talented and skilled professionals. According to NESTA's 2010 report Creative Clusters and Innovation, this leads to faster innovation and a more competitive marketplace. It’s what economists refer to as agglomeration benefits. SMEs rely on a few key ingredients: access to flexible affordable workspace, either as small units or rented by the hour; and good public transport and internet connectivity, for staff and customer interaction.
From smart-phones to drones, economic revolution is driven by technological advancement. The UK Government has been actively encouraging growth of creative clusters in London since 2010, its East London Tech City initiative being launched in 2011 to support Old Street’s ‘Silicon Roundabout’. But this digital cluster in East London is arguably a victim of its own success. Just 3,000 start-ups opened in 2016, compared with 15,500 in 2014 – an 80 per cent drop in just three years, largely due to soaring rents. Today, larger tech brands are also opening their headquarters in London. Although they are inclined to collaborate with start-ups, they are looking further afield than Old Street for sites. Google is developing its London headquarters at King’s Cross and Facebook is moving to Fitzrovia. Will this complement or conflict with Silicon Roundabout? Will new small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) clusters form, or will existing ones simply be priced out?
Challenges and solutions
As an area begins to thrive it also becomes more widely attractive. An increasing number of conversions of workspace into residential development; the rise of commercial rents; the gentrification of formerly deprived areas, now attractive for high-end development; competition for space from successful startups that can now afford higher rents… all pose challenges to London’s tech and SME sector. London’s Mayor and boroughs have mused over the most appropriate way to respond to the challenges of affordable and attractive workspace. There is increasing recognition that growing clusters need support. Where, then, must London look to retain its place at the top table? There are six areas on which we must focus, as explained above right.
The importance of tech clusters
Creative industries naturally cluster. Take London’s Hatton Garden jewellery quarter. As early as 1890, the Cambridge economist Alfred Marshall identified in his Principles of Economics that: ‘Great are the advantages which people following the same skilled trade get from near neighbourhood to one another.’
32
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 32
15/12/2017 12:53:33
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
Talent
With the current Government committed to reducing immigration, resourcing will be a key issue. Encouraging learning in STEM subjects will become more important. So, too, we must address the reasons for a possible brain drain as younger people flee to more affordable provincial centres.
Networks
Clusters encourage a supportive and collaborative network of talent. This goes beyond planners preparing affordable workspace policies. It means fostering an environment in which business can thrive, with tax breaks and access to global markets.
Infrastructure
Transport for London provides an exemplary service, but with much of the affordable workspace in Outer London boroughs, how might these areas be better linked to capture their full potential?
Workspace
Multi-functional and mixed-use space allows a range of occupants to be accommodated in the same building, with the internal fit-out of offices responding to the changing requirements of their tenants. Innovating in this area could ensure we are more resource efficient and responsive to the changing market.
Investment
Following Brexit, much of the funding that the Technology, Telecom and Media (TTM) sector receives from the European Union will stop. If we’re to keep on the right track, there’s a need for Government to step in and fill the gap.
Environment
Everything from housing to high streets has an impact on where we wish to live, work and play. If we’re going to compete with India, China and Japan, we will need to keep the lifestyle opportunities that go with the sector’s working habits.
Technology has always played an important role in the success of cities. The challenge is to create an environment in which this can change and adapt sustainably, without being forced elsewhere. London holds both opportunities and challenges; as we face an increasingly uncertain future, our response becomes even more important. Keeping our seat at the toptable demands a renewed focus on our SME and tech sector, alongside the city that supports it.
Zoe Green is a chartered urban planning and development specialist FIND OUT MORE pwc.com/ee/et/publications/pub/ innovation-for-the-earth.pdf
33
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 33
15/12/2017 12:53:33
Opinion
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
What kind of London do Londoners want? It’s time to start planning with communities, not for them, says the London Forum’s Michael Bach London, particularly Inner London, is changing fast and there is a huge amount of development in the pipeline, including more than 450 tall buildings. This will be a major challenge and, from a community perspective, could leave a large unwanted legacy. The London Forum recognises that there will be considerable growth; the real issue is how well and how sensitively we deal with these pressures. The golden thread running through the Mayor’s A City for all Londoners document, published at the end of 2016, is the desire to create a city that ordinary Londoners are comfortable with, where they can benefit from the changes. The Mayor is concerned that current residents should not be overwhelmed by the scale of the change at local level, and that new developments should be desirable places to be. Accommodating this growth will change our experience of the city. We want to avoid the mistakes of the past, especially of the past decade. Density can be increased without sacrificing the feel of these places. We need a creative approach to densification, with more affordable housing and improved access to local social infrastructure. Communities need a wide range of accessible local services, such as local shops, schools, GP surgeries, parks and places and space where people come together. We must start building and supporting accessible, walkable, sustainable and resilient neighbourhoods. The London Forum welcomes, for example, the statement in A City for all Londoners that tall buildings will only be permitted if they can add value to the existing
community, and that they must make a positive contribution to streetscape and the skyline, as well as their local impact at street level. But sustainable communities need to be created from the bottom up; the London Plan needs to embrace neighbourhoods as the fundamental building block on which to build. It also needs to encourage active participation of the communities themselves in shaping their own future. The new London Plan will need to go beyond the current plan’s 'lifetime neighbourhoods' – it is not just about a better mix of adaptable, lifetime housing, but an approach that embraces all the ingredients needed to support and maintain accessible, walkable, resilient neighbourhoods. Post-Grenfell the culture of planning, whether estate regeneration or maintaining or recreating sustainable neighbourhoods, will need to be a bottom-up process; less planning for but planning with communities. If London boroughs don’t do it, communities will need to take back control. The role of government, through the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF); and the Mayor, through the London Plan, is to raise the consciousness of London boroughs about planning sustainable neighbourhoods. The boroughs’ role in turn is to empower their communities. We are entering a new era of community engagement for reviving our neighbourhoods, but who has yet grasped the challenge? Michael Bach is a trustee of the London Forum of Amenity and Civic Societies londonforum.org.uk 34
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 34
15/12/2017 12:53:34
Opinion
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
Yes in my back yard: the case for infill John Myers, co-founder of London YIMBY, argues that giving individual streets more say in local densification plans could make room for not only more housing, but more ambitious design and better streets Supurbia - Credit: HTA Design LLP
Infill is the easiest way for politicians to win votes and, with the support of existing residents, get millions more homes built, making best use of existing infrastructure and resulting in places that are walkable and attractive. But unlocking the needed scale and quality of infill requires improving the current system. Among the ideas put forward in London YIMBY's recent report, Yes In My Back Yard: How to End the Housing Crisis, Boost the Economy and Win More Votes, the
one that could prove most politically feasible and effective in getting homes built is to allow more infill to improve existing streets. Called ‘Better Streets’, this initiative could, over time, allow five million more homes in London alone, while making the city fairer, more liveable, more beautiful and more welcoming. As part of 'Better Streets', we propose amending the law to allow an individual street to vote itself new permitted rights to extend and/or replace existing buildings, and to select a design code for the new façades to ensure 35
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 35
15/12/2017 12:53:42
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
they are acceptable to residents. The vote would require a double two-thirds majority – of current residents, and also of residents who have been there for at least three years, to prevent gaming of the system. Existing houses could be extended and subdivided, or replaced with taller terraced housing split into maisonettes. Individual plots could be combined to build mansion blocks of flats. There would be strict protections governing loss of light to houses not on the street, a limit on how far the new building could extend down the back garden, and specific rules for houses on street corners, and basement extensions. Interviews conducted in research by London YIMBY suggest that allowing the street to vote on its own design code for façades is key in order to get people comfortable with the concept. Create Streets, a campaign to promote traditional streets, has shown how much people care about the appearance of new construction. Of course, no homeowner would have to use the new permissions. They could just sit on them, team up with a small builder, or sell
their home for a substantially increased value when the time is right for them. Over time, the new flats and terraced houses would create more homes for people to live in, making nearly everyone better off. Affordable housing requirements are much more effective when they are fixed clearly in advance and incorporated in any price paid for the land. Contributions from the owner carrying out works could also be required for other infrastructure as needed – perhaps with an improved version of the Community Infrastructure Levy and Planning Gain.
Well-designed density
Half of the homes in London are in buildings of only one or two storeys, the same ratio applies in many other UK cities. Georgian and Victorian developments were often built far more densely and attractively than are current suburbs. The streets and squares of Bloomsbury and Pimlico accommodate five times as many homes per acre as a typical suburban street, and yet are also highly walkable and attractive.
Rooftop extension - Credit: HTA Design LLP 36
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 36
15/12/2017 12:53:43
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
Simplicity and ambition
Part of their success was enforcing a design code across the estate to ensure that builders took enough care. We could achieve much more today by copying some of the best practices of our predecessors, while avoiding their mistakes. For example, many semi-detached plots in outer London were built within an easy walking or cycling distance of a tube station. The built square footage could be increased fivefold by replacing the current dwelling with a building line closer to the street, and extending up to the boundary lines at the side of the plot and a little further back into the garden, without encroaching on the light of the rear neighbours. This could even be done without loss of parking by including garage space into the design.The new buildings could be terraced houses and maisonettes, or mansion blocks spread over several plots. There is plenty of land if only we use it better; the key is to do so in a way that the neighbours are happy about. Otherwise, politics will continue to create the same blockages that we currently see. Giving a whole street the same permitted development rights can, in areas of high demand, increase the value of each house by a factor of two or three. London YIMBY's surveys and focus groups suggest that, coupled with a design code, allowing decisions by individual streets would make residents much more willing to support improvements. Though many people are happy with their current detached or semi-detached suburban houses, surveys undertaken by London YIMBY show they could often be even happier if given a way to improve their street with attractive, well-designed densification. Not every street will vote for it, of course, which is why a local consensus rather than imposed permitted development rights is so important.
We need to simplify the system to make planning permission a more straightforward process where projects have broad support. The Fitzroof project by HTA Design in 2010 added attractive mansard roof extensions on two terraces of Victorian houses on either side of the same street in Primrose Hill. Despite unanimity among the residents and widespread support from neighbours, it took two years and hundreds of pages of submissions to get permission. One individual involved described the experience as a ‘nightmare’. The Fitzroof project is part of HTA's wider proposals of 'Supurbia', using creative ways to add much more housing on existing suburban plots, using the existing planning system. It is an important project, if in some ways too cautious. Because they are not conditional on agreement from the neighbours, the current proposals are deliberately designed to be unobtrusive and minimise opposition. With the support of a whole street, architects could be much more ambitious, as the Georgians and Victorians were. Infill makes planning, architectural, urban design and economic sense. The challenge is to unlock more without a backlash. Bringing existing residents into the conversation, giving them greater power over their surroundings, and minimising unnecessary bureaucracy, can open up possibilities for ambitious designs that also create an attractive, more welcoming city.
FIND OUT MORE The London YIMBY campaign is one part of the rapidly-growing international YIMBY movement. Get in touch at londonyimby. org if you have ideas or constructive suggestions. HTA's Supurbia study can be downloaded here: www.hta.co.uk/projects/supurbia 37
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 37
15/12/2017 12:53:43
Opinion
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
A ‘scrambled egg’ city? Stop seeing London as a fried egg — with a single centre — and embrace the idea of a city of many centres, with wealth and growth spread evenly to its outer edges, says Sarah Yates London is a ‘city of villages’, one that emerged through centuries of organic growth to form an integrated capital city. Historic settlements and market towns were gradually absorbed into the expanding metropolis, firstly as the population boomed in the 19th century after the Industrial Revolution and as the result of the growth of infrastructure; initially roads, and then much later the rail and Tube networks. Political changes, especially the creation of the administrative body of Greater London in 1965, brought towns from Kingston to Romford within the remit of a much larger capital city. Despite this, London’s towns and villages have retained their distinctive characters, forming a richly diverse fabric that makes London a polycentric city in real terms. Today, we are seeing a gradual shift of people and businesses settling beyond the city centre, as outer London’s established and emerging towns, more affordable, and with
a wealth of existing amenities and muchimproved transport connections, become more attractive as places in which to live and work. The character of London is being reshaped in line with Cedric Price’s famous idea of the city as an egg, cooked in different ways. In Price’s model the ancient city was a boiled egg, encased in its protective medieval walls; the industrialised city was more like a fried egg, still with a distinctive centre but with more fluid boundaries as the suburbs grew; while the future city should be more akin to a scrambled egg, with a more even ‘texture’. London’s towns, from longestablished centres such as Croydon to newer ones emerging from large-scale regeneration such as Canada Water, Old Oak Common and Silvertown, can provide the key to accommodating the capital’s growth. A truly polycentric city is not just one with many different centres. It is one in which planning
The City as an egg - Credit: Cedric Price
38
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 38
15/12/2017 12:53:47
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
Central Parade Creative Hub - Credit: Gort Scott for LB Waltham Forest
policies and development aim to distribute economic growth more evenly across a city. It is a highly connected network of places working together, as opposed to a city with one single dominant centre. Around the world, the idea of the polycentric city has risen higher on planning agendas as policymakers grapple with the question of how to manage growth sustainably and equitably for a predominantly urbanised global population. Places beyond the centre with good public transport connections have the potential for cities to achieve better social and economic conditions by balancing the spread of homes and jobs through densification and intensification of urban and suburban areas. We are already seeing this in London as new infrastructure, especially the Overground rail links and, next year, the Elizabeth line/Crossrail, is transforming how people and businesses move around the city. The
number of passenger kilometres travelled on the London Overground, for example, increased by 258 per cent between its first year of operation in 2008/9 and 2015/16. Connectivity is also the key to unlocking growth in town centres, and the arrival of the Elizabeth line has been a vital driver for new development in towns with stations along the route, from Hayes to Abbey Wood. This well-connected network of urban centres puts people close to jobs, shops and everything else they need on a daily basis. Building high-quality, mixed-use dense development, with local services within walking and cycling distance, can help to build sustainable neighbourhoods for the long term. London’s towns have huge potential to provide the high-quality, mixed-use, dense development that supports a growing city, while ensuring each place retains its character and identity, and the capital as a whole remains liveable. Coordinated placemaking
39
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 39
15/12/2017 12:53:52
Southall Waterside - JTP for Berkeley West Thames
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
Sarah Yates is a writer and researcher, and author of the report London’s Towns: Shaping the Polycentric City FIND OUT MORE Text adapted from the insight study London’s Towns: Shaping the Polycentric City, published by New London Architecture (2017). (newlondonarchitecture.org) An exhibition and events programme runs at the NLA Galleries at the Building Centre, Store Street, WC1 until 11 January 2018.
40
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 40
15/12/2017 12:53:54
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
Kingston Ancient Market - Credit: Philipp Ebeling
strategies at neighbourhood level are now being put in place by boroughs from Waltham Forest to Lewisham, along with new ideas for repairing and repurposing existing buildings and designing new typologies to create multifunctional learning, working, living and making spaces in and around town centres. Responding to the need for flexibility and adaptability, these new mixed-use spaces close to transport hubs could support the innovation and entrepreneurship vital to the knowledge economies of 21st-century cities. At the same time they will respond to the desperate need for additional housing, especially through the provision of different types and tenures. At a time when the traditional role of town centres is under threat from structural changes in retail behaviour and commercial property use, we must optimise the use of these urban spaces through partnership working, especially stronger community participation, to ensure that London’s towns continue to thrive in the future.
41
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 41
15/12/2017 12:53:58
Case Study
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
ADDED VALUES Sometimes a seemingly small project comes along that is so successful that its reputation defies its size. Older Women’s Co-Housing (OWCH), the UK’s first senior co-housing community in High Barnet, is one of those schemes. Nineteen years in the making, the OWCH community for women over 50 finally moved into Pollard Thomas Edwards’ awardwinning New Ground building in late 2016. The scheme, on Union Street in Barnet, is made up of 25 homes built around a central garden with shared facilities including common room, guest suite and laundry.
OWCH are pioneers, as older women who have fulfilled their own housing needs for later life. Unlike the vast majority of senior housing schemes in the UK, where the older generation are so often seen to be in need of being provided for by relatives or the social care system, OWCH are defined by the fact that they have retained control, fighting for the type of home and shared life they wanted. What makes this scheme so unusual, in this country at least, is that OWCH is a group who came together long before they had a building to move into.
42
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 42
15/12/2017 12:53:59
Whole OWCH group at opening - Credit: Joe Okpako
Could co-housing be the answer for a happy old age? Lettie McKie meets the pioneering women of OWCH OWCH started in 1998 when project consultant Maria Brenton ran workshops for an audience of older women based on research she had done for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation into Dutch co-housing. Six women from this original group decided to pursue the idea of creating their own home together based on the Dutch model, meeting for years before a suitable site was secured. Out of this group Shirley Meredeen, now 86, is the only founding member who now lives at New Ground. Why did such an exemplary scheme take so long to come to fruition? Maria cites the lack of land available for housing and
the rigidity of the planning system as wider influencing factors, listing the many and varied problems that arose even after they acquired a suitable site. In addition, the local authority blocked the scheme for two years, arguing that there were alms houses and sheltered housing in the area already for elderly residents and fearing that the women might become an additional burden on the borough. Eventually the scheme was developed by Hanover Housing Association with capital grant funding for eight social-rental flats from the Tudor Trust, an organisation that champions self-determining communities of 43
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 43
15/12/2017 12:53:59
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
older people. The 17 other flats are 250 year leaseholds owned by their occupants.
based on mutual acceptance, respect, shared responsibility and cooperation. The scheme is exclusively for women over 50 and all residents are OWCH members, accepted by the existing group through a selection process. Crucial to the success of this set-up is the mix of ages; it is hoped that when vacancies become available, new members will come in at the lower end of the 50–80 years age range. Day-to-day responsibilities of the community, such as communal meal rotas and gardening, are managed by smaller groups, which report to the main self-management structure. Thus, everybody contributes by way of friendly neighbourliness: ‘Not looking after each other but looking out for each other,' as Maria puts it. The success of the building’s design is that it ensures privacy whilst enabling social interaction to happen naturally. Architect Patrick Devlin of Pollard Thomas Edwards says: ‘The group were heavily involved in the design process, remaining key influencers throughout in open dialogue with us as
Community life
Maria, not herself a resident, describes how transformational the move, which began in December 2016, has been: ‘Most of the OWCH residents lived alone for a long time before moving in. One had lived 46 years on her own on a council estate without knowing her neighbours or having access to an outside space. Now she is an equal partner involved in the daily life of the community with a ready-made set of a friends. She keeps on getting told off for being too happy about the place.' Co-housing goes further than cooperative home ownership in that it is a type of social architecture where groups form intentional communities coalescing around shared values that are clearly articulated. OWCH’s values are simple but integral to the life of the building. All members sign up to living in a community
OWCH Building - Credit: Maria Brenton
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 44
44
15/12/2017 12:54:02
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
architects. They pushed very strongly for the features they wanted. All flats have daylight from both sides and the building has long, generous corridors that encourage sociability.’ The result, as one resident put it: ‘The whole place feels like home.'
But, as the report shows, current options rarely fulfil these needs, often leading to social isolation. The choice for older people is usually between staying in a loved home that is increasingly unsuitable for their needs or finding their autonomy stripped away in safer, but potentially stultifying, sheltered accommodation. Contrary to Barnet Council's fears, the HAPPI report found that interdependent communities such as OWCH can actually relieve the strain on local authority social-care budgets. Co-housing is only one of many possible solutions to a happier old age but it could make a much larger contribution to senior housing in London if only it weren’t so difficult to achieve in the UK. The community-led housing movement is growing in influence in this country with £60m of government funding made available in December 2016 to generate new co-housing and other co-operative schemes nationally. OWCH are keen for others to benefit from their experience, consulting on the GLA’s new Homes for Londoners Community Housing Hub. Funded with £450k from the authority and several London boroughs, the hub will provide co-housing groups, community land trusts and cooperatives with the expert advice they need to follow OWCH’s example. This is a welcome step, making it easier for people to succeed in their ambitions for establishing self-built communities, whatever their age.
'Thus, everybody contributes by way of friendly neighbourliness: Not looking after each other but looking out for each other' In the UK, where housing for older people has a poor reputation, stories like that of OWCH seem like tiny pin pricks of light on a dark horizon. Patrick says: ‘It was people planning to move into their last home and celebrating this. OWCH will inspire other people to take control of what they are doing, becoming inter-dependent; it’s a template for what we want to offer older people.' Although London has a long history of more traditional care communities such as the Chelsea Pensioners, OWCH is clear that co-housing is not for everyone. The social commitment does not suit all temperaments, and there is an added financial risk of buying a property that is tied in to a co-housing model where there are restrictions on who you can sell to.
Moving forward
The 2009 HAPPI Report (Housing our Ageing Population: Panel for Innovation) found that: ‘The younger old represent a massive growing and unsatisfied market. New interest should be focussed on attractive, spacious and manageable housing for people approaching retirement.' These ‘younger old’, the baby boomer generation, want to remain active and in control of their own choices for as long as possible.
Lettie Mckie is Head of Learning at New London Architecture and the City Centre FIND OUT MORE HAPPI report https://www.gov.uk/government/ publications/housing-our-ageingpopulation-panel-for-innovation Contact OWCH at owch.org.uk 45
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 45
15/12/2017 12:54:04
Case Study
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
Learning from Camden A group of exemplary social housing projects offers lessons for London’s housing of the future, says Mark Swenarton, author of a new book on the Camden housing of the 1960s and 70s
46
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 46
15/12/2017 12:54:06
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
Main plaza leading into Rowley Way at Neave Brown's Alexandra Road - Photo Credit: Tim Crocker
47
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 47
15/12/2017 12:54:08
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
In the wake of the Grenfell tragedy, it seems that the government is finally accepting that the market does not hold the solution to all our housing problems. Even if the rhetoric ran way ahead of the money on offer, Theresa May’s speech to the Tory party conference was a turning point, surely the first time in 40 years that a Tory prime minister has made positive noises about council housing. Almost simultaneously the RIBA awarded the Royal Gold Medal to Neave Brown – an architect whose reputation derives almost entirely from social housing, particularly the schemes he built for Camden in the 1960s and 70s. Born in the United States but educated at the Architectural Association (AA) in London, Neave Brown was one of the high-flying designers brought in by Sydney Cook following his appointment as borough architect of Camden in 1965. Cook came from a solidly municipal background but his idea was to go for the brightest architectural talent available in London at the time. Brown served as the magnet, attracting among others Peter Tábori, a young protegé of Richard Rogers, and Gordon Benson and Alan Forsyth, freshly graduated from the AA. What are the main lessons offered by the Camden schemes? The first is that this was housing based on streets. Against the modernist concept of buildings as objects set in empty space – the legacy of the ‘death of the street’ proclaimed by Le Corbusier in 1929 – the Camden projects were based on terraced housing. At this time high-rise was still the orthodoxy promoted by Whitehall and so local authorities across the country were putting families into tower blocks, as indeed some – like Kensington & Chelsea, with the Grenfell tower – continued to do for years to come. Against this Brown and his colleagues showed how housing of the densities required could be built without going high. As in traditional London urbanism (Bloomsbury or Pimlico), blocks of houses faced each other, feeding into the network of streets comprising the city and incorporating at key points squares or other significant public spaces – the main plaza at Alexandra Road or Peter Tábori’s ‘play squares’ at Highgate New Town, for example. Continuity and connectedness, with both physical context and cultural expectations, was the hallmark. Londoners were accustomed to living in terraced housing, with front doors that opened directly onto the street, and this is what the Camden architects provided. Second, the home was conceived as comprising not just as the space within but also the space without. Every dwelling was provided with its own private external space, open to the sky (rather than covered by the soffit of the balcony of the next flat above, as in a high-rise tower or slab). At Neave Brown’s Fleet Road – the first project to set out the new model, – the duplex units had both a balcony (opening off the living room) and a garden (opening off the bedrooms below). At Benson & Forsyth’s
48
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 48
15/12/2017 12:54:09
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
Street-based housing at Highgate New Town by Peter Tรกbori and Kenneth Adie - Photo Credit: Tim Crocker
49
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 49
15/12/2017 12:54:14
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
Benson & Forsyth's Branch Hill, interior of four bedroom house: view from living room towards kitchen/diner, with parents' bedroom visible above (children's bedrooms are on the floor below the living room) Photo Credit: Tim Crocker
50
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 50
15/12/2017 12:54:17
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
Branch Hill, they had a roof terrace extending over the full footprint of the dwelling in front – an idea that we find again in Brown’s last masterwork, built not in the UK but in the Netherlands, the Medina in Eindhoven (completed in 2002). And at Fleet Road, as well as individual external space, each dwelling also had access to a communal garden: not the undifferentiated external space open to all and sundry of the modernist high-rise estate, but a space accessed only by those dwellings that overlooked it – a re-creation of the format (communal, but not public) of the traditional London square, giving children a safe and protected place in which to play. Third, the planning of these projects was based on a precise understanding and calibration of different categories of users and of the types of space that they each required. Inspired by the anatomy of public and private space provided by Serge Chermayeff and Christopher Alexander in their book Community and Privacy (1963), Brown and the other Camden architects analysed and classified space, both internal and external, in terms of different groups of users and of the relationships between them: between adults and children, both within the household and in the external realm; between one household and another; between groups of residents; and between residents and outsiders. Internal spatial divisions were organised to provide children with a zone where they could play (eg adjacent bedrooms opening into each other, and into the garden beyond) while allowing some seclusion for adults, making a setting that matched the daily realities of family life. In this way, the Camden architects sought to provide a proper home in which family life could flourish – a home in which anyone, not just a ‘council house tenant’, would want to live. This surely must be the measure of whatever in future we build.
Mark Swenarton is the author of Cook’s Camden: the Making of Modern Housing (£45, Lund Humphries). An earlier version of this article appeared in BD Online
51
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 51
15/12/2017 12:54:18
Regulars
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
A London notebook By Geoff Tuffs
Bell Street I first walked along Bell Street nearly 38 years ago and I have returned there many times since. It was a prosaic street but not without character; it still is but the character has gone now. Bell Street had a Saturday market, which offered old clothes, books and junk; it had a barbers called Woodward where you could have a cheap haircut and buy a knitted tea cosy for £1 from a selection in the shop window. Bell Street and those streets close by were populated by what I call Marylebone cockneys. Today the area is far more diverse and the cockney element has diminished. I have made many entries about this matter-of-fact street, which was representative of an older London, and the following small selection will, I hope, provide something of its flavour. December 1979 In Bell Street, close to the Edgware Road end, is a remarkably old-fashioned clothes shop called Setton, whose window displays a selection of items seemingly from another social time: long johns, bed socks, workmen’s braces, sea boot socks… A Sunday afternoon, June 1982 This NW1 area of Marylebone seems like a forgotten quarter (I’m in Bell Street) with its redundant church and poor shops. Suddenly, a young teenage girl runs up to me with a tear-stained face and asks me to undo her watch bracelet as it is hurting her wrist. I do so; she thanks me and runs off. 8 November 1987 The grey-brick Peabody Trust, Bowmans Buildings, in Bell Street are grim and institutional but they no doubt replaced slums and represented a considerable improvement in housing. There’s a little iron gate from Bell Street that leads into a small yard full of pot plants, which is quite intimate and homely. The flats here rise to three or four storeys and each floor is served by iron-railed walkways of York stone – I can see the texture of the stone in the lamplight. In one of the ground floor flats I can see a white haired old lady watching, I imagine,
52
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 52
15/12/2017 12:54:20
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
TV in a tiny room crowded with ornaments and, what appear to be, silver cups and trophies. The warm light is, of course, electric but if it were gas it would scarcely enhance the intense Victorian quality of this interior scene. 21 July 1990 Remarkably hot, like Africa! The market is doing a reasonable trade. All the junk imaginable is found here: hideous glassware, teapots, old toys, battered fibre suitcases, broken pens, watches beyond repair, old rubber stamps, thimbles, buttons, tarnished spoons, pipes… People poke about in the hope of finding a rare object or more likely a simple bargain. 16 May 1998 Old clothes hanging on the brickwork in Bell Street this morning remind me of pictures of Rag Fair in Bangor Street, Notting Dale, before the war. The few junk stalls here today indicate that even in its diminished state the market seems tenacious. RJ Sutton’s antique shop is still open, entirely unchanged, and Mr Sutton hovers over a workbench in the back room engaged in some unseen activity, his form distinguished by a hunched back, a shiny black jacket of considerable age and long grey hair. My view of him could be likened to an illustration by ‘Phiz’. I ask him how long he has been in Bell Street and his reply nicely puts a flea in my ear: ‘I’m here to buy and sell things not to discuss family history.’ His shop and its meagre stock has about it a certain pathos. Linger awhile as assuredly it will die with its owner. 19 May 2007 And so to Bell Street where I find a sole trader, John, from whom I’ve bought an occasional book in the past, notably a Gissing and a biography of Alain-Fournier. Nothing else remains of the Saturday market and the paint marking the pitches is fading. John tells me Mr Sutton died a few years ago. His old shop is empty and forlorn, hemmed in by the Lisson Gallery and the Sanctuary (built on the site of the Salvation Army citadel), a small block of lifestyle apartments which are unoccupied. Perhaps Sutton’s shade has put the ghastly mockers on this modish intruder. Geoff has been writing his London notebook for 45 years; excerpts first appeared in the Journal of the London Society in 1998
53
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 53
15/12/2017 12:54:22
Reviews
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
Book Reviews
Outskirts: Living Life on the Edge of the Green Belt By John Grindrod (Sceptre, £16.99) Ostensibly about the Green Belt, Outskirts is in fact a moving reflection on British life. Part autobiography and part history, it demonstrates the author's mastery of storytelling through a personal and touching exploration of the relationships we all have to places; imagined and actual, nostalgic and immediate. ‘I live in the last road in London,’ John Grindrod would tell people when growing up. It wasn’t strictly true, but New Addington is encircled by the Green Belt, which started at the end of the family garden. Now amongst Croydon’s most deprived wards it is a mid-century settlement which, much like the Green Belt itself, embodies Britain’s postwar consensus. A long-format historical account of the Green Belt has been waiting to be written. It’s amazing, given the extent to which the concept has become embedded in the national consciousness, that this is apparently the first attempt. To some extent, such a book could still be written. Outskirts is no traditional history book. It comes close to anthropomorphising the Green Belt. Grindrod recalls his childhood experience in such a way that the two histories are woven together. Memories and facts for both family and Green Belt are placed side-by-side as if the latter was a relative that lived nearby and joined in on family trips. The book abounds with heart and soul. There is an inescapable immediacy to the honest recollections of his parents: ‘John the dyslexic, Marj with her love of words… the indestructible superwoman, held together with Disprin, tea and irony.’ There is empathy throughout: ‘To city dwellers the Green Belt is tightening around our throats. To country folk we are ignorant barbarians, intent on its destruction.’
Outskirts by John Grindrod By Jonathan Manns Big Capital: Who is London For? by Anna Minton By Darryl Chen Watling Street: Travels Through Britain and Its Ever-Present Past by John Higgs By Jessica Cargill Thompson London's Blue Plaques By Jessica Cargill Thompson The New Urban Crisis by Richard Florida By Peter Murray 100 Houses 100 Years By Jessica Cargill Thompson Unseen London Picture book choice
The London Society and John Sandoe Books We have partnered with the independent bookseller John Sandoe Books so that members can order books reviewed in the Journal and on the website, as well as a carefully chosen selection of other interesting titles about the capital. Books can be held at their King's Road shop for collection, or posted anywhere in the UK or abroad. The London Society will receive 10 per cent of the sale price of most of the books ordered through the shop. To browse the titles or to order, visit www.londonsociety.org.uk/bookshop 54
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 54
15/12/2017 12:54:22
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
This could make Outskirts the most popular contribution to Green Belt discussion in the past 50 years. The facts are there: the same facts as used in other reports, papers and articles. Yet, taking Amazon reader reviews as a litmus test, there are no indignant calls to arms, no accusations of vested interests or collusion. Of the 21 posts thus far, all offer four or five stars. In 1993 John Major spoke to the Conservative Group for Europe about another defining issue of our age. He conjured a vision of Britain as ‘the country of long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers’ in which ‘we trust our own integrity as a people quite enough to fear nothing in Europe’. Grindrod expresses no clear opinion, but Outskirts could be read as an everyman’s remaking of the same case. Outskirts blends recollection of days out with a tale that takes us from Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) to the present day, reminding us how the often emotive and irrational feelings that make us human are so instinctively imprinted upon otherwise straightforward and rational public policies. Grindrod reveals how a simple technical designation can become something so meaningful to so many people. If for no other reason, this makes it a must read.
Reviewed by Jonathan Manns Jonathan Manns is the author of The London Society’s White Paper No.1 'Green Sprawl: Our Current Affection for a Preservation Myth?' (2014), available to print and buy at www.londonsociety.org
55
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 55
15/12/2017 12:54:23
Reviews
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
Big Capital: Who is London For? By Anna Minton (Penguin, ÂŁ8.99) Anna Minton is angry. From government policy to foreign investment, from property professionals to shady landlords, from greedy developer to greedy local council, a spectrum of forces has created the crisis in which we now find ourselves, where housing has gone from being a human right to a financial product. Big Capital sets out the complexity of its shape and causes, however trades balanced argument for polemic in a litany against the ills of regeneration. Minton's ambition is to show the consequences of the workings of local and global capital on the lives of ordinary Londoners. This she does in the journalistic way that makes all of her writing pointed and accessible. This is also her weakness, relying on examples of only the worst regeneration projects, selected statistics, and hearttugging interviews with the dispossessed. Some of the reportage is insightful and genuinely eye-opening, but too often Minton makes knee-jerk generalisations where her research should be leading to more nuanced conclusions. A recurring theme of the book is that council estates are being bulldozed throughout the city to make way for luxury flats that none but the very wealthy can afford. On the way, social-housing tenants are being displaced around the country or forced into giving up their tenancies altogether. But for each of her egregious examples of exploitative regeneration there are other unpublicised cases of happily housed tenants on rebuilt estates. There is cause to rally against cruelly unfair practices in the worst of cases, but why throw the baby out with the bathwater? The redevelopment of Battersea Power Station is characterised as 'a high-class gated community, like every single one of the countless other new quarters planned for London'. Such generalisations aren't helpful. She paints as one of the most grotesque distortions of our crisis foreign investors who purchase properties only to leave them empty as a kind of safe-keeping deposit. Never mind that a GLA study this year concluded that this was an infrequent occurrence and therefore an insignificant issue.
A minor grievance is the characterisation of the 'evil other' played through the lens of race. The 'Chinese investor' (and also the Russian, and Middle Eastern) is now ingrained in the popular imagination as the faceless automaton of some personal selfenrichment project, a byword for all that is brutishly capitalistic about foreign investment. If the actual point is the emotional detachment of capital from homes where people live, then why use a lazy and offensive stereotype? There is some redemption in these pages – a very readable history of postwar housing policy. And Minton is at her best questioning our received understanding of terms such as 'mixed tenure', 'estate regeneration' and 'development viability' while exposing processes of property development that otherwise remain hidden from public scrutiny. The reader should also take away the sound rebuke that supply is not the sole solution to the crisis. Disclosure: I work for an architecture practice involved in the design of new housing estates. That doesn't make me a worse or better commentator – we are all participants in this crisis whether first-time buyer or landlord, regeneration consultant or planning officer, foreign student or council tenant. Minton's appeal to all is to be angry and get political, however by diagnosing the crisis by its extreme excesses, she preaches to those already pining for deep structural change, but falls short of a balanced description of a complex situation.
Reviewed by Darryl Chen Darryl Chen leads the urban design and research studio at Hawkins/Brown
56
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 56
15/12/2017 12:54:24
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
London's cultural Restoration; Dickens and his characters; druids; highwaymen; and even, at one point, James Bond. The claim that 'there is no road anywhere in the world that has produced so many stories' is a bold one, but there are nevertheless tales a plenty – in the case of the M6 toll road, literally, as we learn that below the tarmac are 2.5 million pulped Mills & Boons. Also along for the ride are the literary spirits of Iain Sinclair, WG Sebald and Alan Moore as the narrative turns off down psychogeographical slip roads to join a network of histories and mythologies. The least fulfilling part of the journey is in fact where we pass through central London and the route splits into pre- and post-Roman after Southwark, reconnecting at Marble Arch (the small section that is still actually called Watling Street can be found near Cannon Street). En route the pace slows with an unnecessarily long digression about a poet called John Crow and the Crossbones burial ground at Borough — a fascinating story, but one whose intricacies might be better served in a separate work. Yet there are also some deliciously gruesome descriptions of the hangings at Tyburn, made palatable only by the cushion of time. However situating London not at the centre of the road network, as does the clockwise numbering of A-roads radiating from the capital, but as a node on a continuum, allows a reconsideration of the city. We see it not as a place fixed in time and space, but inextricably linked down and up through history and out along its linear routes, connecting to far-flung people, places and events. The shadow of Brexit inevitably stretches out across the pages as the author searches for 'a new national story'. 'We are seeking a better sense of national identity,' writes Higgs, 'one which bubbles naturally out of the land.' Going on to argue, having weighed up the land's history: 'If someone is on this island, they are part of it.' It is an intentional irony that the journey begins at the very point that links this isle to its continent; and finishes in Wales, which so recently voted to uncouple it.
Watling Street By John Higgs (Weidenfeld & Nicolson £18.99) Subtitled 'travels through Britain and its ever-present past', Higgs's book follows one of the country's most ancient and longest roads (444 km from Dover to Anglesey) in an attempt to tap into the psyche of Albion. In London, Watling Street manifests itself as the Old Kent Road and Edgware Road, two unprepossessing thoroughfares that have nevertheless been fundamental to the story of the capital, carrying kings, pilgrims and drovers up from Kent, or accommodating filmmakers, codebreakers and landscape gardeners in Hertfordshire and beyond. In its guise as the A2 and the A5, the road carries commuters, goods and travellers in and out of the city, imprisoning them in its turgid metallic flow, unconcerned with the history beneath their wheels. It's a wilful downplaying of importance that the author describes as 'very British'. En route from coast to coast the reader travels the road in the company of its ghosts: the Romans determined to plough a straight line irrespective of the undulations of the landscape; Charles II returning from French exile to kickstart
Reviewed by Jessica Cargill Thompson
57
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 57
15/12/2017 12:54:25
Reviews
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
London's Blue Plaques: the lives and homes of London's most interesting inhabitants Edited by Howard Spencer (September Publishing, £16.99) round; the only blue plaque in the Square Mile is to Dr Johnson (the City, ever the administrative maverick, has its own system of marking noteworthy buildings). But the book itself acknowledges the inherent problems of such memorialisation, a debate that has been to the fore of late as the world questions the role of its colonial/confederate/ communist statues. It acknowledges, in genteelly diplomatic language, that since the scheme was initiated by the then Society of Arts (now the RSA), the reputation of certain commemorated individuals 'has not, it has turned out, entirely stood the test of time'. And the disproportion of white men to women (13 per cent) or ethnic minorities (5 per cent) currently noted with plaques speaks of past values and social and economic constraints that do not reflect those of the present-day English Heritage. As plaques can be nominated retrospectively for people who perhaps did not receive recognition in their own lifetime (the stipulation is that it should be 100 years after the recipient's birth) they also provide us with a physical manifestation of changing social priorities, a history that is malleable, an opportunity for a degree of rewriting to suit the values of today. One wonders who, or what, of contemporary London, might be celebrated in blueplaque form 100 years hence. Perhaps there might be more room for 'ordinary' (extraordinary) citizens akin to the incredibly moving GF Watts Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice in Postman's Park. Too heavy at 500+ pages to be easily portable, this endlessly dip-in-able work should nevertheless be afforded a place on the bookshelf beside other essential London reference books such as The London Encyclopaedia, the old Time Out guides, and Jones and Woodward’s A Guide to the Architecture of London.
The English Heritage blue plaque is as much a part of London, its past and its present, as the red pillar box or green cabbie shelter. Chancing upon them as one goes about one's everyday business gives pause for thought, imagining a very different Brixton/Stockwell with Van Gogh in residence, or eavesdropping on the whispers of Bohemian intellectual conversations of Woolf and Strachey as one wanders the streets and squares of Bloomsbury. Together the 900+ memorials to London's noteworthy residents – long-term or just passing through – who have made 'a positive contribution to human welfare and happiness' tell a story of a city of culture, creativity, invention, dissent and philanthropy, a metropolis that attracts and cultivates the sorts of people who make things happen. This book by English Heritage helpfully collects the plaques into one volume, organised by area (handy for the DIY walking tour) and with many more details of the individuals' lives than there's room for on a 495mm diameter disc. We learn stories of Émile Zola's exile in South London following the Dreyfus Affair (commemorated with a plaque in the unlikely suburban location of Upper Norwood), and of Charles Coward of Edmonton who smuggled prisoners out of Auschwitz. There are also plenty of facts to appeal to the pub-quiz mentality: the recipient of the first plaque was Lord Byron in 1867; the earliest surviving blue plaque is to Napoleon III on King Street in St James's; not all plaques are blue, or
Reviewed by Jessica Cargill Thompson 58
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 58
15/12/2017 12:54:25
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
The New Urban Crisis By Richard Florida (One World, £20)
values but put a ‘brake on the very clustering that drives innovation and economic growth,’ and are dubbed ‘New Urban Luddites’. Unlike the original Luddites, these are not exploited workers but some of the biggest winners of winner-takeall urbanism. The book recognises the issues of gentrification but suggests that chronic, concentrated urban poverty is a far greater problem. Much of Florida’s analysis, which focuses in large part on cities in the US and UK, will come as little surprise to observers of physical and economic planning in London. Neither will some of his solutions, such as ‘invest in the infrastructure for density and growth’, and ‘build more affordable housing’. He presses the idea of a land value tax (LVT), which would create incentives for property owners to put their land to most intensive use, capturing the uplift in value from development; last year the London Assembly proposed that the Mayor investigate the idea of an LVT to replace council tax, business rates and stamp duty. Florida also says that suburbs must become denser, greener, more mixed use and more connected to urban centres via public transport. Florida puts rather too much blame for the levels of rising inequality on city planning and economics. There are also national and international political drivers: Conservative housing policies, taxation regimes that favour the wealthy, global corporations that avoid taxation, the near disappearance of unions, and disruptive technologies. Perhaps Florida’s most important recommendation is to ‘empower cities and communities’. As the LSE’s Tony Travers has written in the London Finance Commission report, Government control ‘limits the ability of London’s government to tailor provision at the local level or to align funding and delivery to provide high-quality services and achieve greater cost efficiencies. Devolution to London would allow the city’s government to develop bespoke policy for its citizens and manage its budget efficiently across areas of policy.’ For London at least, greater devolution is the key to addressing the challenges of the new urban crisis.
I began reading The New Urban Crisis on the day that Duncan Bowie gave the introductory lecture to the London Society’s Saturday Morning Planning School. Duncan, a senior lecturer at the University of Westminster and former advisor to Ken Livingstone when Ken was Mayor, went through the key chronologies of recent London planning policy: the Green Belt in the 1930s to contain urban sprawl; controlling population concentration through density controls from the 1940s; the world city focus of the 1990s; compact city and densification from 2000. Bowie made no mention of Richard Florida’s ideas about the creative city, which had such an influence on mayors around the world during the noughties. Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class (2002) identified the growing importance of creativity in a wide range of jobs – not just in the arts but computer science and maths, architecture and engineering, social sciences, media, finance, healthcare and education – and how clustering them together in cities was becoming a key driver of economic growth. Fifteen years later, this new book acknowledges the downside of this concept. It sets out detailed research showing creative clustering as the engine not just of economies but of increasing inequality and exclusion in cities, of skyrocketing housing prices and the spread of gentrification. After his talk, Bowie told me that he took a certain delight at Florida’s mea culpa: 'I always thought the creative city was nonsense.' I’m not sure he’s right. There is no getting away from the fact that London has hugely benefitted economically from the clustering of financial services in the City of London, tech businesses in Shoreditch, and education and medical sectors in Bloomsbury and King’s Cross. So what’s going wrong? According to Florida it’s the rise of ‘winner-take-all urbanism’. The high cost of land and the intense competition for urban space, fuelled by overseas investment and absentee landlords has turned real estate into a new form of ‘global reserve currency’. Supercities dominate wider economies: London comprises a massive 30 per cent of the entire economic output of the UK. The situation is exacerbated by NIMBYs who not only fight to preserve their own housing
Reviewed by Peter Murray 59
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 59
15/12/2017 12:54:26
Reviews
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
100 Houses 100 Years By Twentieth Century Society (Batsford, ÂŁ25) The Twentieth Century Society's latest coffee-table book edited by Susannah Charlton and Elain Harwood is a romp through a cornucopia of housing styles and types, selecting one exemplary house for each of the past 100 years. It starts in 1914 with Raymond Unwin's Chestnut Grove family homes for the garden village of New Eastwick, York; and finishes in 2015 with artist Grayson Perry and architect Charles Holland's joyful 'House for Essex' out on the Stour estuary. There are a number of one-off, extremely covetable private houses, which will appeal to Grand Designs fans. These display such variety that it is almost impossible to discern any linear evolution; it is more like listening in on a conversation back and forth across the century. There's Sarah Wigglesworth and Jeremy Till's innovative Straw Bale House (2001) off London's Caledonian Road; Michael and Patty Hopkins's corrugated-steel home (1976) for their family in Hampstead; Patrick Gwynne's modernism-luxe The Homewood (1939) in Esher, Surrey; and Lutyens's Gledstone Hall (1925) in Yorkshire. Particularly inspiring, though, is the array of more democratic housing developments: a purpose-built village for Bata factory workers at East Tilbury (1933); Bill Dunster's exercise in sustainable community living BedZED in Hackbridge, Sutton (2002); Walter Segal self-builds in Lewisham (1980); Span housing in Kent (1969); Alison Brooks's lowbudget family homes in Harlow (2012), continuing the new town's tradition of carefully considered domestic provision; and Benson & Forsyth's Branch Hill Estate in Hampstead (1978), which takes inspiration from Neave Brown's Alexandra Road and is one of the country's last council-built estates. No doubt everyone will have a favourite house they feel has been overlooked, but equally everyone will discover in this eclectic list somewhere previously not on their architectural radar. Intentionally or not, 100 Houses leaves the reader with one burning question: how does so much dull housing get built when the form is shown here to be such a well of creative possibility?
Hopkins House - Credit: Elain Harwood
Straw Bale House Sarah Wigglesworth Credit: Paul Smoothy
Reviewed by Jessica Cargill Thompson 60
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 60
15/12/2017 12:54:36
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
Unseen London By Rachel Segal Hamilton is published by Hoxton Mini Press (£26) www.hoxtonminipress.com
You know what London looks like - or so you think. You’ve seen the bright lights of Piccadilly Circus, the dull grey skies above. You’ve seen Buckingham Palace and Big Ben, black cabs and red phone boxes. But the tourist vision isn’t the whole story. This illuminating new book brings together more than 20 contemporary photography projects that uncover the strange, beautiful and surprising sides of the capital.
The Heath - Credit: Andy Sewell
Sketch - Credit: David Vintiner 61
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 61
15/12/2017 12:54:57
London Society
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
Review of 2017
This year the London Society and its members have enjoyed the Society’s most extensive programme for some years; nearly 60 events attracting close to 2,500 attendees. One of our major themes for the year was London’s Great Estates, looking at their role in the capital and how their long-term stewardship has shaped the character of some of central London’s bestknown neighbourhoods. Engaging talks from Grosvenor, Cadogan, the City of London Corporation and Argent, the developer behind the remodelling of King’s Cross, were complemented by walking tours of the areas and privileged access to some distinctive buildings within the estates’ portfolios. In fact it was a bumper year for our ever-popular programme of guided walks, with visits to Brixton, Hampstead Garden Suburb, Bermondsey, Bloomsbury, Spitalfields, and Greenwich among the highlights. In addition there were exclusive members’ tours of Bush House and the Charterhouse. Architects Barr Gazetas showed us new ways of living and working at the Camden Interchange, and the director of the Design Museum, Deyan Sudjic, treated members to a personal after-hours tour of the museum’s new home in Kensington’s listed Commonwealth Institute building. Other themes included our ongoing ‘London Icons’ series where speakers examined objects and places that are quintessentially ‘London’. Jonathan Glancey celebrated the Routemaster bus, but Stephen Bayley firmly stuck the boot into the black cab. Architect Liam Hennessey demonstrated how the dispiriting six-lane highway that is Park Lane could be refreshed as a boulevard, Sarah Gaventa shared the planning and designs behind the ‘Illuminated River’ project and Andrew Ritchie,
62
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 62
15/12/2017 12:54:58
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
designer of the original Brompton folding bike, told the story of his creation and let us in on his plans for future development. We also debated the future of the capital with a lively panel discussion between those for and against development on the Green Belt a concept incidentally that owes its existence to the London Society. There was a presentation on what the ‘smart cities’ idea could contribute to everyday life in the capital, and Emily Gee of Historic England explained the history and future of London’s tall buildings. This year we also launched a completely new concept, one that we will definitely return to in 2018, in the shape of our Saturday Schools. Over five weeks in spring, expert lecturers took us on a journey through the history of London’s architecture, from the medieval to the 21st century city. This was followed in autumn with an introduction to planning, in which experts provided an overview of how and why UK cities, and London in particular, have grown in the way they have. It was encouraging that many of this year’s events sold out. As a result, for 2018 we will be extending our priority booking system for members so that you have more opportunity to get discounted tickets before they are made available to the general public.
Design Museum - Credit: Gareth Gardner
You can find reports of any past events you’ve missed on our blog. Next year’s programme is already filling up, so be sure to check londonsociety.org.uk/events to see just what is being planned.
63
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 63
15/12/2017 12:54:59
London Society
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
Events for 2018
Demonstrating the health and vigour of the Society, there’s an expanded programme to look forward to in 2018, with events that look at the past, present and future of life and work in the capital, and opportunities to debate just what we want our city to become. This year we aim to have a behindthe-scenes tour each month, as well as walks to explore the architecture and history of different areas of the capital. There’ll be talks and lectures from a range of speakers; panel discussions to debate more contentious issues; new classes in our architecture and planning Saturday Schools; as well as the summer party, the annual Banister Fletcher Lecture and a variety of other social events. The major themes that will be explored include the 1930s, with a series of talks curated by Alan Powers of the Twentieth Century Society on the architecture and plans of the period, plus visits to some of the classic surviving buildings of that decade. We’ll also look at 'London: the market' with a programme put together by Eric Reynolds of the Urban Space Management and featuring tours of those Victorian temples to commerce of Old Billingsgate and Leadenhall, a look at how old markets such as Camden, Spitalfields and Borough have reinvented themselves, and how markets can play an important part in the regeneration of an area. We’ll also examine London’s role and history as a world market, and consider how Brexit will affect the capital’s position as a trading centre. We’ll continue our Great Estates and London Icons themes into 2018, with a
64
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 64
15/12/2017 12:54:59
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
speaker from the Portman Estate describing the development of Marylebone, and Matt Brown, Editor at Large of the Londonist website, selecting his favourite London objects, buildings, people and places. We’ll be looking to the future in our Planning for 10 Million series, curated by Colin Wilson, Strategic Planning Manager of the GLA, currently on secondment to Southwark Council. The population of the capital is at its highest ever, and is projected to continue growing over the forthcoming decade. How will we cope, in housing, in transport, in commerce? The London Society is putting together an impressive lineup of speakers to share their thoughts, including debates on the transport infrastructure needed, and on whether we actually want this growth; are there ways in which London can be ‘contained’? It’s a full and varied programme with, we hope, something to interest, challenge and amuse everyone who loves London. Make sure you’re receiving our regular newsletter to see which events are open for booking, or visit londonsociety.org.uk/events During 2017 many events sold out, so remember that as a member of the London Society you not only benefit from discounted tickets, you also get priority booking, meaning that you can reserve your space before nonmembers.
65
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 65
15/12/2017 12:54:59
London Society
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
Join the London Society If you want to understand the debate on the capital’s future, while discovering more about its past and present, become a member of the London Society. Your subscription not only helps us organise our growing programme of talks and events, it also supports the Society’s work in engaging London politicians through our All Party Parliamentary Group. At our regular events you can meet like-minded Londoners, and have the opportunity to question the experts at our debates and panel discussions. The London Society is a place where architects, planners, developers, policy makers and other built environment professionals can hear the voices of Londoners who are passionate about making their city a better place in which to live and to work. Members benefit from priority booking and discounted rates for our walks, talks, debates and lectures. You will see inside important buildings (some not generally open to the public) on our tours, there are social events held in some of London’s most interesting locations, and you receive the London Society Journal. Our motto antiqua tegenda, pulchra petenda, futura rolenda translates as 'protect the best of the past, strive for quality today, plan properly for the future' – a mission that the Society has promoted through its publications, events and lobbying since 1912. Individual membership costs just £30 for a full 12 months, with special discounted rates for students and families. Full details at londonsociety.org.uk/join
66
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 66
15/12/2017 12:55:00
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
Our thanks to our Corporate Supporters:
If your company cares about the future of London it should consider becoming a corporate supporter of the Society. It allows your organisation, and individuals within it, to be engaged with making the capital a better place in which to live and to work. As the Society is a registered charity, donations are tax-deductible. Your donation helps the work of the Society by providing much-needed funds for our administration and membership recruitment. In return Supporters receive: T JE ID aK: ;G:: I>8@:IH ;DG 6AA I6A@H A:8IJG:H 9:76I:H 6C9 DJG .JBB:G +6GIN T 6C JCA>B>I:9 CJB7:G D; B:B7:GH G6I: I>8@:IH ;DG 6AA L6A@H IDJGH 6C9 DI=:G :K:CIH T aK: 8DE>:H D; :68= >HHJ: D; I=: 'DC9DC .D8>:IN %DJGC6A 6C9 D; :68= C:L .D8>:IN 2=>I: +6E:G T NDJG 8DBE6CN AD<D DC I=: .D8>:IN L:7H>I: 6C9 L>I=>C I=: %DJGC6A 6C9 DI=:G EJ7A>86I>DCH T >CK>I6I>DCH ID 6II:C9 B::I>C<H D; I=: AA +6GIN +6GA>6B:CI6GN "GDJE DC 'DC9DC H +A6CC>C< 6C9 Built Environment (usually held at Westminster) T 6 9><>I6A 8DEN D; +A6CC>C< >C 'DC9DC I=: FJ6GI:GAN B6<6O>C: EGD9J8:9 7N I=: 'DC9DC +A6CC>C< Forum T I=: DEEDGIJC>IN ID DG<6C>H: :K:CIH HJ8= 6H 7J>A9>C< IDJGH ;DG .D8>:IN B:B7:GH DG ID HEDCHDG drinks at the Society’s other events The minimum donation to become a Corporate Supporter is £1,000. If your organisation would like to help our work and our programme by becoming a Corporate Supporter, email director@londonsociety.org.uk for more information.
67
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 67
15/12/2017 12:55:01
London Society
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
2017 Banister Fletcher Lecture – the future of the Royal Parks This year’s Annual Banister Fletcher lecture was given by Loyd Grossman CBE. Grossman has made a considerable contribution to civil society and is perhaps best known as the ex-host of TV shows such as ‘Through the Keyhole’ and ‘Masterchef ’ and for his own range of cooking sauces. Beyond this, Grossman has had a lifelong interest in history, the arts and heritage, where he has served on the boards of a number of notable cultural institutions, including English Heritage, the Museums and Galleries Commission and the Public Monuments and Sculpture Association. The evening event provided the opportunity to gain an insight into Grossman’s role as the first chairman of The Royal Parks charity. The lecture took place at the St Marylebone Parish Church, which is just a stone’s throw away from Regent’s Park, one of the eight Royal Parks. The following provides a summary account of Grossman’s thoughts and reflections from the evening.
City’ noted that the Royal Parks are welcoming places, providing tranquillity, sporting opportunities and what we now call wellbeing. The Royal Parks do not encapsulate the ‘classical beauty’ of parks and gardens in France. However, as someone who grew up in Boston, Grossman reflects that the Emerald Necklace (a 450 ha chain of parks linked by parkways and waterways in Boston and Brookline) was certainly inspired by Frederick Law Olmsted’s visits to London’s Royal Parks.
The challenges
The Royal Parks is a charity launched in July 2017 to support and manage 5,000 acres of Royal parkland across London. The parks are owned by the Crown with their responsibility resting with the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. The Royal Parks charity manages the parks on behalf of the government and responsibilities include i) building up a reserve of funds and planning future investment; ii) maintaining a voice independent from government; and iii) developing a closer relationship with the public. Managing the Royal Parks' immense and diverse portfolio is a daunting task. The Royal Parks are responsible for 600 buildings and structures (including 195 listed buildings), approximately 170,000 trees and 68 miles of paths, cycle routes and horse-rides. Richmond Park, the largest of London’s Royal Parks, is defined by wide open spaces, grasslands and deer herds, whilst Greenwich Park, part of the UNESCO Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site, is a mix of green space, gardens and historical features. A lesser known fact is that the garden of 10 Downing Street is looked after by The Royal Parks. Grossman commented that ‘I can say that I mow the prime minister’s lawn.’
The value of the Royal Parks
Every single person in the room has been to the Royal Parks – once a year, once a month or some of you may use them almost everyday. With around 7.7 million visits a year, the Royal Parks are very different from other cultural assets and institutions. The Royal Parks are essential to our wellbeing and should be considered ‘one of London’s single greatest assets’ Although the Royal Parks were founded on the royal love of hunting, this has evolved to provide the public with unparalleled opportunities for relaxation, exercise, entertainment and education. Steen Eiler Rasmussen the author of ‘London: The Unique 68
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 68
15/12/2017 12:55:01
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
The Royal Parks’ charitable objectives are to protect, conserve, maintain and care for the Royal Parks, promote their use for public recreation, health and well-being; to maintain and develop biodiversity; to support the advancement of education and to promote national heritage. However there a number of challenges and risks facing the Royal Parks:
to make sure people are happy, safe and secure in the parks.
Future plans
Upcoming projects include the rejuvenation of Greenwich Park, which is the oldest of the Royal Parks and serves a number of different constituencies, some which are subject to social deprivation. Over the last 20 years this park has received little investment and some of the infrastructure has started to deteriorate. The Royal Parks charity will restore the steps leading up to the Royal Observatory and the famous viewpoint. The annual cost of managing the parks is £36.6m; about 65% is self-generated through events, sponsorship, donations, catering, grants, lottery funding, licenses, rental income from lodges, filming and photography. Grossman notes that ‘The work done to maintain the park is not done by elves’. The Royal Parks have over 500 staff who are responsible for growing 90% of the plants in the parks (which provides value for money) and for maintaining the high quality standards of the parks. The Royal Parks charity wants to encourage more philanthropic support for the Royal Parks from the public. The charity can not increase the number of money making events such as Hyde Park’s Winter Wonderland, as it is important that the parks remain a place for all users. The Royal Parks will always be free to access and The Royal Parks charity will continue to raise funds to protect and improve these spaces. Ultimately, Grossman concludes that he wants to ‘make sure that 20 years from now they will remain the best urban parks in the world.’
- Government support for arts and culture is in decline, due to competing demands. - London’s rising population is contributing to increased pressure on the infrastructure of the Royal Parks. For example soil compaction is an issue, where people trample over the roots of trees; as a consequence trees need to be ring-fenced for protection. - The parks’ value is their openness. However, developers are constantly chipping away at the Royal Park estate. The Royal Parks have stood firm on their position that they will not allow any loss of open or green space from new development. - There is also constant pressure for new monuments and memorials eg the new Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park. There are numerous proposals and if they were all approved it would create parks filled with monuments and memorials, leaving little room for anything else. - Biosecurity is a constant threat, most recently with the toxic caterpillars of the oak processionary moth. It costs thousands of pounds a year to control this constant threat of these caterpillars, whose poison can be a significant threat to the health of humans and dogs. Trees are also prone to diseases from new parasites, which can come from overseas through the importing of cheap furniture. - Conflict of use can be tricky to manage. For example Richmond Park is a popular place for cyclists, but is also a place that is used by pedestrians and motorists. One of the biggest challenges is to balance competing interests, which can often lead to endless consultations
Loyd Grossman Banister Fletcher lecture report by Zoe Green 69
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 69
15/12/2017 12:55:02
London Society
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
APPG update The All Party Parliamentary Group for London’s Planning and Built Environment was established by the London Society in 2015. The Society now provides the Secretariat in partnership with Local Dialogue and New London Architecture. Recent meetings have focussed on housing, both with regard to the tragic fire at Grenfell Tower and the Mayor’s emerging provision strategy in his draft London Plan.
Grenfell Tower: The Implications for London’s Housing.
are presently too ‘layered’ and emphasised the need for a fundamental review. He highlighted the extent to which local authorities lack the power to manage their blocks appropriately, such as where an ‘intermediate landlord’ undertakes works without LPA agreement. This may include, for example, the installation of less fire-resistant doors than required. Adrian Dobson, Executive Director of Members at the Royal Institute of British Architects emphasised that the inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire must concentrate not just on the cause of the fire, but also the wider systemic and regulatory context. Making the point, he noted that in the 1970s more than half of practising architects were employed in the public sector whereas today that is down to just 6%. Sarah Davies, Head of Project Management at developer Pocket Living, made clear that building regulations treat new build, change of use and refurbishment in residential property differently. The first two are expected to comply with modern regulations whilst the last is only required to ensure that the situation is no worse than existing. Different expectations result in different approaches and outcomes. Views expressed in discussion were that building control regulations have not kept pace with design and construction; there is a lack of accountability in projects governed by splintered procurement procedures; old housing is often poorly adapted to modern uses; there are limitations on council powers to inspect buildings; competitive building inspectors undercut councils and there has been a leaching of design expertise from Local Authorities.
The APPG met at Portcullis House on 13 July to re-establish itself following the General Election and to hear a panel of experts discuss the implications of the fire at Grenfell Tower for London’s housing stock. All Officers were re-elected to serve on the APPG and Bambos Charalambous, Labour MP for Enfield Southgate, was elected to sit alongside Paul Scully, Conservative MP for Sutton and Cheam, as joint Vice-Chair. Sam Webb, Principal at Sam Webb Chartered Architect, spoke first. He contrasted the fire with that at Lakanal House in Camberwell in 2009. After acting as Expert Witness to the Lakanal House inquiry, Webb sent representations to the Home Office for changes to be made to blocks of flats across the country. He maintained that the then Communities secretary Eric Pickles was made aware of this by the coroner but was told that ‘sorting it out would make far too many people homeless’. Sue Foster, Strategic Director of Neighbourhoods and Growth at Lambeth Council, provided a local authority viewpoint. She considered that it was unlikely there would be a single point of failure. Her view was that tenant management issues need ‘revisiting’ and that Government should better equip Local Authorities, particularly in terms of finance and resource, if they expect quick action. Pat Hayes, Managing Director of Be First, made the case that building regulations 70
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 70
15/12/2017 12:55:02
I S S U E N O. 4 7 2
Questions from the floor â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a representative of the Grenfell tower residents
Rupa Huq MP chairs the debate
All images - Credit: Agnese Sanvito
71
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 71
15/12/2017 12:55:02
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017
Affordable Housing: Key Issues for the next London Plan
Julia Park, Head of Housing Research at architects Levitt Bernstein, then emphasised the need to maintain focus on housing quality. ‘I don’t think good quality housing costs much more than poor quality housing’, she said, ‘the trouble is, that’s the bit that gives’. She was eager to underscore the idea that reducing quality is no way to increase supply. Heather Cheesbrough, Director of Planning and Strategic Transport at LB Croydon, wished to stress the potential of London’s small sites to help meet housing need. Her view was that the key was a good plan, with good interpretation of policy, securing good design and place-making. We must do more, she urged, to help the public understand that ‘the planning system is there to facilitate development and not to stop it’. Helen Hayes, Labour MP for Dulwich and West Norwood, herself a qualified urban planner, made clear her view that ‘the definition of affordability has become completely broken’. “Affordable’ has become a toxic term’ and ‘is one of the biggest contributors to a loss of trust around housing’ she said. Government definitions, she asserted, have no bearing on what people can actually afford and people won’t support development that’s perceived as ‘for someone else’. Andy Slaughter, Labour MP for Hammersmith, former Shadow Housing Minister, lamented the current situation. ‘Housing Associations have lost their way. They want to be developers but no longer seem obligated to meeting the need of those in need of housing. Some Councils have gone the same way’. He suggested that Principles for Social Housing Reform (2009) by Stephen Greenhalgh and John Moss had made the recommendations which became Conservative policy and that have undermined affordable housing. Accordingly, he argued for the need to put an end to what he saw as a ‘regression, almost a war’ on affordable housing from the current Government. Solving this, he stressed, required effective ‘dealmakers’, particularly in the public-sector, to draw in investment from developers.
The APPG met at Portcullis House on 30 October and received a presentation from James Murray, Deputy Mayor for Housing, followed by responses from housing industry professionals. Introducing the event, Rupa Huq MP stressed that the Blairite mantra of “Education, Education, Education” had been replaced with “Housing, Housing, Housing” and welcomed a new member to the group, Siobhain McDonagh, Labour MP for Mitcham & Morden. James Murray said that there had been ‘remarkably few’ opportunities to speed-up the drafting of a new London Plan, but that this should be launched on 29 November. The story of London over the last two decades was one ‘of jobs and economic success, but housing failure’, he said. London needs some 66,000 homes a year, according to new GLA figures, with 2/3 of them having to be affordable; 80% of homes built are affordable to only 8% of Londoners. Murray was clear that land supply was key and that ‘the problem now has been many years in the making and is frankly a bit of a mess’. He signalled that City Hall will be doing more to assemble land, get it into the system and boost supply. ‘Government really needs to support a different approach to building homes if we are to make that leap in delivery’, he indicated pointedly, suggesting the need for the publicsector to once more become active in housing delivery. David Montague CBE, Group Chief Executive at housing association L&Q made clear that major intervention was needed by central government ‘at a different scale’. As a developer, delivering his aspirations to build more homes required a pipeline of clean, serviced, permitted land. Achieving this will nonetheless ‘take collaboration and courage’.
72
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 72
15/12/2017 12:55:02
James Murray – Deputy Mayor for Housing, GLA
Andy Slaughter MP
Views expressed in discussion were that the industry must embrace off-site construction; that the market will not provide affordable housing without subsidy; that smaller apartments are not a suitable solution except where well-detailed and managed; that staff turnover in local authorities results in a loss of institutional knowledge; that the skills shortage must be addressed and that ‘Brexit’ presents significant risks.
Helen Hayes MP APPG for London’s Planning and Built Environment - Credit: Agnese Sanvito
Report: Jonathan Manns 73
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 73
15/12/2017 12:55:03
LS Layout issue 472 AW 2017 final.indd 74
15/12/2017 12:55:03
9 770954 668007
AU T U M N / W I N T E R 2 0 1 7
No.472
AU T U M N / W I N T E R 2 0 1 7
No.472
LSJ cover flat 472 print.indd 1
15/12/2017 10:22:10
We hope you enjoyed this digital preview of the Journal of the London Society. You can get the printed edition from our website: www.londonsociety.org.uk Or get a copy free when you join the Society www.londonsociety.org.uk/join-today