AoU Here & Now - Spring 2024 - Housing: The Alternatives
Welcome from the Chair
Introduction from the Editors The Academy in Action
Book review: Manchester Unspun
Nick Falk shares his thoughts on Andy Spinoza’s exploration of ‘pop, property, and power in the original modern city’
MyPlace & ArtPlace
Contributors share their reflections on housing and belonging
Co-housing Explained: In conversation with Charles Durrett
Andrew Bailie interviews
Charles Durrett to understand more about co-housing, its origins and the importance of sharing.
Cities and communities: Deploying co-living to help strengthen community ties
Progressive developer Damien Sharkey turns his attention to high quality co-living communities.
Co-housing, co-living, and the search for neighbourly housing at scale
Murphy
Considerate Urbanism
Liane Hartley advocates for an experiential and emotional approach to the city.
Past, Present Tense, Future Gary Duncan interrogates the direction of planning reform.
Meeting
our
Future Housing Needs
Janet Sutherland calls for a more inclusive conceptualisation of housing and homes to address our ageing population
Span Developments: A legacy of sociable housing
Maisie Zheng and Leyla Moy trace the history and legacy of Span Developments
The Siren Song of the Tiny House
Leyla Moy examines the rise of the tiny house, from subversive origins to commercial peak.
Urban Philosophy: Commodities
Resident philosopher Andreas Markides suggests the solution to the poor state of British housing may lie in our collective values.
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The Academy of Urbanism
The Academy of Urbanism has come a long way! A line of distinguished chairs have helped establish the Academy as a significant force for Urbanism. We now number more than 1,500 members and we have friends in over 30 European cities that the Academy has visited.
It is therefore with humility as well as a sense of great responsibility that I have now assumed the role of chair. One might reasonably wonder - a Highway Engineer as chair of the Academy of Urbanism? This is precisely the uniqueness and strength of the Academy as it is a broad church with architects, planners, engineers, economists and artists coming together to make a potent mixture of creativity, learning and friendship.
And so, with a refreshed Board and executive team, the Academy continues its journey with vigour and ambition. This year has already been busy, and there is a lot planned going forward.
I am excited and determined to carry on with the Academy’s good work, with objectives to spread our wings, raise our voice, and encourage the young.
In short, I can see a rich and fulfilling journey ahead. Some of you may already know my love of poetry and I’m therefore going to finish with a quote from one of my favourite poems; it’s called Ithaca by Constantine Cavafy and is based on Homer’s The Odyssey, which describes Odysseus’ 10-year long return journey from Troy back to his home on the island of Ithaca and his dutiful wife Penelope.
“When you start on your journey to Ithaca, then pray that the road is long, full of adventure, full of knowledge…”
This is exactly what the Academy of Urbanism promises and offers!
Andreas Markides AoU Chair
Editorial team
Harrison Brewer
Connie Dales (AoU Exec)
Harry Knibb
Leyla Moy
David Rudlin
To join the editorial team or contribute an article to the Here & Now Journal, contact journal@theaou.org
Template design
Richard Wolfstrome
For all other enquiries, including sponsorship, contact Connie Dales at cdales@ theaou.org
Editorial
Building on the momentum of our re-launch in Winter, this issue of Here & Now takes aim at one of the knottiest problems facing the built environment. We often hear that the answer to the housing crisis is to ‘build more houses’ but this neglects to consider the multi-faceted, interdisciplinary, and interpersonal aspects around community, wellbeing, and place that house-building rarely addresses. This issue asks whether that cookie-cutter solution is still fit for purpose and without spoiling, we can confirm it isn’t.
We’re excited to present an issue brimming with incredible insights reimagining the way we live, and revisioning what our future will look like. Houses are more than simply bricks and mortar, they are places for community-building, for memory-making, and for celebrating. Housing takes on a whole new role in building a sustainable and inclusive urban future when we conceive of our homes as places of possibility for generation-spanning connection and collectivism.
To open this issue, Nick Falk reviews ‘Manchester Unspun’, and our MyPlace contributors share their housing stories before ArtPlace takes us to Manhattan. For the headliner, Andrew Bailie interviews Charles Durrett, the American architect who brought the concept of cohousing to the US – with an introduction from Owen Jarvis
Subsequently Damien Sharkey provides a handbook for growing co-living in the UK, while Neil Murphy considers the distinction between this and co-housing. Liane Hartley advocates for mindset shift, Gary Duncan playfully interrogates why planning and development has moved from help to hindrance, and Janet Sutherland calls for more inclusive housing to address our ageing population. Together Leyla Moy and Maisie Zheng trace the legacy of Span Developments before Leyla explores the ‘Tiny House’ phenomena.
Finally Andreas Markides returns as our resident philosopher to question our collective values concerning housing.
As always, if you were inspired to respond to what you read or wanted to submit an idea of your own, please get in touch with Here & Now at journal@theaou.org
We hope you enjoy!
The editorial team
The Academy in Action
Our programme since the Journal relaunch in January has included our Members’ Winter Party, the Great Urbanism Team Quiz in Edinburgh, Urbanism Hours, and the inaugural John Thompson Memorial Lecture, which we were honoured to hold at John’s alma mater, Cambridge University.
In this time, we also announced a new cohort of YU Small Grants recipients and, with the help of our Academician and Young Urbanist panels, determined our 2024 Urbanism Awards finalists, which will be announced this June at our Journey of Place half day event in Leeds.
Not only Leeds, we have a remarkably busy spring ahead that we are gearing up for, including in-person events from Galway to Barcelona.
Upcoming AoU events include :
• Lifelong Neighbourhoods – in collaboration with the RIAI
Weds 29 – Thurs 30 May 2024, Galway
Tickets and details at theaou.org/galway
• The Journey of Place: Leeds
Tuesday 11 June 2024, Leeds
Tickets and details at theaou.org/leeds
• Members’ Rooftop Drinks
Wednesday 24 July 2024, Farringdon
Tickets and details at theaou.org/summer
This is just a snapshot of our programme, with details on these and plenty more - including the now sold out YU cycle trip and New Ground site visit - available at theaou.org/events
Manchester Unspun: Pop, Property and Power in the Original Modern City Book review
I have had a long association with Manchester. URBED had an office for many years in Britain’s Second City, so I wanted to read this intriguing book to discover the real story behind the city’s renaissance. It is written by a journalist who played a key role over the last three decades during which the city recovered from a long period of industrial decline.
The book is a highly personal account, telling the inside story of the Hacienda night club, the close alliance between Council leaders, particularly Sir Richard Leese and Chief Executive Sir Howard Bernstein, and a coterie of high-powered developers such as Allied London and iconic characters such as Tom Bloxham of Urban Splash.
There is a large cast of supporting actors but many of the key players, particularly urbanists tend to be overlooked. The Manchester Design Guide to development goes unreported and there is only fleeting mention of Hulme that has been completely rebuilt and is seen as a new urbanism model. Similarly
with Ancoats, possibly Britain’s oldest industrial quarter, was reborn thanks to the North West Development Agency, with a fine public realm as well as repurposed industrial building. Instead, we get the story of the part played by a few powerful men since and the way that they became the city the that Conservative Government was able to deal with.
The essence of Andy Spinoza’s story is that Manchester needed to change its image from a failed industrial city known for
grimy Victorian textile mills and warehouses to a glossy centre that literally towers over the surrounding area. So, the City backed a small group of developers willing to invest while influencing their choice of designers. 41 buildings over 20 stories high have been built since 2000, with many others promised, and the number of residents in central Manchester has risen from 500 in 1982 when the Hacienda opened to some sixty thousand.
Manchester and adjoining Salford were by 2019 the fastest growing and youngest city centres in the UK. The phrase ‘Original Modern’, developed by Peter Saville, the designer behind factory records was adopted by the city although the slogan ‘Madchester’ that came out of the Hacienda sums up the city better. It comes across in Spinoza’s telling rather as medieval Italian cities such as Bologna must have once appeared.
Local pioneers such as bookmaker Jim Ramsbottom, who was one of the first to convert the city’s warehouses
into workspace, are forgotten. Innovative initiatives like Homes for Change, a pioneering housing cooperative in Hulme merits a single line. Manchester comes across as a strangely insular place not interested in what other cities are doing, convinced of its own importance.
URBED changed its name to Urbanism Environment and Design and took an office in the Northern Quarter in Manchester and I have watched the city change over the years. We never got any work in Manchester, not being part of the ‘Manc Mafia’ that Spinoza describes, although we did work a lot in the surrounding towns like Oldham and Rochdale. The contrasts between Central Manchester and these towns is immense, although some like Bury, significantly connected to Manchester by the first tram line, have had their own ‘renaissance’. Spreading the wealth from the centre to these towns is something that Mayor Andy Burnham has championed along with tackling homelessness.
The Northern Powerhouse, a term coined by George Osborne when he was Chancellor, is an empty concept so long as councils have to go like beggars to central government for this or that project. Manchester has managed to secure more than its fair share of public funding but what has really changed the city is private capital although the book misses out the dangers of relying on this private capital.
Spinoza keeps returning to the contrast between the anarchic vision of the founder of the Hacienda and Factory Records,
a Cambridge graduate called Tony Wilson, and the civic determination that attracted private investment on such a massive scale, and later won approval and support from a Conservative government.
The story raises two important questions, how enduring is the transformation and does Manchester hold lessons that could be replicated in other cities? Demographic maps reveal the contrasts in wealth between the different parts of the city which the high-rise towers serve to accentuate.
Andy Spinoza quotes Sir Richard Leese saying, “Manchester had to become a place where people want to be. Music was a very big part of that.” The Hacienda, which had to closed due to problems with drug dealers has been replaced by a block of apartments, but its influence remains.
The story of Manchester also illustrates the time it takes to turn a city around. In URBED’s report Partners in Urban Renaissance, launched at John Prescott’s Urban Summit in 2002 I wrote that “In Manchester, probably the most impressive single example in England today, the industrial quarter of Ancoats is being promoted as an urban village and national housebuilders have now woken up to the prospects that local developers have pioneered.” Over twenty years later and right at the end of this sometimes infuriating book, Spinoza comments cynically: “This is what a successful modern city in a neoliberal economy looks like: gig economy workers taking food to the tower dwellers above, journey through a city whose history may well have
little meaning for them.”
So though the singlemindedness of the city’s leaders has made a real difference, it is surely a long way from what good urbanism should be all about? A more balanced modern history of Manchester still needs to be written after the memories of recent civic heroes have faded. This history should recognise the importance of the ‘whole city’, and a model for urban transformation where there is room for all.
Nicholas Falk is an Academician and Executive Director of The URBED Trust.
Andy Spinoza, Manchester Unspun: Pop, Property and Power in the Original Modern City, Manchester University Press 2023, £20.00
1 Vol. 25, No. 4, Urban Design Strategies in Practice (1999), pp. 317-324 (8 pages)
by Alexandrine Press
MyPlace
People with places that are significant in their lives
The Vicarage
Britt SC (pictured below)
I’ve lived in around 10 different houses in my 25 years of life. My mother’s family emigrated from Montserrat to Bradford in the late 90s and since being born I have bounced between homes, cities and countries, sometimes along with my mum and younger sibling, and sometimes alone. I have thought a lot about how transitory most of my living situations have been - there’s something unsettling about moving frequently.
To some, home is not a place. For me, having somewhere l know I can come back to, feel settled in, host loved ones in - is deeply important. During the pandemic, I moved from London back to Yorkshire to trial living with two of my close friends and their parents. I was apprehensive. They were always kind to me, but I had just left a stressful living situation and like many, I am not the
most receptive to change. I spent two wonderful years there in The Vicarage, before I decided to spread my wings and move in with a new friend. The Vicarage remained a refuge for me even after I moved out, when I craved the comfort of family (which my friends and their parents had become). Lo and behold, a year later, my rent was to increase and my relationship with my housemate had soured. Housing insecurity was a prominent feature of my childhood, and here I was at 24, preparing to uproot myself again. I was bereft, but there was one thing I knew. The Vicarage and its inhabitants were prepared to take me back with open arms. I moved back and have lived there since.
It’s the most beautiful place I’ve lived, a big cosy house with a chapel, a vegetable garden, my lovely attic room and a family I now think of as my own. I will go out on my own again someday, but for now, I am home!
New Ground Co-Housing, Barnet
Ann Beatty (pictured opposite)
Before I moved to New Ground I had been living with family and friends temporarily as I had just returned from living in Sierra Leone. I had been uncertain if I was going to remain in the UK and then my daughter said to me, “you can’t be a nomad forever mum”, so I started investigating different housing options and came across New Ground.
Although I wasn’t part of the 18 year journey to build New Ground, I admired the women’s tenacity and drive and felt honoured to be welcomed as part of the group of 26 women.
I am the youngest at 58, initially it felt strange to me and we each had to find our own way of balancing community and personal lives. My family are the most important thing in my life; I have 2 grandchildren, Kaylem and Sienna, and they visit regularly.
I have formed good friendships living here. Jude and I have a love of travelling and we enjoy getting away together to visit new places, we have a long list!
Hedi who is 94 (pictured) and I go to pottery every week and we enjoy sharing and solving some of the conundrums of life.
I like the spontaneity of living here as working from home
as CEO of an international education charity can be challenging some days but there is often someone who will ask do you fancy a coffee or a walk? at just the right moment! Other days a walk around our beautiful garden always clears my head.
I travel regularly for work so I feel safe that everything will be just as I left it when I get back and my lovely friend and neighbour Anna takes good care of my plants.
Tiny House
Eugene McCarthy (pictured right)
This is my shack, the only place I can afford. It cost me £1,500 all-in, thanks in large part to Facebook Marketplace. It’s not much, but it’s mine. Each part has a story: the tiles from an 1837 schoolhouse set for demolition; windows scavenged from skips around Essex by a bloke who let me have his spares; the door that served a family’s home for a century, before I chopped it in half to fit mine; the furniture built from scrap wood that sat in my grandmother’s garage for decades.
Growing up in South Essex, I’ve witnessed the housing crisis eroding communities. Our oncethriving town has gradually been hollowed out, with locals priced out by new residents who can outbid them. Those
who remain either lack interest in our community or spend so much on essentials that they can’t afford to support it.
A decade ago, a story might have seemed extreme. Today, it’s all too common. The housing crisis is only worsening. Homes in my town have tripled in
price in the last 15 years while wages… haven’t. ‘Grannyhouses’ and other grassroots housing projects are springing up across the country, and maybe that’s a good thing.
Looking ahead, I see a glimmer of hope in communityled initiatives. Tiny homes, self-builds, and other unconventional housing solutions are just the start. Communities taking control of their own housing, whether through self-builds or other grassroots type projects can help tackle the housing crisis and bring communities back together.
Have you got somewhere you’d like to share in MyPlace? Get in touch at journal@theaou.org to find out more.
ArtPlace
Artworks inspired by the built environment
Eclipse, NYC
Connie Dales
I unintentionally found myself in Manhattan on the day of the recent solar eclipse. It was our first day in New York and I was more than a little daunted by the city, but that afternoon it seemed to soften.
In the hour or so that it took for the eclipse to reach its height, we passed block after block of New Yorkers taking a break from their busy days to embrace the moment. Whole groups emerged from office blocks with cardboard glasses bought in bulk. Shop workers took turns to come out and check on the moon’s progress. I watched an actual Broadway actor explain to a group of delivery drivers how to use the glasses. Some brave elementary school teachers shepherded roughly 40,000 five-yearolds to a nearby park for the occasion.
It was this beautiful, unifying experience that just utterly transformed my experience of the city. A testament to the fact that people - their habits, their interactions, their priorities - are fundamental to urbanism.
Create, edit, write for the AoU
Here & Now Journal
We’d love to hear ideas and opinions from, see art and photography by, or curate with more of the AoU community in future issues of the quarterly Here & Now Journal.
Join the Editorial Team and help source, refine, and curate articles as part of a friendly, passionate team who meet regularly online to plan the next issue.
Write an opinion or research piece that dives into an idea or theme under the broad umbrella of urbanism. Perhaps you have a particular view on density, or greenbelts, or density in greenbelts that you would like to share in a public, yet safe and supportive space. Send your idea in?
Share a creative, reflective artwork through MyPlace and ArtPlace.Through photography, illustrations, and other media, these are an opportunity for the artists within the AoU community to depict the urban experience.
Review a book that speaks to urbanism - whether through a political, practical, or creative lens. Give your perspective on the key lessons from a book, and whether we should all be reading it!
Co-housing Explained In Conversation with Charles Durrett
Andrew Bailie interviews Charles ‘Chuck’ Durrett to understand more about co-housing, its origins and the importance of sharing.
Foreword by Owen Jarvis, UK Cohousing Network
The profile of cohousing across the world has never been higher. We celebrated the 20th anniversary of the first new build scheme at a national summit in London last year attracting the best and brightest practitioners including the eminent US architect and cohousing expert Charles Durrett, who is interviewed within this issue. He, with Katie McCamant, brought the concept from Denmark to the English speaking world and their book, Cohousing Communities, touch-stone for the growth of the movement.
Our summit at Coin Street, London, the first in 6 years, was a lively affair showcasing the innovation, energy and diversity of projects across the UK. Amongst the movement’s recent stars are New Ground Cohousing in Barnet, a World Habitat Award Winner, and the first scheme designed by and for older people. Industry influencers queue to visit Marmalade Lane in Cambridge, whilst Chapletown Cohousing, Leeds is a beacon for diversity, celebrated in a BBC documentary. Members of Lancaster Cohousing have not only housed themselves but reclaimed a forested riverbank, renovated a Victorian industrial site into modern workspaces and developed a community land trust.
Demand for cohousing outstrips supply in the UK. The Bacon Review 2023 clearly shows UK governments have failed to deliver on self and custom building like cohousing in contrast to European neighbours. Cohousing is more widespread in Germany, The Netherlands and Denmark which boasts over 650 schemes. In comparison, the UK has 11 new build and 15 retrofit cohousing schemes with 65 community groups, developers and housing associations in our membership seeking affordable and appropriate sites for up to 50 units and shared facilities. UKCN currently has over 1000 people on amber alert for any opportunities across the country to buy or rent in cohousing schemes.
It is important to acknowledge some brickbats. Cohousing is sometimes criticised for being exclusive or “middle class”. Although harsh and perhaps unfair, given the absence of supportive
policy, funds and partnerships, cohousing has to date largely succeeded where pioneering groups of networked, self-funded and determined professionals have found a way through the barriers.
However this really isn’t the whole picture. Cohousing presents a curious mix of radical innovation whilst harking back to the village life around the local green. Created in 1970s Denmark to address yearnings for community connection amongst what was even then a sense of growing alienation within modern life. Research shows that cohousing can address isolation and loneliness, sustains independence in older age, builds social capital and outperforms other housing models on carbon footprints. Housing association, Housing 21 has embarked on developing 10 cohousing inspired schemes across Birmingham, working with seniors from diverse, low income communities to design homes they never imagined possible before. Community of Grace in Leicester are using cohousing values to provide inclusive supportive communities for people moving out of homelessness. Private developers are beginning to see cohousing as a cornerstone on new sites, delivering custom build, attracting pre-sales and demonstrating community culture building from the get-go. Community entrepreneurs are taking cohousing principles and renovating rural farms and mansions into bustling healthy cohousing communities. And they transform existing neighbourhoods into a bustling din of participatory citizens. Citizens who believe that creating community helps to create and make a viable society thrive more than just about anything else.
So, urbanists should care about cohousing, because it is an urgent and practical enterprise, addressing real problems. If they want to get more involved, here is how to contact the cohousing network
cohousing.org.uk owen@cohousing.org.uk
Interview: Charles Durrett
Andrew Bailie, an AoU Board member and one of the founders of Roost, a housing start-up, interviewed Charles Durrett, the American architect who brought the concept of cohousing to the US, and shared that process whilst he was in the UK for the cohousing summit.
The following is an excerpt of that conversation: How do you get a co-housing project started?
We would leave free copies of our first book in every store. A few days later, we would come back and slip a bit of paper into each book: “hey, we are planning to have a meeting about this, here are the details.” In Seattle, we built 10 new projects right off the bat because bookstores sold 1,000 copies. In San Francisco, bookstores sold 2,000 copies and we made 20 projects. 100 copies per project is very doable.
The best customer for co-housing books to date has been the Danish government (200 books) and Elliot Bay Books in Seattle (550 copies).
You are a prominent architect who grew up in a village. Why do you think that is so unusual?
Growing up in a village should help architects. They teach you what small kinships are, how they add up, and how they stack up to an aggregate sum of consequence in your life. Village people know exactly what living in an enhanced community feels like.
The problem is they have to grow technical experience elsewhere. There was not a single architect in Sierra County, California where I grew up, so I went to San Francisco highly motivated to make a village in the city. And we did it - but only after I went to Denmark to study a modern-day village.
Now, luckily, there are enough books written about modern-day villages, so you don’t have to go to Denmark - they’re sick of talking to us over there anyway.
Francis Kere keeps returning to his village [Gavon in Burkina Faso] to build things. Paford Keating Clay grew up in a tiny tiny village in England, before he built the Cesar Chavez Student Centre.
In San Francisco State University? That’s the first place I was ever on TV. I was on the college trivia challenge team and we got our butts kicked by Stanford. An interesting experience.
Denmark’s co-housing model was the spark for your own work at Muir Commons [The US’ first co-housing project]. Are you a translator?
I think I am an importer. I imported the 1970s rendition of Danish co-housing. When I was getting started, I had seven interns from Denmark who came to my office, to replace the older generation. And sure, there were some things lost in translation. But now they might be some of the best Danish architects.
And it goes both ways. The original Danish activists were concerned that the Americans were going to screw up co-housing. So I’ve been very motivated not to do that. Now, too many Danes see co-housing as a great thing but also they
take too many shortcuts. If you take a shortcut, it actually takes longer and leads to weaker schemes, and they cost more. Put it this way, I’m seriously thinking about opening an office in Copenhagen.
We need to be concerned about taking the movement from being a promising teenager to a fully mature adult.
Where should the Danish Cohousing movement learn from?
Vancouver, BC has come to grips with the anthropology of co-housing. I think I could work on Vancouver projects for the rest of my career. It costs $500,000 to build a common house - used or unused. Get it 100% right, and you see 400-500 people hours in the common spaces each week. Get it 90% right, you only get 100-150 people hours per week - a huge waste. If there are two co-housing groups on the same street, they have to be understood and treated differently. It’s not only a question of who they are but also who they want to become.
Can developers help co-housing grow from adolescence to adulthood?
By the time you learn the tricks of the trade, you have the attitudes of the trade. The attitude of developers is control, control control. When you make a mistake as the developer, you are the bad guy. That is unsustainable. They must cede control, so that when there is a mistake the cohousing group owns their mistake.
There are major advantages to developers - it’s a mutually beneficial collaboration. But developers are the last to see the mutual benefits and they are always looking in the rearview mirror: Well, these units sold last time, people like a party bathroom. Bullshit. Groups don’t care what sold well last time. They know the second bedroom needs to be bigger because there will be three kids in that bedroom.
How do your best and worst clients differ?
I don’t care how much money you have or how much land you have,you must be a highfunctioning group to succeed. Once you become a lean mean co-housing machine, you will make co-housing.
By the way, in Canada, they won’t let me say ‘mean co-housing’. It has to be ‘lean clean cohousing’ - they don’t want to be mean about anything. And that’s beautiful, too.
I was on a project in Oklahoma where they bought a single-family house and then built 24 new houses around it. Six people, without a pot to piss in, created brand new houses for $153,000. If people really want co-housing to happen, there will be co-housing. The goal was $150,000. They like to remind me we went over budget. That was really mission impossible, a rabbit out of a hat.
Total failure.
Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. It was a rabbit out of a hat.
But the rabbit was expensive. Is there a bridge to be built between the co-housing movement and the YIMBY movement?
Cohousing creates new homes and new highfunctioning neighbourhoods. Both movements need a supply of capable activists. You don’t want each small group to have someone who dabbles. Maybe an umbrella organisation would enable both movements to shoot big.
I did a homelessness project in San Francisco, right beside the most expensive neighbourhoods. At the public hearing 26 neighbours were pounding the table: over my dead body is this going to happen. The next day, we came knocking and had tea with each family. If they weren’t sympathetic, we sent three other homeless people to their house to have tea.
At the next public hearing, we had six objecting neighbours. The head of the planning commission said: We couldn’t live with 26. But
we can live with six. We got it built - I had dinner there recently. You know, what’s so problematic about that? She was admitting that land use is mobocracy. Every housing project is a political act before it becomes a business act or a bureaucratic accomplishment.
So co-housing gets moving through mobocracy and then sustains itself with internal democracy. Where does that leave architects - aren’t they nervous about giving up control?
That’s the protons and neutrons of the problem. It’s the thing that establishes all the chemistry of co-housing.
I was hired by a nonprofit to design a project for poor single mums. The mums broke the box in 15 different directions and made enough sacrifices that we could build 13 houses for $650,000 (total). But the most important part happened after. The nonprofit had a plan: when mums got into school or a job, they should move out and make room for new people. But that is stupid: just as you start thriving you lose your home and your community. The mums advocated for themselves: if you want to help more people, go build more housing. The nonprofit capitulated. Empowerment is a big part of co-housing.
The other thing is that co-housing shields you from being distracted. The day I moved into co-housing, my life was free. All of a sudden, somebody else is cooking, somebody else is shopping, somebody
else is cleaning, somebody else is figuring out why the washer has stopped working. I have a job to do, but I can do it very efficiently. Everybody’s at their highest and best use. Without distraction, you can think better and have conversations that last for decades.
Bad housing is like a collective lobotomy - millions of people losing brain cycles to housing stress.
Housing worries remove potential human energy from the real issues of the day. Making democracy work, creating social justice, reducing classism. The big ticket items that have to be addressed, otherwise we will never look really like a first world country. Denmark is in the lead here. Everyone else might be too distracted to catch up.
At home, each neighbour cooks once a month. So I’m putting all this love into that dinner, because they do the same. So love becomes the currency of consequence. And love is something that you want to produce and engage in, rather than an inconvenience.
You write that “co-housing has no ideology or implied ideology”. What do you mean by that?
Unfortunately, I believe that Ayn Rand might have been correct about rationalised selfishness. The number one reason people move into co-housing is to make their own life easier, healthier, more economical, more convenient, more
interesting, more fun, more safe, etc. And then after that, they start to think about the bigger world.
Pushing back, it seems like there is an implied ideology: we aren’t doomed to a tragedy of the commons, people can self-govern.
I’m going to share the shortest poem in the English language: Me, We. I will never reach my potential unless we reach our potential. I don’t believe in the Marxist sense ‘Do as you can and take what you need’. In co-housing it’s always about doing your share one way or another.
I’m writing my next book about a project in Iceland. 45 of the residents have autism, which had previously left them isolated. They are working to create co-housing, and they have figured out some big pieces.
What do your clients with autism know about urbanism that Here & Now readers don’t?
We need each other to survive. If one person can use the bus, and if one person can shop, and
one can cook, and one person can clean up, and so on, the community can figure out anything. There’s always a way, if the group gets really organised, that you can do your share. You can see it as kind of a laboratory for making fairness in the world. They also confirm what many know but don’t practise: proximity is where it’s at. I want to walk to work, walk to my friend’s house, walk to the workshop, the common house where I have dinner 4-5 times per week. Walk to my neighbour, walk to the childcare, and so on.
That’s a great place to close. What question do you wish Here & Now had asked you?
One I have no answer for: what are we going to do to foster more social activism in our society around creating our own housing? Today, housing is a commodity – we buy it, we sell, we hardly ever produce it. Too many neighbourhoods are estranged and without healthy togetherness. The village is on the way back – let’s nurture it, cultivate it, be one with that emerging possibility.
Pictured, in order: Charles Durrett; Lancaster Co-housing - courtesy of the UK Co-housing Network; Vancouver Cohousing - courtesy of the Canadian Co-housing Network
Cities and communities: Deploying co-living to help strengthen community ties
Progressive developer Damien Sharkey, managing director of HUB, is responsible for an impressive array of Build to Rent projects in the UK and is now turning his attention to high quality co-living communities.
Increasingly, people don’t know their neighbours and find few opportunities to socialise within their community. In fact, data from ONS suggests that nearly four million people in the UK are chronically lonely, and many report a general sense of loneliness, partly down to lack of friendships or access to community-based activities. Although the built environment isn’t solely responsible for the way people experience community, when buildings and places are designed and
operated effectively, they can help neighbourhoods feel more inviting and foster social interactions.
The ’co-living’ typology is growing in popularity across the world and offers a great opportunity to create sociable places. Schemes like La Balma Collective in Barcelona, and Silodam in Amsterdam provide strong evidence that there is not only a demand for co-living, but that it offers immense community benefit – creating spaces for shared activity and amenities.
Working in partnership with Bridges Fund Management and MVRDV, HUB launched a coliving design study earlier this year. The aim was to imagine what co-living communities of the future might look like and outline how intelligently designed co-living schemes can contribute to improved wellbeing, social cohesion and community ties.
The first key takeaway was that co-living communities of the future are likely to be multigenerational and multicultural. There is often an assumption that co-living is only for younger people who have either recently graduated or cannot afford to rent or buy their own private accommodation, but our design study identified a myriad of different people who might opt
for co-living; transient expats, active 60+ residents, young entrepreneurs and many others besides.
Secondly, while the need for more social communities grow, we see a hollowing out of certain parts of our cities, as work patterns change, and office buildings are no longer fit for occupier demands or don’t meet current energy efficiency standards. Selectively retrofitting vacant office buildings with the right ingredients, to offer new coliving options is one way of addressing this emerging problem. The influx of people and the amenities on offer, from gym and yoga facilities to co-working spaces and cinema rooms, can help bring the displaced activity back and revive the city.
There is a strong pipeline of co-living schemes in London, whether retrofit or otherwise: as of Q2 2023, Savills research found that London accounts for 82% of the total UK co-living market. We know that there is appetite in other cities and regions too, driven by the same fundamentals as we see in the capital. In particular, we expect
to see long-term growth in key regional cities like Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham and Bristol – areas that have seen high levels of build to rent investment and contain a critical mass of people looking for the improved housing offer, service level and sense of community that co-living offers.
Despite resident interest in coliving, some planning authorities were initially tentative – but there are signs that this is changing. The recently updated and adopted London Plan Guidance, released in February this year, recognises that co-living developments can contribute positively to the creation of mixed and inclusive neighbourhoods. The document encourages planners, architects and developers to take a more holistic view of the space available. Along similar lines, our design study found that ‘social spaciousness’ is more important than the specific square metre value of
private space allocated to each co-living resident. The onus is on developers of co-living schemes to demonstrate the value that residents receive and allay the anxieties of planning authorities who are responsible for preserving the quality of the housing offer.
Development should first and foremost serve communities. Partly this means improving the quality and range of housing on offer, but equally, the community should feel that there are spaces within new developments that are for them, contribute to their wellbeing or improve the appearance and safety of the area they live in. Co-living delivers shared spaces of a high quality which can benefit residents and the wider community alike. The way that local businesses and groups can use shared spaces is what separates co-living from other housing models. Everyone from yoga practitioners and gardening groups to local
history enthusiasts and book clubs are invited in, creating an atmosphere almost equivalent to a village hall.
I expect to see other planning authorities following the GLA’s lead and collaboratively developing new guidance that enables standards to support the growth of the sector across the UK and beyond. A Savills survey of European investors
estimated that circa €2.6bn of capital will be targeting the co-living sector in the UK and Europe over the next 3 years. Given this context, the policy environment needs to favourably allow for the testing of new ideas, spatial arrangements and amenity offerings which will ultimately benefit the residents and wider communities. At HUB, our aim is to recreate the atmosphere
of ‘ideal’ neighbourhoods for the contemporary, inner-city context. We believe that coliving is one of the means to deliver on that objective, creating opportunities for neighbourly interactions and high-quality social experiences.
Co-housing, co-living, and the search for neighbourly housing at scale
Neil Murphy considers some of the existing communityfocused housing alternatives and how to affordably and accessibly replicate them for the future.
As the co-founder of perhaps the UK’s foremost enabling developer of co-housing projects, I’m among those who cringe a little when I hear co-housing described as or conflated with ‘co-living’. Insofar as both are forms of housing in which households have both private accommodation and shared facilities, co-housing and co-living are easy concepts to elide. But the built reality, in the UK at least, is starkly contrasting.
For co-housing, imagine (say) 20-40 low-rise, often generously proportioned homes arranged around a central communal garden with, at its entrance, a ‘common house’ providing a space for residents to gather, eat, and take care of the running of their community. Many living here will have been involved in the conception and design of the place, which they jointly own and manage, motivated to find or make somewhere where they
can live in a mutually supportive way with their neighbours and in greater harmony with the environment. Co-housing communities are ‘intentional’ –their members make a positive choice to live differently in what the campaigner and land economist Stephen Hill has called a form of ‘autonomous self-organisation’.
For co-living, think more commonly of a big block of very small studio flats (aka ‘microflats’ or ‘cluster flats’) near – not necessarily in – a city centre, whose ‘compact’ accommodation is supplemented by a communal kitchen, laundry, gym, social spaces, maybe some hot desks, and a concierge service. The mainly twentysomethings living there are all tenants, likely paying some of the highest rents-per-square-metre going to a landlord. Ultimately owned or funded by a major financial institution, the tiny proportions
of their private space render it, if not exactly ‘affordable’, at least manageable; and significantly more attractive to many than a house-share with several other adults.
In some ways these (perhaps exaggerated) archetypes are the story of the British housing market/crisis. A critic of the modern British way might
(unfairly) posit co-housing as the preserve of the time/ money-rich, while pointing out that the ‘studentification’ of postgraduate-aged adults in pseudo halls-of-residence is what happens when the planning system is more concerned with imposing minimum space standards for private homes than with making sure enough land is available for building them.
There are, of course, people for whom co-living is a positive choice, allowing them to live for a time among urban amenities, and other urbanites, they could never otherwise afford to, however much edge-urban grey-belt might one day be developed. And those interested in good urban policy should surely welcome the advent of a new model of dense, car-free, sociable housing with a reasonable claim to help mitigate the loneliness
seemingly endemic in many lives. But it is hard to conclude the consumer is getting much of the surplus from an industry in which, at the time of writing, a six-month “membership” for a studio flat in a pioneering co-living development in an ‘emerging’ area of west London is advertised for rent at just under £2,000 per month – about 70% of the median after-tax salary in London.
Only one form of “co” is rapidly changing the landscape of UK cities, though, and it isn’t the likes of Marmalade Lane or Cannock Mill. A criticism of the co-housing movement in the UK is that, for all its purpose and growing number of award-winning built exemplars, it hasn’t yet proven scalable. Another is that the sheer amount of time and commitment the members of completed co-housing projects have had to invest makes it
prohibitive as anything other than a cottage industry.
But if a future with more shared living is both desirable and inevitable, urbanists should surely be looking for ways to synthesise the best aspects of co-housing – intentionality, agency, strong environmental principles – and co-living – density, flexibility – into something capable of providing a large-scale solution to Britain’s housing challenges. Both are, after all, a reaction to the failure of the mainstream housing market (for which also read the land and finance markets and the planning system) to provide better choices.
As ever, other countries offer valuable insights. Austria’s co-operative model of housingassociations-meets-buildingsocieties has over 500,000 members and accounts for nearly a tenth of the country’s
housing stock. The renowned Vauban eco-district of Freiburg, Germany, was substantially developed by co-operative ‘building groups’ (baugruppen), enabled by a municipally led process that prioritised sustainability outcomes over land receipts. Even the American condominium offers a worthwhile study of the combination of individual homes, shared amenities and resident-led management in a wholly privatised setting. Neither co-housing nor coliving, these are nonetheless examples of replicable, larger scale, higher-density forms of housing in which residents to
one degree or another share more, and have more control over, their environments than we are generally used to.
What are the prospects for change in the UK? We need some realism: we should recognise that high-density urban co-living is here to stay and has a valid role to play in an imperfect housing market, but that we need to decouple what could be a positive spatial/community model from a too-often exploitative development/funding one. If the main purpose of the co-living sector is to serve young adults, and given the
importance many cities rightly attach to retaining graduates, perhaps there is a role for housing associations and even universities in developing coliving environments that feel to more people like a natural next step on the ladder and less like a reluctant compromise.
And we need to find ways to give people more agency over how they live and what and how they share in common. This is partly about design: ensuring that shared spaces and facilities are genuinely additional to decent private accommodation and have a loose enough fit that residents can shape them around their common needs and interests; where possible, involving future residents in wider design. But it’s also about equity and governance: for some, co-living will be a temporary phenomenon, so it suits renting, but perhaps there is a co-operative part-ownership model that encourages good management and rewards people for being active longer-term members of their community.
Autonomous self-organisation this isn’t, but if we want to find ways to elicit some of the social outcomes we see in co-housing from the explosion in co-living, it might be a place to start.
Neil Murphy is an Academician of the AoU and Founding Director of TOWN
Liane Hartley advocates for a focal shift from the physical and functional, to the experiential and behavioural when it comes to urbanism.
The city we have is the city we have been given. What if the city we have next is the city we create together?
My interest is in the social future of cities and improving everyday life for everyone. More than bricks and mortar, cities are an experience, a philosophy, a mode of production. And this can either be a positive for you, or it can hold you back in ways that make the city feel nasty, brutish, and short.
However, for me the focus on placemaking has been far too much on the 3D physicality of place and not enough on the experiential and behavioural aspects. Who am I in this place? Does this place meet my needs? Do I feel valued and included here? Do I want to be here? Do I matter?
Nowhere is this felt more keenly than our homes. Our homes
should embody our sense of safety, love, and identity. Yet far too many of us live in homes that simply do not even meet the most basic of standards. In 2024. In an advanced economy. Bursting with skills, resources, and experience. How is this possible?
Because we build for spreadsheets not people. We value financial health over community wellbeing. When we sit in the homes that don’t work for us, walk through neighbourhoods better suited to cars, or play in parks that were clearly an afterthought, we are reminded that we live in the spatial manifestation of an urban paradigm that elevates the needs of kit, cars and cash over the needs of people, society, and planet.
And how is that working out for you and your loved ones?
We have seen a shift towards greater responsibility and transparency as citizens and consumers. We value authenticity and want to know where products come from. We want our food to be clean, honest, better for us. All of this is powered by consideration. I see this emotional awakening transfer to other aspects of our lives: business, personal wellness, services. But what about urban space? What about housing?
I wanted to create an approach to placemaking and urbanism that is distinctly human and allows us to centre the needs, care, and development of people, to make our urban experiences more meaningful, responsive, inclusive, healthy, and safe. I call this approach Considerate Urbanism.
Considerate Urbanism is a way of thinking about cities
to make a kinder future for our people and planet. We know that we urgently need to transition to a different model of living and producing on our planet. Climate change shows us our lifestyles and systems are unsustainable. Economic disparity and persistent poverty show us our economic system is unjust and inequitable. Social justice movements show us that people still feel unseen, unheard, and unvalued.
As we navigate this emerging new world, we need to be kind and considerate to each
other. Our survival rests on our capacity to live successfully in a community of other humans and Considerate Urbanism is about just that. Asking questions like: What are people’s needs and wants, and how can we care for them? What do we need to do to ensure we are looking after our environment so it can look after us? Can we all feel good in urban environments, not just some of us?
Considerate Urbanism invites us to do this through the following ways:
Change Model:
Understanding how we can adapt and change our cities, policies, and urban models to foster togetherness, better urban experiences, and harmony with our natural environments. How considerate is your project or its objectives?
Design Philosophy:
Centring care, human experience + relationships, social fabric, physical + psychological wellbeing, and diversity for a more human-kind approach to design. How does your project help people thrive?
Vision:
How can we meet pressing economic, social, and environmental challenges? By transitioning from carbased to care-based urbanism that prioritises long-term human and planetary health. How is your project enabling a more considerate urban future?
Manifesto:
Everyone deserves a positive urban experience. Amidst pervasive culture wars and divisive politics, we advocate cultivating radical positivity and strategic optimism, with cross-sector collaboration to bring positive and inclusive change. Are you ready to make better urban experiences for everyone a reality?
Fostering Considerate Urbanism is a systemic and emergent approach that needs to happen on multiple levels, and we are now in our second phase, moving from concept to action. Our focus is on developing the platform for building the Considerate Urbanism movement to activate this concept through collaborations with practitioners and clients.
This is open to anyone looking to share their expertise, work on projects or learn from others. That means you!
Liane
Hartley is the Director of Mend, Founder of Considerate Urbanism, and an Academician of the AoU.
considerateurbanism.com All photos from Unsplash: Denys Nevozhai (previous page, left); Oxana Melis (previous page, right); Raychan (this page)
Past, Present Tense, Future
Gary Duncan playfully interrogates the direction of planning reform and asks why development became an anathema to politics and public alike.
As an undergraduate I read the 1985 Command Paper, Lifting The Burden. Here, a moment of reflection, of national policy self-analysis, of regulation, and moving on. Subsequently, ‘top-down’ was criticised and decades later we seem to live in a continuum of still wellintentioned planning reform. Housing is a most fundamental and regulated sector. Planning and development are seemingly
bad things? We interfere too much and in the wrong way. Access to housing and planning for housing remains and is increasingly regulated, bureaucratised, poorly administered, and out of reach for many.
Before you build a house, a queue is created and life is compromised. We seem to live in a world of impact always:
change, blame, objection, litigation. I object.
Policy and enabling have to happen on the ground. Delivery is not a well-lubricated and synchronous endeavour. Reform! Nationwide Local Plan coverage by July 1996 is a thing of the past.
Strictly Come Planning. What are the moves? Housing
numbers? Localism? Let’s have responsible localism, how about ‘Tapping the Potential’? Barker? Evans? Let’s ditch it and raise the same questions 20 years later. The numbers are wrong… do you like the methodology? Let’s question that. Is it quality? Let’s do quality. Beauty? Let’s do beauty. No real support. Let’s undermine the endeavour completely. Do we need a Local Plan? Policy? Delay? Bury is certainly a place, and its not t’other side o’ Manchester. Bury is in the long grass. It’s all complete and utter politics. Nutrients? Thames Warbler? Green Belts? No, we want Silver Bullets.
We want great and beautiful development immediately: Marylebone-sur-Cam and Poundbury-on-Ouse are seeming panaceas. Unprecedented six-figure housing numbers in one area? Water? We need the doctors to be there first. We need dentists that are cheap. Oh, and shops that deliver to us immediately. Buses, we need buses. Oh, and we need good neighbours right now. We want to meet them in a village pub and play petanque on sunlit nights and we want to not go to work and be at home on Mondays and Fridays and we want, and we want. It is the housebuilder’s fault, isn’t it?’ These are hands, not magic wands. And all the time we are not in traffic, we are traffic!
Is the ecosystem of decisionmaking attractive? In the last 40 years, we have consistently and wilfully eroded planning
to the point where it is no longer attractive. Some Councils are not attractive and rely on agency/consultancy staff. Local Government may not be local anymore. This raises the question of longterm local knowledge and the geography of intelligence that can contribute to delivering sustainable development. In response to a phone call, I was told that ‘highways’ was not part of the County Council. Yesterday I experienced ten choices on the main menu, four on the submenu, and no response from any call to the numbers I called.
We need to encourage a long-term session-on-session commitment to meeting domestic needs: building the nation. Progression is leaps of fantasy and 10 or 12 times one’s salary to buy a house is ludicrous... I quote George Bailey in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’: “Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple o’ decent rooms and a bath?”. There are real issues and it is £1.90 in some shops for a can of soup whereas I grew up in 60s and 70s slums.
We need to conceive of the now and the next 50 years.
Gary Duncan is an Academician of the AoU and Director of The Land and Planning Company
Pictured: Previous page, - Blake Wheeler on Unsplash
Meeting our Future Housing Needs
Janet Sutherland believes we are ill prepared for our ageing population and draws on over 7,500 survey responses to suggest, through creative thinking, more can be done to support those with specialist wants and needs.
The proportion of older people in the UK will grow substantially over the coming years, yet we are not doing nearly enough to prepare for this demographic change. Doing more to help people maintain their independence in their homes is a win/win – it will benefit individuals, and the overstretched health and care sectors, and potentially gain the World Health Organisation goal of an additional 5 years of healthy life. Older people are criticised for under-occupying family homes and adding to the pressures on our housing
stock, yet we know that many more people would move if there were attractive, affordable options available to them.
I have been interested in this topic for many years, and recently carried out a survey of members of the u3a (previously University of the Third Age). Over 7,500 u3a members have completed the Our Homes for our Future questionnaire, with representation across the UK. The age range is 60-85+, and 93% are homeowners, so it is not a representative demographic. 75% want to continue to live in multigenerational settings, with 25% considering options for living with older people. A significant minority – 14% – are interested in ‘intentional communities’, co-housing or co-operative housing, with 8% interested in co-housing for older people and 6% in multigenerational cohousing. How do we meet this level of demand?
I introduced my housing questionnaire to my local u3a in North London and, of the 98 people on the Zoom call, 91%
wanted to stay local, and a huge 28% of this smaller sample had an interest in co-housing / co-operative housing options (intentional communities): with 11% wanting co-housing for older people and 17% cohousing for all ages. I was struck by the potential power to influence, as that level of local information might be enough to start to influence choices of future housing provision in our local area. In my area, the Council had recently sold a site for a development of flats –perhaps it could have included a co-housing scheme? The flats are now completed, and are popular with ‘rightsizers’ who have chosen to move there – a perfect location to support people as they age, in a multigenerational setting in the centre of our London ‘village’. Sadly, some are discovering that grab rails cannot be installed as the stud walls are too thin. When will we require flats to be built to ‘lifetime homes’ standards?
Until we manage to provide more co-housing / co-operative type options, we should address
the desire for more intentional communities of various types, and think how best to support the co-creation of informal settings. Isolation affects many older people; design can encourage social interaction.
A disappointingly small number of local authorities include assessments of need for older people’s housing in their local plans. They should all be encouraging all new developments to meet lifetime home standards in lifetime neighbourhoods. All our new homes should be age inclusive, and we should provide a wide range of types and tenures of homes that can support people’s independence as they age in all new schemes. When we talk of housing for
older people, we tend to think of ‘retirement housing’, and in the UK we provide very little specialist housing for older people, and need much more of it – and affordable to all, as current retirement housing options are not affordable for many, and many are worried about high service charges. But most people want to remain in multi-generational settings. 37% of my questionnaire respondents have already moved, with others knowing they will need to in the future, while others wish to remain in their current home, possibly needing some adaptations.
More of us are living longer – let us start to think more creatively about providing homes that will ensure this is a benefit to us all.
Sutherland is a longstanding member and former Director of the Academy of
Pictured: Previous page, left - Ivan Lapyrin on Unsplash; this page, top - Nikoline Arns on Unsplash; this page, bottom - New Ground Co-housing Community, Barnet
Janet
Urbanism
Span Developments: A legacy of sociable housing
Maisie Zheng and Leyla Moy trace the history and legacy of Span Developments, drawing on the experience of their mentor Natalia Trossero, urban designer and resident of a Span-inspired award-winning development
As issues of social isolation and mental health become increasingly prominent in city life, the formula for crafting urban spaces that foster social interaction and community is increasingly sought after.
In the words of some of their inhabitants, solutions can be found in the legacy of Span developments, a developer of modernist housing estates which sought to balance community, fostered through shared facilities and grounds, with suburban desires for privacy and individual space.
History
Span Development Limited, founded by architects Eric Lyons and Geoffery Townsend, was an active developer of social housing through the mid-1950s to ‘60s, with a total output of 73 schemes and over 2,000 dwellings across London, Kent and Surrey. They sought to “span the gap between the suburban monotony of the typical speculative development
and the architecturally designed, individually built residence that has become (for all but a few) financially unattainable” (RIBA, 1999). At a time of post-war Britain that focused on restoration and rebuilding, Span became a radical example of modern social housing that could not only be affordably delivered, but also well-lived.
The Span development concept, spearheaded by Townsend and Lyons, centred around the creation of ‘total environments’. This concept of an allencompassing, community centred habitat for modern city life rings reminiscent of the 15-minute city idea: the developments would include buildings, planting, roads, car parks and children’s play spaces seamlessly integrated within, to create ‘a pleasant and stimulating background for day-to-day living’ (Townsend, Architects Journal 1955). Lyons, the designer of the duo, was focused on the establishment of residents’ associations which
would maintain and manage each estate, believing them to be key to maintaining visual integrity, community and social interaction within the estates’ grounds.
In ‘The Priory’ in Southeast London, Lyon’s ethos of “homes within a garden” is exemplified by the design of houses with the surrounding landscape in mind. Modern housing features such as mono-pitch roofs are softened by traditional features of stock brick work and hung tiles. The open plan interior with clerestory high-level windows and extensive glazing allows light to fill the units, while overlooking a well maintained communal garden. Estates are either car-free or designed with deliberately concealed joint parking to encourage social interaction among residents.
Legacy
Span developments initially targeted young professionals and first time buyers in the low-cost low-margin property
market, however many of Span’s first residents have since remained, creating a community of long-term residents spanning multiple generations. While the last official Span development was completed in 1984 after the death of Eric Lyons, the design ethos has inspired similar housing developments which continue to today. The enduring nature of these communities has since spawned oral and written history projects which collate personal accounts of life on Span and Span-inspired estates while linking the history of individual developments to their ever-evolving legacy.
In the words of Neil, a V&A curator and resident of Cator Estate, the centrality of the residents’ associations has served to safeguard the communal focus of the estates. “People say ‘Oh, things have changed a lot,’ well actually things haven’t changed a lot ‘round here. Because with Span, everything is maintained.”
Many accounts describe the sociability of their lives on Span estates through a confluence of everyday moments of connection. Children play together, the elderly rely on informal help from their neighbours, and commuters into the city centre return to a social environment after days that can otherwise be
isolating. In this way, the benefits of social interaction are intergenerational.
We sat down with urban designer Natalia Trossero, urban designer and resident of a Span-inspired award-winning development – and our AoU mentor.
Speaking of the way the design of the estates has led to a culture of neighbourliness, Natalia recounts having first met her neighbours in a series of casual, serendipitous interactions fostered by Oaklands’ plentiful communal green space.
“When you get out of your house, you’re on the footpath network within the estates and you bump into someone else and you say I’m going to grab a cup of tea and let’s see each other in five minutes. It started [from] just having catch-up conversations and enjoying being outdoors.”
While the WhatsApp chat has served as a more direct tool for organising neighours for special occasions like birthdays, the connections forged in the gardens are central to the estate’s public life. Describing the serendipitous nature of these interactions, Natalia reaches for the Jane Jacobs quote that describes the sum
of these mundane, at-will interactions forging an ‘intricate web of public respect and trust, and a resource in time of personal or [neighbourhood] need.’
There are imperfections –Natalia notes security issues around the deliberately concealed car park. She cites the benefits of overlooking in schemes like the Marmalade Lane co-housing development in Cambridge, wherein residential units overlook the shared garages while remaining separate from pedestrians.
What emerges from the Span idea is a toolbox for sociable residential development – resident associations which integrate communal ownership from the developments’ inception, coupled with thoughtful design which encourages the full use of communal space. That root emphasis on sociability, entrenched both the management and design of the developments, shines through in testimony serves as a reminder of the necessity of considering at the outset how spaces can be well-lived.
Maisie Zheng is a Young Urbanist and an Associate at Strategy&
Leyla Moy is a Young Urbanist and a Graduate Planner at UPP
The Siren Song of the Tiny House
Leyla Moy examines the rise of the tiny house, from subversive origins to commercial peak.
The tiny house of my teenage memory is so small that it fits within the confines of a YouTube video. The people who inhibit it, too, are as small and flat as paper dolls, archetypal characters in corduroy and plaid with usernames evoking simple living and nomadic wanderlust. The movement I knew was social media optimised and colour-graded for Instagram, reaching oversaturation under reality TV cameras – but it wasn’t always so glossy.
Many credit the beginning of the modern tiny house movement to architect Jay Shafer’s 1997 creation, a simple wooden country house on wheels. Conceived as a response to
the minimum internal areas required by American building codes, Schafer’s tiny house intended to highlight the habitable potential of small spaces while rebelling against regulatory forces.
While not necessarily the ‘original’ tiny house, the success of Schafer’s house served to popularise the tiny house as a salient alternative to traditional housing. Following the popularity of his house and the accompanying Small House Book, Schafer began selling prefab versions of his original RV house.
A 2007 video tour of Schafer’s 89-square-foot tiny home
reveals the depth of his personal investment in the tiny house idea. He speaks fondly of the design details that make the small space work – but the deeper reasons, he explains, are environmental. Schafer’s tiny house pitch evokes common desires to minimise the environmental repercussions of living oversized lives, questioning the necessity of a larger space as a one-size-fits-all solution.
Tiny houses proved themselves perfect subjects for the screen in the late 2000s. Also in 2007, Schafer appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show, further drawing the tiny house concept into the mainstream in time for the US mortgage crisis to render downsizing all the more appealing. In 2013, Christopher Smith’s documentary TINY: A Story About Living Small chronicled the inspiration and build process of the creator’s own tiny home. Narrative forms further crystallised the archetypal tiny house inhabitant, typically a millennial with an interest in breaking away from the social norms enshrined in space, seeking flexibility and low-impact living on a budget. That tiny houses glowed with the virtue of self-
sufficiency and looked great on Instagram was only a bonus.
Mertre Mueller, Smith’s thenpartner, is quoted alluding to the glossy millennialism of the way the tiny house movement was portrayed on screen at the time: “Even me and Christopher, the way we were posting and sharing about our experiences did definitely have this perfect, hashtaggy – now looking back on it – barf-inducing flavor.” The virtues extolled by the tiny house movement – nomadic freedom, environmental consciousness, and a resistance to the inert standards of suburban home ownership many millennials resented – had begun to be undercut by its sheer marketability.
The 2014 premiere of the home improvement show Tiny House Nation solidified the tiny house as both a household name and a discrete consumer product.
By this time, Schafer had grown disillusioned with the tiny house movement he helped to crystallise, having been quoted saying “[Then, the industry] wasn’t so much about civil disobedience or about aesthetics so much as it was about selling houses.”
Because tiny homes proved to be an unstable investment for housebuilders, they soon became a common sight on AirBnB as the short term rental market offered a way to draw reliable profit from a depreciating investment. Mueller believes that this proliferation also snuffed out some of the tiny house’s already-fading lustre. When tiny homes no longer entailed a titillating peek into an alternative lifestyle and became
places where one could spend a weekend before retiring to the home of their choice, the fervour slowly died down.
In the years since, the tiny house has been pitched as a tool in combating the housing crisis, with tiny dwellings being provided to unshelted people in service of the housing-first approach. The blanket provision of tiny homes for this purpose, however, is viewed by many to undercut the dignity that should be afforded to urban residents regardless of housing status. The ascetic minimalism of tiny living, while laudable when the inhabitants are willing, takes on a darker flavour when thrust upon those who are not.
Despite what many view as the dissolution of the tiny house idea in the mainstream, the radical potential of a tiny home remains compelling. The rebelliousness of the original tiny house idea is present in Skip House, architect Harrison Marshall’s 2022 Antepavilionsponsored tiny home created in a metal skip which Marshall lived in for a year, highlighting the mounting unaffordability of London living.
Antepavilion has lent backing to multiple installations that
interrogate the relationship between architectural ingenuity and the planning system. 2017’s competition winner HVAC (PUP Architects) created a tiny, habitable space atop the Antepavilion building that fell within the bounds of permitted development for rooftop plant. This subversion of regulation and embrace of ingenuity bred, more often than not, from necessity, echoes the everseductive quality of the first tiny house wave.
The tiny house craze rings emblematic of a hunger for alternative housing forms, while reflecting an innately human desire to inhabit in spaces that reflects one’s worldview. Through subversion, they highlight the root of what many desire in housing – functionality, flexibility, and maybe a bit of Instagram flair.
Leyla Moy is a Young Urbanist and a Graduate Planner at UPP Pictured:
Commodities Urban philosophy
Our resident philosopher, Andreas Markides, considers the poor state of British housing, and suggests one potential solution lies in our collective values and not in typical solutions of supply, economics, and ownership.
I have just finished a book called The Last Colony. It was written by Philippe Sands, a human rights lawyer and professor of Law at UCL. The book tells the story of how Mauritius (which, in addition to the main island that we are familiar with, consists of several islets in the Indian Ocean) gained its independence from Britain in the mid-sixties. Except that it had gained only partial independence. A cluster of islets in the Chagos Archipelago (such as Peros Banhos and Diego Garcia) continued to ‘belong’ to Britain and they are still referred to (by Britain) as the British Indian Ocean Territory.
Why did Britain wish to retain control of those islets (and at the same time to keep it a secret)? Britain did so under pressure from the United States who wanted to turn one of those islets into a military base. This they have done and the islet of Diego Garcia has been an American military base ever since.
Astounding as this story may be, there are two additional details that stand out. First, it was from this islet that American war planes would take off on their bombing missions to Iraq during the disastrous war against Saddam Hussain, in 2003. Secondly and most alarmingly
all the indigenous people who had long lived on those islets were forcibly removed in the latter part of 1960s.
Madame Liseby Elyse was one of the people deported and she describes her experience as follows: “The administration told us we had to board the ship, leaving all our personal belongings behind except for one suitcase each. We were like animals and slaves in that ship. People were dying of sadness in that ship”.
Madame Elyse goes on to say that she was four months pregnant at the time and by the time the ship had reached Mauritius four days later, she had lost her child.
This is of course tragic but the troubles for all 1,500 deportees had just begun. Once
on Mauritius, the deportees were provided with basic accommodation near the harbour. In Madame Elyse’s words: “The building we lived in had three floors, each divided into apartments. I think they were built for dock workers. We cleaned the place up and that was where we lived for fourteen years, until 1987. There were four or five of us in each room”.
This shocking episode is an illustration of how we are all pawns to the powers which control people’s lives. They control where people should live (in the case of the Chaggo islanders) and they control what everyone else should know about (in the case of the rest of us).
Significant as these issues may be, I would like to focus on the deposition of these
islanders in some makeshift accommodation; this to me shows that people are in some cases treated as nothing more than commodities, rather than as human beings. It is simply a case of picking these ‘items’ up and depositing them in some boxes somewhere else.
This is of course not an isolated example of such behaviour. Isn’t this how the ex British Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, had attempted to solve the asylum seekers conundrum? Let us put these items into little cubicles on an engineless barge in Portland port or better still, let us put them in an aeroplane and send them to Rwanda. Something similar happened to thousands of people who had emigrated to the US, a century ago. They could see the Statue of Liberty as their ship approached the New World but they were subsequently deposited in tiny tenements which, in time, became the Italian quarter, the Greek or Jewish quarter etc. Horrendously this is also how the Jews were treated by the German Nazis. Nothing but insignificant commodities thrown into trains like cattle to be transported to different concentration camps for extermination.
It may not be an exaggeration to say that we approach the provision of housing in this country, in a similar way! We say “we need X number of houses here and Y number of houses there”. Housebuilders then come along and in most (but not all) cases they build little cubicles to accommodate families. In every sense these are not homes; they are boxes to accommodate items which, for the rest of us, are no longer
human beings. We even have National Space standards setting the minimum size for each dwelling type!
Is this what humanity has descended to? Building boxes to house one type of merchandise or other? The situation is much worse when we consider all those people sleeping rough (a few thousand every night) and people who are homeless (around a quarter of a million in the UK).
But let us stay with the question about housing provision. The crucial question here is how do we stop our current practices and how do we start building homes instead?
Many people have grappled with this question, including The Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission which, in its 2020 report, Living with Beauty, identified many of the root causes of this malice (merely calling it a problem does not portray the magnitude of the situation). The report concluded that “Beauty is not an arbitrary addition to the builder’s aims but fundamental to promoting health, well-being and sustainable growth. Beauty is a promise of Happiness.”
We appear to have nailed it! And yet, we continue to fail. Why?
Is it to do with Ownership?
This cannot be so. Italy, and a number of other Mediterranean countries, have a strong culture of home ownership and yet nobody can claim that Italy’s housing position is better than ours.
So, does ownership make a difference? The Margaret Thatcher introduction in the 80s
of the Right to Buy encouraged home-ownership but it had disastrous consequences with the loss of a huge number of Council-owned accommodation. That experiment having failed there must now be justification for empowering councils and Housing Associations to build more affordable homes. The trouble with this is that councils have now lost the necessary skills and they will need significant funding to achieve what was once second nature.
Is it to do with Economics?
What most people mean by the housing crisis is middle class youngsters being unable to save the deposit for a home. We therefore need to make housing more affordable. How can we do that? Probably the only way out now is a commitment to a long term programme of public investment in public housing using land that is Compulsory Purchased for a cost that is only marginally above current use value. Perhaps we have been deluding ourselves over the last 40 years that we can maintain standards without paying for the investment needed and the myth that the private sector can always deliver effective public services.
Is it to do with building? It has been repeatedly said that building new homes is highly problematic for the environment. Concrete, bricks and other materials generate large greenhouse gas emissions. Natural materials like timber are in short supply and we also need trees growing to sequester carbon. Should we therefore focus on renovating and re-using existing housing stock? That surely cannot be enough to cater for our growing population (an increase of
around 250,000 people/year).
Is it to do with Politics? Our politicians carry a lot of responsibility in taking the wrong steps almost at every turn of this miserable saga. “Let’s stop the immigrant boats from crossing the Channel,” they say, “because immigrants take up housing that our own people require”. Or “let’s build a lot of penthouses for Russian oligarchs and Arab sheikhs” to help the economy. All these are nothing more than deflections from the real issue. None of our politicians in recent years has shown the leadership and daring required to tackle this issue head-on.
Finally, is it to do with who builds it? For decades governments have relied on housebuilders whose primary objective is to make a profit. To make matters worse, it has recently been reported that volume housebuilders may be operating a monopoly. Perhaps smaller builders could create neighbourhoods where people live out of choice and not just necessity.
There are many other contributing factors such as densities (but see how density combined with greed has turned Vauxhall into a grotesque jungle of concrete); location (to build on the Green Belt or not to build); building materials and methods (see how the Danes have mastered the use of timber); and stewardship (see Charlie Dugdale’s pioneering work at Knight Frank). However, it is clear that we have yet to find the silver bullet that would solve the housing crisis in all its ramifications.
Maybe the answer lies in
something which is not tangible. Recently I was struck to read of the case of a 65-year old lady, Aysen Dennis, who fought against gentrification of the Aylesbury Estate in LB Southwark, where she has lived for 30 years. Unexpectedly she won and her words of victory - “they wanted to sell off our community” - make it clear that a sense of community is far more important than a renovated house.
In his excellent book A Home of One’s Own, Hashi Mohamed agrees with this sentiment. He goes on to identify the social, political, economic and many other factors that have resulted in our current predicament of failing to build communities and on focusing instead on providing for commodities. In the book he also makes many significant recommendations that would take us a long way towards changing our approach to housing provision. He rightly points out that the issue requires clinical surgery, rather than cosmetics.
What does ‘clinical surgery’ mean? In my own view this means that the answer does not lie with Economics or Ownership, Housing Numbers or Politics. It lies with our values. The values of the society that we live in.
This brings to mind Plato’s famous utterance about the Ideal Society which, in his view, will come about if / when politicians became philosophers or conversely if / when philosophers became politicians. The important thing to note here is that Plato’s politicians do not carry today’s meaning of the word. Polis in Greek means City and
politicians for Plato were The Citizens!
The answer therefore lies in all of us (the citizens of the world that we live in) becoming Philosophers.
Easy!
Andreas Markides is Chair of the AoU and Chairman of Markides Associates
Urban Model of the United Kingdom & Ireland Large urban modelling allows analysis of spatial inequalities providing insights that influence national and regional policy on issues including mobility, land value, health and carbon.
