Peter Franklin is an Associate Editor of UnHerd.
First there was NIMBY — Not In My Back Yard. Then there was the pro-development backlash, YIMBY — Yes In My Back Yard. But better than both is BIMBY — Beauty In My Back Yard. This is the idea that if we build new homes beautifully we can secure popular consent — and even active support — for development.
Thanks to the efforts of organisations like Create Streets and ResPublica,the BIMBY philosophy has been incorporated into government policy.
It’s a wonderful theory, but sometimes I wonder if it’s true. Don’t get me wrong. We must build beautifully. Indeed, I believe in beauty for its own sake. Every house is an opportunity not solely to provide a home, but to say something about ourselves that will speak to people hundreds of years from now — just as the architecture of the Georgians and Victorians speaks to us today.
Unfortunately the message we’re sending to the future is that we don’t care. Or it might be that our descendants will conclude that the people of the United Kingdom had physically shrunk over the course of the 20th century, so that by the 21st we were content to live in rabbit hutches.
They might also deduce from our minuscule gardens and plastic grass that we’d become allergic to the natural world. As for the monochrome and unornamented exteriors of our time, what will that convey to posterity? An epidemic of myopia? Assuming there’s some form of a cultural recovery between now and the future, there’ll be much puzzlement over the aesthetic deprivation of the early 21st century.
And that’s the first reason why I have my doubts about the BIMBY hypothesis. In the year to March 2023 we built 210,320 dwellings — which is not enough, but still a lot. Design-wise most were mediocre and many were downright ugly — so lack of beauty is not the deal breaker that it ought to be.
My second reason is that when a developer does bother to draw up a top-quality masterplan, it’s often thrown back in their faces.
A prime example is the Duchy of Cornwall’s South East Faversham scheme — which would add 2,500 homes to the town of Faversham in Kent. As one might expect from the pioneers of Poundbury, the design is exemplary — incorporating traditional architecture, affordable homes, and well-integrated green space. T
he reception should have been rapturous. Local and national government leaders ought to be queuing up to fast track the scheme through the planning process. Indeed, ministers should be sitting down with Duchy representatives asking them what they need to replicate the project in towns across the land.
But what the developers were actually met with was a barrage of hostile headlines. “Anger at King Charles’ plan to build an ‘ideal town’ in Kent: locals lash out” screamed the Daily Mail. It then followed up with “Prince William dragged into a planning row”. There was similar from the Mirror, the Metro and the BBC.
And let’s not forget the Telegraph — always happy to feature free marketeers like Liz Truss and David Frost, but swift to join the “anti-growth coalition” on housing matters. However, the first prize for hysteria goes to The Times, which conjured up a scene from the reign of Richard II: “Medieval market town revolts over royal plans”.
One month on from this mainstream media freak-out, there’s a less fevered account in Building Design. The report reveals that at the time that the issue blew-up, there were “fewer than thirty” objections to the planning application. The press coverage has elicited a few more since, but as Nicholas Boys Smith of Create Streets commented: “if people really were up in arms you’d be in the hundreds, if not thousands.”
Also, it’s not as if the Duchy has suddenly sprung the scheme on an unsuspecting local populace. There have been years of close consultation with residents (though that too was met with hostile press coverage).
Bad publicity creates political risks. The easy way out for panicking politicians, whether at the local or national level, is to pull the plug on the most prominent projects. That’s a major disincentive to ambition. After all, why invest in design and consultation if the work gets wasted and you cop a load of abuse in the process? It’s a system that favours the cynical scatter-gun approach to development — i.e. propose a load of interchangeable, identikit schemes at various sites in the hope that some of them get through the planning process.
It’s a formula for mediocrity that was described in a Policy Exchange pamphlet as “sequential development” – the spamming of urban peripheries with smallish estates that provide living space, but little else of value to the community.
In place of spam, we need beef: development on a scale that allows the deployment of significant resources for top-quality architecture, infrastructure, and amenities.
For beef to become standard we need major planning reform. Indeed, we need to turn the system upside down — or rather the right way up. Schemes like Faversham South East or Nansledan or Poundbury should begin with the presumption of planning permission — thus reducing commercial risks and re-directing resources into positive activities like amenity provision or biodiversity improvements. Instead of delaying or complicating the planning process, residents, public bodies and NGOs would be invited to make an upfront contribution to the master planning of the development — getting it right the first time instead of trying to make time-consuming corrections later on.
There also needs to be a recognition that, full-on regeneration aside, new development always involves sacrifice. As in Faversham, we have to be prepared to lose open countryside. Every community should be upfront about what it is willing to give up to grow.
But why should communities agree to grow at all? Why shouldn’t they fight the developers every step of the way — conceding the occasional crappy cul-de-sac where they must, but resisting major expansions.
Well, for one thing, the master planning of new urban quarters is the surest way of getting top-quality townscape in return for the loss of landscape. However, a political quid pro quo is also required. Communities that accept Faversham-style developments, should be rewarded. They should get more control over planning policy not less. Having beefed up their housing provision, they should have the power to stop the spam of low-quality piecemeal development. As long as the overall supply of new homes goes over and above a given baseline — the community should decide what gets built and where.
So how close are we to implementing such a policy? Michael Gove took a big step forward last year when he unveiled proposals for the expansion of Cambridge. Unfortunately, the Gove era has arrived too late. If there’s to be a major reform to the planning system any time soon, then these will likely be Labour reforms. Such are the penalties of Tory inaction.
Labour’s latest bright idea is to redefine “low quality” parts of the green belt as “grey belt” — on which new housing would be permitted. It’s the sort of thing that’s meant to sound like smart policy, but isn’t. Such land does exist, but mostly in small patches. A “disused petrol station in Tottenham” was given as an example. It’s absurd to “protect” such sites under the green belt heading — but they’re not big enough to build garden communities on a game-changing scale.
For that, we need sites covering tens or hundreds of acres — most of which will be green not “brown “or grey”. Freeing up this much land requires political courage, not gimmicks. Most of all, it requires a government willing to strike grand bargains with local communities.
Contrary to the NIMBY caricature, the British people are willing to accept new development. But if we want them to accept more of it, then ministers must offer them more in return. More beauty is certainly part of the bargain, but so is more money and more power.
Time to start negotiating.
The post Peter Franklin: A memo to future ministers. Building enough houses requires beef not spam. appeared first on Conservative Home.
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Author: Peter Franklin
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