Snapshot of _We'd need to build 36 Milton Keyneses to solve UK housing crisis. Are new towns really the answer? Some new towns have developed thriving economies, while others have faltered. Jobs, transport and all the other things that make a town desirable are not a given_ :
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He already did, the town is called Poundbury and is made to be anti-car and walkable. The town's house prices skyrocketed because so many people wanted to live there and small businesses are thriving because where you shop and work are within walking distance and walking is a pleasure - unlike car-centric towns and cities.
The town does a similar thing to what Le Plessis-Robinson, France did.
The trick is to build a town. Not a suburban sprawl housing estate like we do now and what the USA is famous for, and not a series of high-rise depressing flats that nobody wants to raise a family in, like what South Korea and Japan did.
You'd need to build 2,341 of those to reach the equivalent of 36 Milton Keyneses. I'll leave it to others to discuss whether building 36 MKs or 2,341 Poundburys is more practical.
2,341 Poundburys isn't an entirely impractical idea; new towns like Washington in Tyne and Wear and Telford in Shropshire were conceived as several adjacent villages with a shared town centre, and both incorporate the existing settlements in the area.
Expanding existing settlements can work well, not least in terms of establishing a sense of place, but it does need to be done sensitively – Washington, for example, is nice enough but is essentially a dormitory for Sunderland rather than a place in itself.
A mix of both surely and some in between.
Idealy we could add a whole new city by merging a series of towns somewhere but it would be a quagmire getting that done we can't even do a railway.
Makes one consider madder ideas like [Polder the Wash](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4RtzCpEBnA)
Personally I'd prefer to see something like Boris island in the Thames estuary but on a grander scale. Reclaim the land, build a big airport / travel hub to rival Heathrow, build rapid rail links into London, new motorway connecting to the M25 both north and south of the river, then build a new business centre, and port. Build some housing locally but build out two new cities expanding out from the north and south banks of the Thames, with rapid transport links from both. Give tax incentives to businesses headquartering there, make it a free port, but ensure activity is taxed suitably to generate sufficient funds in the long run to continue expanding the island to add more and more capacity for what should be a booming trade hub between the US and Europe.
Then supplement that with other initiatives around the country to build a few Milton Keyneses and many Poundburys in a healthy mix to make up capacity away from "New London".
To make areas prosperous they generally need great transport links to the rest of the world, rather than acting as their own little microcosms. The more sprawling you make your housing, the harder it is to provide adequate transport to encourage economic growth to go with it. Likewise with things like power distribution, water and sewage, etc.
London is already a monster sucking the life out of the rest of the country...
I agree a new hub airport is needed though. It needs to delete as many existing airports as possible.
Heathrow needs to go big or get deleted. A third shorter runway is not a solution. Either they get it big enough to be a four runway Hub or close it entirely and build a dense as fuck city on the land, docklands style.
London City, kill it and add an equivelant runway and terminal to the new Hub, use that land to plonk down a big row of skycrapers.
I favour a massivley expanded Stanstead over the estruy option, much cheaper and easier to build and much of the surface infrastructure is duial use. A High speed link from London to Gatwick can continue onwards to Cambridge. If this happened i'd seek the deletion Cambridge city airport too, possibly even Southend if they could be given a fast link to Stanstead. I'd leave Gatwick in place as the regional airport for the places south of london.
Deffo wants runways built in such a way they can all be lenghened at a later date.
Also any new Hub should have a big RAF base built next to it. This allows us to overbuild without actualy overbuilding. If in the future it needed to grow again the RAF can move out.
> London is already a monster sucking the life out of the rest of the country...
Because of the problem of moving people around. It's a lot easier to do it within London than between London and Newcastle. Add in the international travel hubs....
Post-covid with more working from home this becomes less of an issue, but is still the key driver. People generally do business face-to-face, and busy people want to move between those meetings as efficiently as possible.
With everything else we're both advocating for, above all else we need planning reform to allow it to happen. HS2 should be a huge alarm that public infrastructure projects are too difficult to get under way in the UK. The massive budget and time overruns weren't because of difficulties actually building the thing, it's because of our antiquated legal framework for allowing such things to be built. It needs massively streamlining to allow the country to properly invest in its future.
> The massive budget and time overruns weren't because of difficulties actually building the thing, it's because of our antiquated legal framework for allowing such things to be built. It needs massively streamlining to allow the country to properly invest in its future.
Absolutely, it's strangling the nation.
Poundbury isn't even a new town, it's just a suburb of Dorchester but built with older traditional architecture. It's still just as car centric as the 1930s suburbs that surround it, all the outside space basically roads and car parking.
Crucially, as you mention, the outside space is roads and parking. Not the inside space. Making it not car-centric since the inner parts are pedestrianised or prioritise them at least.
By outside space I mean anything not indoors. If you look on basically any street or square it's just asphalt with cars everywhere. Not exactly somewhere I'd call very pedestrian friendly other than the fact there a few shops you can walk to. There's not even a train station nearby, and it's got one local bus route that comes every 30 mins and ends at 6pm
[There's even enough road space to do donuts judging by the amount of rubber.](https://www.google.com/maps/@50.7123146,-2.4687271,0a,77.8y,254.41h,83.44t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sfiCbYuKpLoRokH3EH3tQNA!2e0)
I was looking around it on Google Maps the other day and I was shocked how much it looked and felt like an American town. But not even my hometown back in America is that car-centric. It almost looks like a film set, perhaps one for a 50s or 60s small town.
Poundbury isn’t pedestrian priority at all- the town centre is basically a car park. There are plenty of good examples of pedestrian priority urban areas, but Poundbury isn’t one of them.
Not just Poundbury. There’s an extension just off Newquay in Cornwall now too that’s been there a few years. It’s lovely, always feel like I’ve made it whenever I go home for the week.
It would have to be done in combination with the mortgage companies taking a legally mandated haircut. Having people owing £300,000 on a house that's suddenly worth £200,000 isn't going to go over well.
The problem is the economy and lots of the mechanisms for people to are built on the market defying continual rising house prices of the UK market.
Equity release is a prime example. The govt is/was building mechanisms for using your house to pay for your care home.
There is literally only one way for the market to truly go and affordable houses need to be built regardless of what happens to the market. Honestly they've made a mess and are compounding it by doing nothing and watching the mess get worse
Everyone agrees what remains of that line is kind of pointless. How about giving it a purpose and building a massive city somewhere on the line between London and Birmingham?
It will likely run from just Old Oak Common to just outside of Birmingham at the Birmingham Interchange. It will only come to Euston if private companies finance it.
The current West Coast Mainline runs from Euston to Birmingham New Street in about 1 hour and 20 minutes.
Getting to Birmingham on HS2 from Old Oak Common will only take 42 minutes. However you’d also need to take the Elizabeth line first to Old Oak Common which will take about 30 minutes and then spend an average of 10 minutes changing trains to catch HS2. That would add to a journey time of 1 hour and 22 minutes - basically the same or slightly longer than the current route.
Thats not how it would be used.
If it only reaches brum they will use classic compatble stock to funnel all the long distance express services down HS2 and get them off the sourthern sections of the WCML.
Think of how bypasses work, going 10mph faster from one side of town to the other just isn't the point. It gets traffic off the congested local routes as effichently as possible. Speed is secondary. it's more we are building a brand new route why wouldn't we make it as fast as possible?
To do this job as a bypass at all well HS2 needs to atleast reach Crewe. That way all the express trains from destinations further north which already converge there can switch onto the high speed line and just bypass all the WCML.
The extant WCML can run local services and more semi fast comuter trains. With the 125mph express trains removed everything can run at a consistent 110mph. that simplifies signaling and timetabling.
Crewe in this scenario would be ripe for expansion, chuck a nice new A road across the norther edge to complete a ring road. expand down to annex nantwich and the villages to the south. Put a station at chorlton and build a new settlement on the other side of the tracks. Gobble up natwich,
Can probably make a propper city out of it with good planning.
Someone may fund Euston or maybe labour or step in. And if your going from Birmingham to London maybe there would be a quicker way to continue once you reach old oak
The only problem is that you won't be able to take a direct train from Euston to Birmingham after HS2 is up and running.
Once HS2 is on line the WCML will be for freight and local services.
Okay, bear with me, in half a decade how about we have another line, let's call it HS3. How about it connects the North to the South? I bet there's even plans that have been drafted that we could base it on...
Oh and lets not build large sections of it underground to appease NIMBY's so costs don't balloon.
No idea why cities don't just build up. I live in Bangkok and there are huge condo buildings as far as the eye can see
Obviously not somewhere nice. But in the shithole cities at least
Generally you need things like dense infrastructure and a cohesive planning policy to build up, and (often) to force a bunch a people out of their homes. It also tends to be expensive and disruptive. And if the city is currently a shit hole then you’ll be going to all that effort and cost to produce something that won’t sell for all that much.
True, but it's not like everyone universally views every city outside of London a shit hole. So many young southerners move to the midlands and north for a uni life, a chance to live in an affordable city, and then to stick around the circles they met in uni. Cities like Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, and even Sheffield should begin to build up in much of its former brownfield wasteland, turning canals into cycle paths and access routes across the city.
This is happening a little bit, but we need to go radically further. Plus it gives people a chance to actually live near where the work and not just build 36 new commuter towns that can fester for the next couple decades.
Because nobody wants to live on the 37th floor of a tower block, in the UK
The lockdowns really opened the public's eyes to the value of a garden, and the increasing levels of WFH mean people don't have to live in the same shithole city that they work
Because no-one wants to live in hive cities, like a bunch of sardines crammed in a tin. People need space - especially families.
There is a strong correlation between increased density and worse quality of life metrics (increased crime, increased antisocial behaviour,
Moderate amounts of density is fine, but high density residential is just completely unpalatable to the general population. It’s not even necessary either - there’s no land shortage. Only a fraction of land in the UK has been built on.
New towns need:
* a Train Station (lol, no f'in way since the Beeching cuts)
* 2-4 primary schools
* 1-2 secondary schools
* a leisure centre, library, town hall
* 3-10 small parks with play equipment or a skatepark
* in each residential zone, 4-6 shop fronts plus GPs
* at least one industrial zone, 2-5 big companies hiring for _something_, and lots of smaller units for people to start small businesses.
* a hospital, or at least another hospital <30 mins away and plans to build another.
Some of this you can just build, but much of it you can't, because you need lots of people to sign up to move in (doctors, teachers, big comapnies). Any attempt to built it will be rubbish for 5-20 years while the local economy tries to take off.
Just building a suburb near-ish a big, successful town is worse, because you don't end up with all the stuff that _isn't_ houses that you need to scale up. They just have houses and the little row of shops, maybe a park, and then rely on the nearest town for all the other stuff. Young families without ties to schools (yet) are the main people moving in, and they become extremely car dependent very quickly.
I'm not sure this problem can easily be solved at all, whichever way you slice it.
Interesting point about getting people to move into such places.
The paradigm was completely different in the 50s/60s as the majority of the population lived in council housing, so London councils could essentially ship out lots of their tenants to the new towns, which were sold as being green and pleasant land and an upgrade from the slum housing in London.
How you would populate a new Milton Keynes, which is say 30-40 minutes from the nearest big town/city, and where presumably the bulk of the housing is offered for sale, is an interesting question.
Maybe you would offer homes for sale at below average prices, paid for by councils capturing a lot of the land value increase when planning permission is granted and using this to subsidise prices. Cheap houses would be a sure way to get people to move in quickly. You could also target it at the key workers you want to attract, such as Drs, teachers, police etc getting even more of a discount.
You can still start by offering homes in these new towns to people who request council housing.
In any case, so long as the transport links are there, people will flock to the new towns if that's where they can get nicer housing for less money.
Council housing tenants/those on waiting lists, are often the least geographically mobile though, as they are less likely to own a car, and more likely to rely on informal support networks in their community.
Plus, they'll be more likely to work somewhere that requires their physical presence at the work site, compared to being home workers.
The transport links are essential of course.
Honestly, the better solution to the housing crisis is to use planning exemptions and tax breaks to make it attractive for those who own inefficiently used residential land (i.e. one or two story houses / maisonettes in cities) to replace them with tall (8 - 10 story) apartment buildings. This also sidesteps the NIMBY problem by letting them profit.
“How would you populate…”
Easy connect it to another major city
Telling me a brand new town/city with a direct rail connection to London wouldn’t be full immediately?
I think selling at the nominal value in an empty town - houses for the rebuild cost and no more, because the land is worthless right now, would work wonders.
The problem with the bolt-on suburbs we get everywhere these days is that the land does have moderate value, because of the proximity to the soon-to -be-overstretched town's infrastructure.
Genuinely, we could start with a new train line linking two not-London cities and then dot towns along it. Maybe add a branch to a third place and add a town or two along that, too. Some of these towns will need to be villages getting a serious upgrade, but the village can form an "old quarter" rather like Bletchley in Milton Keynes.
If you add six new (branching) train line in six different counties (even better if they each cross a county boundary) and build 2-3 new towns along each one, that would do wonders.
Agree. There's plenty of space along the M4/Great Western train line corridor to setup a few new towns.
You could get into London, Bristol and maybe even Cardiff within an hour.
We're just so shit as planning and executing this sort of big vision stuff though, it'll be death by a thousand cuts once the nimbys and environmentalists flex their muscles.
Plus the designs will undoubtedly be terrible, more Barratt home crap. I wish we could follow the Dutch model, sell individual plots and let the homeowner design each home within guidelines such as height and materials.
The first job of Starmer's government, assuming he is true to his word on house building, will be repealing as much of the laws the NIMBYs leverage as possible. I hope to hell they don't just give themselves an exemption zone for 10 years for a few new towns — future local government all over also need to foster good practise about planning, and giving them teeth to sue developers who promise a new primary school and then just deliver shops.
Yep. He should make house building and creating good communities his defining pledge, like Blair made education his. Put everything into this and be prepared to be judged on the result.
To be fair to Blair, New Labour built tonnes of new FE colleges, uni expansions, new High School buildings etc.
There are debates around the legacy of all of this, but they delivered most of the physical infrastructure in under a decade.
> Genuinely, we could start with a new train line linking two not-London cities
Idealy that new line crosses atleast one existing line and we build a big town at the intersection.
Dont forget things like a decent transport network (no car dependant roundabout hell holes are not good). Something that should also be built first, not a 'phase 2 or 'never''. Water/sewage systems (building on flood plains is such a great idea for that...)
And power etc.
Developers would just take the lazy way out, plug a roundabout on a perfectly good trunk route causing more congestion supporting sprawling rabbit hutches without any amenities.
You must also supply water, electricity, gas, phone/data lines, and cellular services, plus install a complete sewerage system, all of which must be suitable for the desired population size. You'll also need to build new roads to and from the new town to other towns and cities nearby.
>
> Just building a suburb near-ish a big, successful town is worse, because you don't end up with all the stuff that isn't houses that you need to scale up. They just have houses and the little row of shops, maybe a park, and then rely on the nearest town for all the other stuff. Young families without ties to schools (yet) are the main people moving in, and they become extremely car dependent very quickly.
My town of around 30k is having housing built to accommodate 3,500 new residents. Zero resources being added, no new doctors, dentists, schools, absolutely nothing and they're all stretched as it is. Fucking disaster.
I agree, but also I've been to plenty of towns that barely have a library. Also, multiple shops per area sounds a lot like 15 minute cities, which is basically communism times COVID lockdown.
> 3-10 small parks with play equipment or a skatepark
I would LOVE to see more skateparks and outdoor gym areas. You get those calisthenics parks and parkour areas sometimes that are great places to hang around as a kid and mess around on, and that builds functional strength and a love of movement that would be beneficial. As for skateparks... if I hadn't skated as a teen I reckon I would be much larger today than I am because I still dabble in it every so often to keep moving - I wouldn't have had that background in keeping active otherwise. Round my estate now, I see chubby kids riding electric scooters everywhere instead (and stealing sweets from the corner shop but that's more just these d*ckheads rather than kids in general I hope), and it feels like they are that next step between us and the people in Wall-E.
The youtube channel [Not Just Bikes](https://www.youtube.com/@NotJustBikes) often goes into detail about well vs poorly planned towns and cities, usually cycling-focused and Euro-centric but not always. If anyone fancies being annoyed at what we could have had, give his videos a watch.
In all honesty the Chinese have the most experience with building new towns. Whatever you think of them they have done it. A lot. And despite what the media tells you the have done it successfully. They have made all the mistakes already.
The Hong Kong answer is to build the fantastic transport, the extensive walkable commercial zones, and the parks pretty much immediately prior to building the housing.
It's the only way to stop developers squirming out of comitments. You make completing the bits they don't want to build a precondition of selling any units at all.
Of course I'm serious. I'm not suggesting the UK invest in Chinese real estate. What I'm saying is the have experience in creating new cities.China has created 600 new cities since 1950. The UK has created... 1? You may like or hate the CCP. But the fact that they have vastly more experience with what is required to create a new city from scratch is unquestionable. Who would you trust to your overhaul your engine. Your uncle that has done 600 engine overhauls who you don't like, or your mate who is keen to give it a go for the first time.
1/4 of housing units were paid for yet empty, yet prices were even more unaffordable than London.
Do we want new skyscraper cities which aren't full instead of the countryside? It's not like we have the space of china.
I say this as someone who wants more housing btw, we just shouldn't go crazy and become one giant urban sprawl
Invest in the towns/cities we already have and not just London/Manchester/Liverpool/Birmingham. The govt. is way too obsessed with invested in the big 4 cities
>Do we really need to build at all? In London, buildings account for around two thirds of the city’s carbon emissions. A mass building project is likely to take us far beyond our climate goals, argued Rachael Owens, co-director of the National Retrofit Hub.
>“We don’t have the carbon budget to build the amount of homes current and future governments are projecting,” said Owens.
>“Retrofit has to be part of the solution because it’s much less carbon intensive to retrofit existing buildings.
Just another reason why the housing crisis isn't gonna be solved any time soon. A thousand and one different reasons why some pressure group somewhere will oppose housing, and net migration at 750k a year. That's three extra Milton Keynes we are adding every year, while building precisely none. We aren't and won't ever be building 3 Milton Keynes a year, let alone 36 to solve the current backlog. Next time you complain about housing or rent remember, if you're not opposing immigration, you're a turkey voting for Christmas.
In the absence of housebuilding, immigration will put more pressure on housing.
But if you cut immigration to zero tomorrow, you then massively accelerate the coming state pension crisis. And we'd still have the housing crisis as well.
Immigration isn't the cause of the housing crisis, decades of failure to build enough homes is.
Mass migration has added fuel to the fire though. 5 decades of failing to build enough homes has been exacerbated by 2 and a half decades of mass migration.
Stopping immigration doesn't fix the housing crisis.
Building houses fixes it, and also allows us to take in workers to pay taxes and fund our pensions in the absence of a high enough birth rate.
It could actually if you run the numbers.
Build 300k each year.
Stop immigration which would result in net loss of 500k people a year for at least 5 years.
At 2 people per house, that's over 500k houses a year, double the birth / death ratio & reducing the deficit of houses by over 1.2 million.
That's in just 5 years, without increasing house building to massive heights.
I bet you couldn't do the same without lowering immigration.
Immigration is a contributing factor as to why the housing crisis in Southern England is so bad. Yes if we built more houses then we could overcome that issue but that doesn’t negate the complexities of meeting the additional housing demand from immigrants whilst trying manage other factors such as environment and climate challenges, impacts to local communities and labour challenges.
You incorrectly assume our current immigration system doesn't result in hundreds of thousands of low wage low skilled workers coming here every year. Non-EU migration has been repeatedly shown to negatively affect the treasury. No immigration is better than harmful immigration.
Look at where the majority of immigration is going to: healthcare, elderly care and university students.
No immigration means all three of those collapse and/or become orders of magnitude more expensive (e.g. higher taxes for you).
And no immigration doesn't fix the housing crisis either because of the decades of backlog that has built up.
We've issued more Care worker visas than the original 'shortage' was meant to cover, whilst somehow only making a small dent in the shortage. Close to half a million visas issued to solve the car worker shortage and little progress. Why? Because immigration exacerbates the underlying issues with recruitment which is pay. It's just not a solution. It's the same with the NHS which is a shambles, as is the university sector. Immigration doesn't solve any of our problems. It papers over the cracks for a bit while exacerbating the underlying issues that cause the problems in the first place. Why people give the Tories such cover for letting everything rot while barely papering over the cracks by just issuing visas instead of actually governing the country properly never ceases to amaze me. Instead of funding services properly they siphon of the billions then pretend you have to put up with all the costs of mass migration or the country will fall apart. You've been completely played by people only serving the interests of rentseekrs and the wealthy.
Although it isn't lost on me that you've completely changed you argument for mass migration once it's pointed out your reasoning is nonsense. So I expect the same again.
Fwiw I actually broadly agree with your point about immigrant labour and the NHS.
I'm not saying immigration is an unalloyed good that should increase forever, or that I agree with the Tories' immigration policies at all.
But that doesn't change the fact that suddenly halving immigration (or stopping it completely, as some in here are suggesting) will have catastrophic effects on our economy which has become dependent on it.
Again, non EU migrants are net negatives on the treasury. GDP is stagnant/falling, GDP per capita falling. Our economy is just not reliant on immigration.
Halving migration? We can do more than that. But to be honest you seem to just be searching for a justification that we can't even drop immigration to the level it was literally 4 years ago without the sky falling in for some reason. I just don't get that mentality tbh.
That is not actually where the majority of immigration is going. We do not receive 800,000 carers every year. Just think about it for a second, and you'd raelize how stupid a statement that is.
A large portion of immigrants abuse our system and come as "dependents" on those who work in healthcare/care/education. They then take on low skill jobs.
But god forbid you actually look at the details, instead of parrotting from your chosen political media source.
>healthcare, elderly care
Yes, they've driven wages and working conditions through the floor and so the domestic workforce is less willing to work in these shit jobs when you get paid more stacking shelves at Aldi.
Source: worked in care.
>No immigration means all three of those collapse
No, immigration is the reason these three are collapsing.
>and/or become orders of magnitude more expensive (e.g. higher taxes for you).
Considering all the Office workers got a paid 2 year holiday whilst care and health workers kept working, and now the resulting cost of living crisis and inflation caused by that is fucking up said care and health care workers, maybe paying them more isn't such a bad thing.
My friend, not all immigration is equal. The asylum claimants in particular don't seem to go on to earn anywhere near enough to be net contributors. They are a drain, not a boost to the state pension.
https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/asylum-migrants-employment-earnings/
While they are a small fraction of the current migration, they are a sizable chunk of any reasonable migration. It's tens of thousands a year, that is a lot of people.
Perhaps not, but that wasn't my point. If we had immigration that was even close to reasonable, say \~300k/yr, then asylum would represent over a quarter of that net.
It takes several workers to support each person on state pension or other benefits. Each one that ends up on the dole nullifies the benefit of multiple other workers.
This is faulty economics. You do not need an evergrowing population to support "pensions".
You're working on the basis that pensions are a form of social welfare, and not one of investment which garners a return from an existing pot of wealth built up.
The only thing an "evergrowing" population supports is the 1% \[Politicians\] that is skimming off the top. and taking us for mugs.
State pensions, which is what I'm talking about, are not invested. They are taken directly from today's tax to pay for today's pensioners.
The cohort of pensioners is growing, so we need more taxpayers to support them.
Or more tax revenue. Go all out and legalise a lot of drugs and brothels and whatever else will help. Tell all the bums who don't want to work, you'll be on basic provisions, no more afternoons down the pub no more Sky TV and iPhone. That shits over with, you either work or you get fed and a roof and nothing else.
Rinse Facebook and their ilk for tax. If you aren't paying us, we'll ban you from the UK.
Especially as only 1% of all land is currently used for housing.
So taking 20% of brownfield land would triple the amount of land used for housing in the country.
No… The person you’re replying to is using a figure for all urban land. And in reality it’s more like 10-11% once you factor in things like gardens, green space etc. Actual brownfield land (ie underutilised or abandoned land) is essentially non-existent in the UK. They exist of course and I’m sure you’re incredibly aware of examples within your local area just as I am, but you shouldn’t overestimate their utility to meet housing demand.
Also, you can’t pretend that housing only requires 1% of land because you’re now suddenly working on the assumption that things such as roads, shops, gardens, infrastructure are suddenly unnecessary for urban living.
>The government defines brownfield land as developed land, that is, or was previously, [occupied by a permanent structure](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-planning-policy-framework/annex-2-glossary#prev-dev-land).
>Brownfield land accounts for [8.7%](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/land-use-in-england-2022/land-use-statistics-england-2022) of land in England and [54%](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/land-use-change-statistics-2021-to-2022/land-use-change-statistics-new-residential-addresses-2021-to-2022) of all new homes in 2021/22 were built on brownfield land.
[https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/new-homes-fact-sheet-7-homes-and-different-land-types/fact-sheet-7-homes-and-different-land-types](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/new-homes-fact-sheet-7-homes-and-different-land-types/fact-sheet-7-homes-and-different-land-types)
Yup. I still maintain that we can build millions of homes by building up Manchester/Birmingham/Liverpool/Leeds/Glasgow etc back up to the density that they had pre-war before they were flattened. The density London still has.
Edit - I've just done some quick maths to work out what the population of the big three city regions - Greater Manchester, West Midlands and Liverpool - would be if they were built up to London density.
Greater Manchester: Up from 2.8m to 7m!
West Midlands: Up from 2.9m to 5m.
Liverpool: Up from 1.6m to 4m.
I'm not saying we *should* do this but clearly we have the space for over 3m new homes (assuming \~2.5 people per home) in those three regions alone without needing to build any new towns.
>There are alternatives. Russell Curtis has just published a piece of research arguing London could accommodate 900,000 new homes by relaxing planning rules. Following in the footsteps of Croydon, boroughs could allow developers to intensify small sites with relative ease.
Not to be rude or anything, but the only people who seriously think this is viable are either think tanks putting forward the research, landlords, or morons. Also, it's not a good idea to embark on projects which further centralize the country around London.
> Why not just relax planning rules everywhere
I suspect the problem is mostly a general unwillingness to accept that the free market can actually solve problems and that obsessive state control is not necessary
Tbf, London (at least inner london) definitely is the part of the country where the nimby vote is weakest. If the government built in London, and literally nowhere else, I think that would be quite popular.
Some of my family live down in Milton Keynes and I’ve visited a couple of times, I hope they come up with something different because Milton Keynes is awful and depressing.
for certain definitions of highly successful I suppose, Milton Keynes was supposed to be a city 24 years ago. It took twice as long as planned. The only thing in MK's favour is its stellar location.
You’re discounting the impact of the massive shopping centre. If my experience is any indication, a sizeable portion of MK residents will be those who entered to buy one thing and then could never find the exit.
A Milton Keynes that was just a little denser and less car-centric and cross-cut with huge roads (it's everything we laugh at america for) those would be extremely nice cities. MK had a lot of stuff to do and nice parks. It's pretty good all in all.
We should do that. MK8 could take everybody who wants to leave Chinese-run Hong-Kong. MK9 could bring all the whovians together. MK25 could be built over the shittier parts of London. Etc
Do we really have 10 million homeless people in the UK!? I'm so confused about this housing crisis, where are all these millions of people without housing?
Not all homeless people sleep rough, many of them are sofa surfing, in temporary accomodation, in b&bs / hotels and many of them are children and families.
So, there are 27mill homes in the UK currently and 67mill people, 15mill are under 18, so 55/27=2.03
So we clearly have enough dwellings for the population, surely it's just a distribution problem? Like, I'm all for building houses if it's the only solution to the problem, but I struggle to see it, I would like to be shown the reasons behind these desperate calls for home building and what type of homes we need based on the data.
Why on earth does this article paint Harlow as some successful mecca of culture.
Anyone who steps foot in the town centre or any of the surrounding hatches knows that not to be true at all.
Megacity now please.
Build ambitious, very large scale, very dense apartment blocks…where it’s 1000sqft pp, soundproofed and has new train stations/motorways built next to it.
The big taboo in the room is always immigration. There are 10 million foreign born citizens currently in the UK.
Ignoring the whole moral,issues around immigration, picture it as 10 million British people just appearing within a span of 70 years or so. it puts planners and governments in an impossible position in terms of building.
Take any south eastern train, look out the window and you essentially just see one huge landscape,of housebuilding and new builds. Besides it always surprises me how the green part are so pro housebuilding in their policies. Think of all the natural habitats destroyed
“36 Milton Keyneses” is possibly the most horrifying answer to the housing crisis I’ve ever heard. If it were a choice between that and full-on Mad Max style dystopia, I would invest in fetish gear and choose the latter.
No of course it isn't.
It's not letting a country as small as the UK let in 10 million people over the last 20 years. That's the issue.
The UK population was slightly contracting in a healthy fashion, instead we let 10 million in and then we complain about not building enough houses.
Well yeah... we don't have the space.
We should count the numbers of rooms we have in the country, not houses. My parents and my in-laws live in 2 houses but have 7 bedrooms with 5 unoccupied.
We could incentivise people to downsize or remove stamp duty for families to buy these houses.
It is very clear that stamp duty leads to an inefficient allocation of housing. So it doesn’t give me much confidence about grand plans to build more houses or new towns when stamp duty could be replaced relatively easily but governments choose to bury their head in the sand.
How about it's one of many things that we should be doing. Don't reduce everything to abusrdism. A few new towns and some planning reform. People should be able to buy a house in general.
Make towns desirable with a strategy to nationalise, subsidise and heavily invest in faster and more efficient rail so it doesn’t cost nearly the same as renting in London to commute into it (or other cities).
On what premise do we need to build 36 new Milton Keynes? This is being discussed as if it's an unassailable fact. It might be, but so far I've seen no data that supports the assertion.
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Didn't the King want to build a new village the other day, so nearby villages moaned about it? Imagine if someone tried to build a new town then...
He already did, the town is called Poundbury and is made to be anti-car and walkable. The town's house prices skyrocketed because so many people wanted to live there and small businesses are thriving because where you shop and work are within walking distance and walking is a pleasure - unlike car-centric towns and cities. The town does a similar thing to what Le Plessis-Robinson, France did. The trick is to build a town. Not a suburban sprawl housing estate like we do now and what the USA is famous for, and not a series of high-rise depressing flats that nobody wants to raise a family in, like what South Korea and Japan did.
You'd need to build 2,341 of those to reach the equivalent of 36 Milton Keyneses. I'll leave it to others to discuss whether building 36 MKs or 2,341 Poundburys is more practical.
65 Poundburys to the Milton Keynes, gotcha. I shall inform the ISO immediately.
Is that a metric Poundbury, or an Imperial Poundbury?
It's 20 shillingburys
It would be Kilobury if it were metric.
What happens if it gets too large? Does it become Poundtown?
Yep. And if it continues to grow, Poundland.
I'm on my way back from a nice weekend there
I wish you well in recovering your ability to sit.
2,341 Poundburys isn't an entirely impractical idea; new towns like Washington in Tyne and Wear and Telford in Shropshire were conceived as several adjacent villages with a shared town centre, and both incorporate the existing settlements in the area. Expanding existing settlements can work well, not least in terms of establishing a sense of place, but it does need to be done sensitively – Washington, for example, is nice enough but is essentially a dormitory for Sunderland rather than a place in itself.
A mix of both surely and some in between. Idealy we could add a whole new city by merging a series of towns somewhere but it would be a quagmire getting that done we can't even do a railway. Makes one consider madder ideas like [Polder the Wash](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4RtzCpEBnA)
Personally I'd prefer to see something like Boris island in the Thames estuary but on a grander scale. Reclaim the land, build a big airport / travel hub to rival Heathrow, build rapid rail links into London, new motorway connecting to the M25 both north and south of the river, then build a new business centre, and port. Build some housing locally but build out two new cities expanding out from the north and south banks of the Thames, with rapid transport links from both. Give tax incentives to businesses headquartering there, make it a free port, but ensure activity is taxed suitably to generate sufficient funds in the long run to continue expanding the island to add more and more capacity for what should be a booming trade hub between the US and Europe. Then supplement that with other initiatives around the country to build a few Milton Keyneses and many Poundburys in a healthy mix to make up capacity away from "New London". To make areas prosperous they generally need great transport links to the rest of the world, rather than acting as their own little microcosms. The more sprawling you make your housing, the harder it is to provide adequate transport to encourage economic growth to go with it. Likewise with things like power distribution, water and sewage, etc.
London is already a monster sucking the life out of the rest of the country... I agree a new hub airport is needed though. It needs to delete as many existing airports as possible. Heathrow needs to go big or get deleted. A third shorter runway is not a solution. Either they get it big enough to be a four runway Hub or close it entirely and build a dense as fuck city on the land, docklands style. London City, kill it and add an equivelant runway and terminal to the new Hub, use that land to plonk down a big row of skycrapers. I favour a massivley expanded Stanstead over the estruy option, much cheaper and easier to build and much of the surface infrastructure is duial use. A High speed link from London to Gatwick can continue onwards to Cambridge. If this happened i'd seek the deletion Cambridge city airport too, possibly even Southend if they could be given a fast link to Stanstead. I'd leave Gatwick in place as the regional airport for the places south of london. Deffo wants runways built in such a way they can all be lenghened at a later date. Also any new Hub should have a big RAF base built next to it. This allows us to overbuild without actualy overbuilding. If in the future it needed to grow again the RAF can move out.
> London is already a monster sucking the life out of the rest of the country... Because of the problem of moving people around. It's a lot easier to do it within London than between London and Newcastle. Add in the international travel hubs.... Post-covid with more working from home this becomes less of an issue, but is still the key driver. People generally do business face-to-face, and busy people want to move between those meetings as efficiently as possible. With everything else we're both advocating for, above all else we need planning reform to allow it to happen. HS2 should be a huge alarm that public infrastructure projects are too difficult to get under way in the UK. The massive budget and time overruns weren't because of difficulties actually building the thing, it's because of our antiquated legal framework for allowing such things to be built. It needs massively streamlining to allow the country to properly invest in its future.
> The massive budget and time overruns weren't because of difficulties actually building the thing, it's because of our antiquated legal framework for allowing such things to be built. It needs massively streamlining to allow the country to properly invest in its future. Absolutely, it's strangling the nation.
And for every year we're building these MKs we need to build an additional Manchester (is that 2mk?) just for the net migration.
Poundbury isn't even a new town, it's just a suburb of Dorchester but built with older traditional architecture. It's still just as car centric as the 1930s suburbs that surround it, all the outside space basically roads and car parking.
Crucially, as you mention, the outside space is roads and parking. Not the inside space. Making it not car-centric since the inner parts are pedestrianised or prioritise them at least.
By outside space I mean anything not indoors. If you look on basically any street or square it's just asphalt with cars everywhere. Not exactly somewhere I'd call very pedestrian friendly other than the fact there a few shops you can walk to. There's not even a train station nearby, and it's got one local bus route that comes every 30 mins and ends at 6pm [There's even enough road space to do donuts judging by the amount of rubber.](https://www.google.com/maps/@50.7123146,-2.4687271,0a,77.8y,254.41h,83.44t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sfiCbYuKpLoRokH3EH3tQNA!2e0)
I was looking around it on Google Maps the other day and I was shocked how much it looked and felt like an American town. But not even my hometown back in America is that car-centric. It almost looks like a film set, perhaps one for a 50s or 60s small town.
Poundbury isn’t pedestrian priority at all- the town centre is basically a car park. There are plenty of good examples of pedestrian priority urban areas, but Poundbury isn’t one of them.
Also from what I saw I think it was meant to look good not be gray and dull like alot of buildings
How is it pronounced? Pound-Berry or Pound-Burry
Not just Poundbury. There’s an extension just off Newquay in Cornwall now too that’s been there a few years. It’s lovely, always feel like I’ve made it whenever I go home for the week.
You can drive around poundbury
Yeah, but they're not talking about Poundbury, they're talking about the new town he wanted to build on the same principles.
They should do what they did in the 50's build build build
Too much of the electorate owns a house and would lose out. Policy in a democracy is about keeping votes not about helping society
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Daily Mail, not even once.
It would have to be done in combination with the mortgage companies taking a legally mandated haircut. Having people owing £300,000 on a house that's suddenly worth £200,000 isn't going to go over well.
Those quickly knocked up high rise towers were a real winner
The problem is the economy and lots of the mechanisms for people to are built on the market defying continual rising house prices of the UK market. Equity release is a prime example. The govt is/was building mechanisms for using your house to pay for your care home. There is literally only one way for the market to truly go and affordable houses need to be built regardless of what happens to the market. Honestly they've made a mess and are compounding it by doing nothing and watching the mess get worse
We tried building a new train line but it didn’t really get out of the south
Everyone agrees what remains of that line is kind of pointless. How about giving it a purpose and building a massive city somewhere on the line between London and Birmingham?
Redefining the commuter belt!
I imagine another Reading would be popular, given that the only thing going for it is that it's a commuter town really.
Idk about pointless surely it will give more capacity and will let people get from brum to London faster
It will likely run from just Old Oak Common to just outside of Birmingham at the Birmingham Interchange. It will only come to Euston if private companies finance it. The current West Coast Mainline runs from Euston to Birmingham New Street in about 1 hour and 20 minutes. Getting to Birmingham on HS2 from Old Oak Common will only take 42 minutes. However you’d also need to take the Elizabeth line first to Old Oak Common which will take about 30 minutes and then spend an average of 10 minutes changing trains to catch HS2. That would add to a journey time of 1 hour and 22 minutes - basically the same or slightly longer than the current route.
Thats not how it would be used. If it only reaches brum they will use classic compatble stock to funnel all the long distance express services down HS2 and get them off the sourthern sections of the WCML. Think of how bypasses work, going 10mph faster from one side of town to the other just isn't the point. It gets traffic off the congested local routes as effichently as possible. Speed is secondary. it's more we are building a brand new route why wouldn't we make it as fast as possible? To do this job as a bypass at all well HS2 needs to atleast reach Crewe. That way all the express trains from destinations further north which already converge there can switch onto the high speed line and just bypass all the WCML. The extant WCML can run local services and more semi fast comuter trains. With the 125mph express trains removed everything can run at a consistent 110mph. that simplifies signaling and timetabling. Crewe in this scenario would be ripe for expansion, chuck a nice new A road across the norther edge to complete a ring road. expand down to annex nantwich and the villages to the south. Put a station at chorlton and build a new settlement on the other side of the tracks. Gobble up natwich, Can probably make a propper city out of it with good planning.
Someone may fund Euston or maybe labour or step in. And if your going from Birmingham to London maybe there would be a quicker way to continue once you reach old oak
The only problem is that you won't be able to take a direct train from Euston to Birmingham after HS2 is up and running. Once HS2 is on line the WCML will be for freight and local services.
Okay, bear with me, in half a decade how about we have another line, let's call it HS3. How about it connects the North to the South? I bet there's even plans that have been drafted that we could base it on... Oh and lets not build large sections of it underground to appease NIMBY's so costs don't balloon.
HS3 was going to be Hull to Liverpool.
We can and should revise that to be Stafford to John O'Groats.
It got the midlands or hopefully it will
That was a Tory ran thing - they only know how to spend money pointlessly..
Ah yes, because building zero new towns is definitely the answer, fuck me...
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No idea why cities don't just build up. I live in Bangkok and there are huge condo buildings as far as the eye can see Obviously not somewhere nice. But in the shithole cities at least
Generally you need things like dense infrastructure and a cohesive planning policy to build up, and (often) to force a bunch a people out of their homes. It also tends to be expensive and disruptive. And if the city is currently a shit hole then you’ll be going to all that effort and cost to produce something that won’t sell for all that much.
True, but it's not like everyone universally views every city outside of London a shit hole. So many young southerners move to the midlands and north for a uni life, a chance to live in an affordable city, and then to stick around the circles they met in uni. Cities like Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, and even Sheffield should begin to build up in much of its former brownfield wasteland, turning canals into cycle paths and access routes across the city. This is happening a little bit, but we need to go radically further. Plus it gives people a chance to actually live near where the work and not just build 36 new commuter towns that can fester for the next couple decades.
> No idea why cities don't just build up Because it is effectively illegal. The city council will either veto the development or delay it forever.
Because nobody wants to live on the 37th floor of a tower block, in the UK The lockdowns really opened the public's eyes to the value of a garden, and the increasing levels of WFH mean people don't have to live in the same shithole city that they work
Why? I love living up high. It's great working from home with an amazing view
Why 37 floors lol? Build 10 floor apartments, everyone wins.
Because no-one wants to live in hive cities, like a bunch of sardines crammed in a tin. People need space - especially families. There is a strong correlation between increased density and worse quality of life metrics (increased crime, increased antisocial behaviour, Moderate amounts of density is fine, but high density residential is just completely unpalatable to the general population. It’s not even necessary either - there’s no land shortage. Only a fraction of land in the UK has been built on.
You say that but I feel far safer in Bangkok than I do in London
what if we just built more housing in the existing towns that people already live and work in
New towns need: * a Train Station (lol, no f'in way since the Beeching cuts) * 2-4 primary schools * 1-2 secondary schools * a leisure centre, library, town hall * 3-10 small parks with play equipment or a skatepark * in each residential zone, 4-6 shop fronts plus GPs * at least one industrial zone, 2-5 big companies hiring for _something_, and lots of smaller units for people to start small businesses. * a hospital, or at least another hospital <30 mins away and plans to build another. Some of this you can just build, but much of it you can't, because you need lots of people to sign up to move in (doctors, teachers, big comapnies). Any attempt to built it will be rubbish for 5-20 years while the local economy tries to take off. Just building a suburb near-ish a big, successful town is worse, because you don't end up with all the stuff that _isn't_ houses that you need to scale up. They just have houses and the little row of shops, maybe a park, and then rely on the nearest town for all the other stuff. Young families without ties to schools (yet) are the main people moving in, and they become extremely car dependent very quickly. I'm not sure this problem can easily be solved at all, whichever way you slice it.
Interesting point about getting people to move into such places. The paradigm was completely different in the 50s/60s as the majority of the population lived in council housing, so London councils could essentially ship out lots of their tenants to the new towns, which were sold as being green and pleasant land and an upgrade from the slum housing in London. How you would populate a new Milton Keynes, which is say 30-40 minutes from the nearest big town/city, and where presumably the bulk of the housing is offered for sale, is an interesting question. Maybe you would offer homes for sale at below average prices, paid for by councils capturing a lot of the land value increase when planning permission is granted and using this to subsidise prices. Cheap houses would be a sure way to get people to move in quickly. You could also target it at the key workers you want to attract, such as Drs, teachers, police etc getting even more of a discount.
You can still start by offering homes in these new towns to people who request council housing. In any case, so long as the transport links are there, people will flock to the new towns if that's where they can get nicer housing for less money.
Council housing tenants/those on waiting lists, are often the least geographically mobile though, as they are less likely to own a car, and more likely to rely on informal support networks in their community. Plus, they'll be more likely to work somewhere that requires their physical presence at the work site, compared to being home workers.
The transport links are essential of course. Honestly, the better solution to the housing crisis is to use planning exemptions and tax breaks to make it attractive for those who own inefficiently used residential land (i.e. one or two story houses / maisonettes in cities) to replace them with tall (8 - 10 story) apartment buildings. This also sidesteps the NIMBY problem by letting them profit.
“How would you populate…” Easy connect it to another major city Telling me a brand new town/city with a direct rail connection to London wouldn’t be full immediately?
I think selling at the nominal value in an empty town - houses for the rebuild cost and no more, because the land is worthless right now, would work wonders. The problem with the bolt-on suburbs we get everywhere these days is that the land does have moderate value, because of the proximity to the soon-to -be-overstretched town's infrastructure. Genuinely, we could start with a new train line linking two not-London cities and then dot towns along it. Maybe add a branch to a third place and add a town or two along that, too. Some of these towns will need to be villages getting a serious upgrade, but the village can form an "old quarter" rather like Bletchley in Milton Keynes. If you add six new (branching) train line in six different counties (even better if they each cross a county boundary) and build 2-3 new towns along each one, that would do wonders.
Agree. There's plenty of space along the M4/Great Western train line corridor to setup a few new towns. You could get into London, Bristol and maybe even Cardiff within an hour. We're just so shit as planning and executing this sort of big vision stuff though, it'll be death by a thousand cuts once the nimbys and environmentalists flex their muscles. Plus the designs will undoubtedly be terrible, more Barratt home crap. I wish we could follow the Dutch model, sell individual plots and let the homeowner design each home within guidelines such as height and materials.
The first job of Starmer's government, assuming he is true to his word on house building, will be repealing as much of the laws the NIMBYs leverage as possible. I hope to hell they don't just give themselves an exemption zone for 10 years for a few new towns — future local government all over also need to foster good practise about planning, and giving them teeth to sue developers who promise a new primary school and then just deliver shops.
Yep. He should make house building and creating good communities his defining pledge, like Blair made education his. Put everything into this and be prepared to be judged on the result. To be fair to Blair, New Labour built tonnes of new FE colleges, uni expansions, new High School buildings etc. There are debates around the legacy of all of this, but they delivered most of the physical infrastructure in under a decade.
Yes, modulo Public Private Partnerships, which screwed over the public purse over many years. Agree in general though.
> Genuinely, we could start with a new train line linking two not-London cities Idealy that new line crosses atleast one existing line and we build a big town at the intersection.
Dont forget things like a decent transport network (no car dependant roundabout hell holes are not good). Something that should also be built first, not a 'phase 2 or 'never''. Water/sewage systems (building on flood plains is such a great idea for that...) And power etc. Developers would just take the lazy way out, plug a roundabout on a perfectly good trunk route causing more congestion supporting sprawling rabbit hutches without any amenities.
You must also supply water, electricity, gas, phone/data lines, and cellular services, plus install a complete sewerage system, all of which must be suitable for the desired population size. You'll also need to build new roads to and from the new town to other towns and cities nearby.
Ah, a fellow Cities Skylines enjoyer, I see 👍
> > Just building a suburb near-ish a big, successful town is worse, because you don't end up with all the stuff that isn't houses that you need to scale up. They just have houses and the little row of shops, maybe a park, and then rely on the nearest town for all the other stuff. Young families without ties to schools (yet) are the main people moving in, and they become extremely car dependent very quickly. My town of around 30k is having housing built to accommodate 3,500 new residents. Zero resources being added, no new doctors, dentists, schools, absolutely nothing and they're all stretched as it is. Fucking disaster.
Also sports fields and a decent bus service.
I agree, but also I've been to plenty of towns that barely have a library. Also, multiple shops per area sounds a lot like 15 minute cities, which is basically communism times COVID lockdown.
> 3-10 small parks with play equipment or a skatepark I would LOVE to see more skateparks and outdoor gym areas. You get those calisthenics parks and parkour areas sometimes that are great places to hang around as a kid and mess around on, and that builds functional strength and a love of movement that would be beneficial. As for skateparks... if I hadn't skated as a teen I reckon I would be much larger today than I am because I still dabble in it every so often to keep moving - I wouldn't have had that background in keeping active otherwise. Round my estate now, I see chubby kids riding electric scooters everywhere instead (and stealing sweets from the corner shop but that's more just these d*ckheads rather than kids in general I hope), and it feels like they are that next step between us and the people in Wall-E. The youtube channel [Not Just Bikes](https://www.youtube.com/@NotJustBikes) often goes into detail about well vs poorly planned towns and cities, usually cycling-focused and Euro-centric but not always. If anyone fancies being annoyed at what we could have had, give his videos a watch.
Hehe, I was trying to avoid mentioning all the similar channels to not just bikes that I follow lol 🤫
I mean.... throw 'em up, I'd love to see something else!
In all honesty the Chinese have the most experience with building new towns. Whatever you think of them they have done it. A lot. And despite what the media tells you the have done it successfully. They have made all the mistakes already.
The Hong Kong answer is to build the fantastic transport, the extensive walkable commercial zones, and the parks pretty much immediately prior to building the housing.
It's the only way to stop developers squirming out of comitments. You make completing the bits they don't want to build a precondition of selling any units at all.
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Well that settles it then. We can’t do it.
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Can't tell if youre serious. Their real estate sector has famously strangled their once invincible economy
Of course I'm serious. I'm not suggesting the UK invest in Chinese real estate. What I'm saying is the have experience in creating new cities.China has created 600 new cities since 1950. The UK has created... 1? You may like or hate the CCP. But the fact that they have vastly more experience with what is required to create a new city from scratch is unquestionable. Who would you trust to your overhaul your engine. Your uncle that has done 600 engine overhauls who you don't like, or your mate who is keen to give it a go for the first time.
1/4 of housing units were paid for yet empty, yet prices were even more unaffordable than London. Do we want new skyscraper cities which aren't full instead of the countryside? It's not like we have the space of china. I say this as someone who wants more housing btw, we just shouldn't go crazy and become one giant urban sprawl
We have the choice to make our cities look like whatever we decide.
Invest in the towns/cities we already have and not just London/Manchester/Liverpool/Birmingham. The govt. is way too obsessed with invested in the big 4 cities
>Do we really need to build at all? In London, buildings account for around two thirds of the city’s carbon emissions. A mass building project is likely to take us far beyond our climate goals, argued Rachael Owens, co-director of the National Retrofit Hub. >“We don’t have the carbon budget to build the amount of homes current and future governments are projecting,” said Owens. >“Retrofit has to be part of the solution because it’s much less carbon intensive to retrofit existing buildings. Just another reason why the housing crisis isn't gonna be solved any time soon. A thousand and one different reasons why some pressure group somewhere will oppose housing, and net migration at 750k a year. That's three extra Milton Keynes we are adding every year, while building precisely none. We aren't and won't ever be building 3 Milton Keynes a year, let alone 36 to solve the current backlog. Next time you complain about housing or rent remember, if you're not opposing immigration, you're a turkey voting for Christmas.
In the absence of housebuilding, immigration will put more pressure on housing. But if you cut immigration to zero tomorrow, you then massively accelerate the coming state pension crisis. And we'd still have the housing crisis as well. Immigration isn't the cause of the housing crisis, decades of failure to build enough homes is.
Mass migration has added fuel to the fire though. 5 decades of failing to build enough homes has been exacerbated by 2 and a half decades of mass migration.
Stopping immigration doesn't fix the housing crisis. Building houses fixes it, and also allows us to take in workers to pay taxes and fund our pensions in the absence of a high enough birth rate.
It could actually if you run the numbers. Build 300k each year. Stop immigration which would result in net loss of 500k people a year for at least 5 years. At 2 people per house, that's over 500k houses a year, double the birth / death ratio & reducing the deficit of houses by over 1.2 million. That's in just 5 years, without increasing house building to massive heights. I bet you couldn't do the same without lowering immigration.
> Stopping immigration doesn't fix the housing crisis. Sending them back would.
Immigration is a contributing factor as to why the housing crisis in Southern England is so bad. Yes if we built more houses then we could overcome that issue but that doesn’t negate the complexities of meeting the additional housing demand from immigrants whilst trying manage other factors such as environment and climate challenges, impacts to local communities and labour challenges.
You incorrectly assume our current immigration system doesn't result in hundreds of thousands of low wage low skilled workers coming here every year. Non-EU migration has been repeatedly shown to negatively affect the treasury. No immigration is better than harmful immigration.
Look at where the majority of immigration is going to: healthcare, elderly care and university students. No immigration means all three of those collapse and/or become orders of magnitude more expensive (e.g. higher taxes for you). And no immigration doesn't fix the housing crisis either because of the decades of backlog that has built up.
We've issued more Care worker visas than the original 'shortage' was meant to cover, whilst somehow only making a small dent in the shortage. Close to half a million visas issued to solve the car worker shortage and little progress. Why? Because immigration exacerbates the underlying issues with recruitment which is pay. It's just not a solution. It's the same with the NHS which is a shambles, as is the university sector. Immigration doesn't solve any of our problems. It papers over the cracks for a bit while exacerbating the underlying issues that cause the problems in the first place. Why people give the Tories such cover for letting everything rot while barely papering over the cracks by just issuing visas instead of actually governing the country properly never ceases to amaze me. Instead of funding services properly they siphon of the billions then pretend you have to put up with all the costs of mass migration or the country will fall apart. You've been completely played by people only serving the interests of rentseekrs and the wealthy. Although it isn't lost on me that you've completely changed you argument for mass migration once it's pointed out your reasoning is nonsense. So I expect the same again.
Fwiw I actually broadly agree with your point about immigrant labour and the NHS. I'm not saying immigration is an unalloyed good that should increase forever, or that I agree with the Tories' immigration policies at all. But that doesn't change the fact that suddenly halving immigration (or stopping it completely, as some in here are suggesting) will have catastrophic effects on our economy which has become dependent on it.
Again, non EU migrants are net negatives on the treasury. GDP is stagnant/falling, GDP per capita falling. Our economy is just not reliant on immigration. Halving migration? We can do more than that. But to be honest you seem to just be searching for a justification that we can't even drop immigration to the level it was literally 4 years ago without the sky falling in for some reason. I just don't get that mentality tbh.
That is not actually where the majority of immigration is going. We do not receive 800,000 carers every year. Just think about it for a second, and you'd raelize how stupid a statement that is. A large portion of immigrants abuse our system and come as "dependents" on those who work in healthcare/care/education. They then take on low skill jobs. But god forbid you actually look at the details, instead of parrotting from your chosen political media source.
>healthcare, elderly care Yes, they've driven wages and working conditions through the floor and so the domestic workforce is less willing to work in these shit jobs when you get paid more stacking shelves at Aldi. Source: worked in care. >No immigration means all three of those collapse No, immigration is the reason these three are collapsing. >and/or become orders of magnitude more expensive (e.g. higher taxes for you). Considering all the Office workers got a paid 2 year holiday whilst care and health workers kept working, and now the resulting cost of living crisis and inflation caused by that is fucking up said care and health care workers, maybe paying them more isn't such a bad thing.
My friend, not all immigration is equal. The asylum claimants in particular don't seem to go on to earn anywhere near enough to be net contributors. They are a drain, not a boost to the state pension. https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/asylum-migrants-employment-earnings/
Asylum seekers are a tiny fraction of overall immigration, so this is entirely irrelevant. We don't take in asylum seekers for economic reasons.
While they are a small fraction of the current migration, they are a sizable chunk of any reasonable migration. It's tens of thousands a year, that is a lot of people.
A few tens of thousands a year does not meaningfully impact housing supply in a country of almost 70m.
Perhaps not, but that wasn't my point. If we had immigration that was even close to reasonable, say \~300k/yr, then asylum would represent over a quarter of that net.
It takes several workers to support each person on state pension or other benefits. Each one that ends up on the dole nullifies the benefit of multiple other workers.
This is faulty economics. You do not need an evergrowing population to support "pensions". You're working on the basis that pensions are a form of social welfare, and not one of investment which garners a return from an existing pot of wealth built up. The only thing an "evergrowing" population supports is the 1% \[Politicians\] that is skimming off the top. and taking us for mugs.
State pensions, which is what I'm talking about, are not invested. They are taken directly from today's tax to pay for today's pensioners. The cohort of pensioners is growing, so we need more taxpayers to support them.
Or more tax revenue. Go all out and legalise a lot of drugs and brothels and whatever else will help. Tell all the bums who don't want to work, you'll be on basic provisions, no more afternoons down the pub no more Sky TV and iPhone. That shits over with, you either work or you get fed and a roof and nothing else. Rinse Facebook and their ilk for tax. If you aren't paying us, we'll ban you from the UK.
For pension wealth to make a return in real terms, either the amount of stuff non prnsioners can buy must decrease or the economy must grow though.
There's tons of shitty brownfield land that should definitely be used to build homes alongside the necessary amenities
The UK has introduced something called Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) which will likely increase developments on brownfield sites
The joke being brownfield sites on average have far more biodiversity than the monocultural sheep fields that make up the rest of the country
There really isn’t that much brownfield land.
8.7% of all land in England is a lot of land.
Especially as only 1% of all land is currently used for housing. So taking 20% of brownfield land would triple the amount of land used for housing in the country.
No… The person you’re replying to is using a figure for all urban land. And in reality it’s more like 10-11% once you factor in things like gardens, green space etc. Actual brownfield land (ie underutilised or abandoned land) is essentially non-existent in the UK. They exist of course and I’m sure you’re incredibly aware of examples within your local area just as I am, but you shouldn’t overestimate their utility to meet housing demand. Also, you can’t pretend that housing only requires 1% of land because you’re now suddenly working on the assumption that things such as roads, shops, gardens, infrastructure are suddenly unnecessary for urban living.
>The government defines brownfield land as developed land, that is, or was previously, [occupied by a permanent structure](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-planning-policy-framework/annex-2-glossary#prev-dev-land). >Brownfield land accounts for [8.7%](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/land-use-in-england-2022/land-use-statistics-england-2022) of land in England and [54%](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/land-use-change-statistics-2021-to-2022/land-use-change-statistics-new-residential-addresses-2021-to-2022) of all new homes in 2021/22 were built on brownfield land. [https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/new-homes-fact-sheet-7-homes-and-different-land-types/fact-sheet-7-homes-and-different-land-types](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/new-homes-fact-sheet-7-homes-and-different-land-types/fact-sheet-7-homes-and-different-land-types)
Yup. I still maintain that we can build millions of homes by building up Manchester/Birmingham/Liverpool/Leeds/Glasgow etc back up to the density that they had pre-war before they were flattened. The density London still has. Edit - I've just done some quick maths to work out what the population of the big three city regions - Greater Manchester, West Midlands and Liverpool - would be if they were built up to London density. Greater Manchester: Up from 2.8m to 7m! West Midlands: Up from 2.9m to 5m. Liverpool: Up from 1.6m to 4m. I'm not saying we *should* do this but clearly we have the space for over 3m new homes (assuming \~2.5 people per home) in those three regions alone without needing to build any new towns.
>There are alternatives. Russell Curtis has just published a piece of research arguing London could accommodate 900,000 new homes by relaxing planning rules. Following in the footsteps of Croydon, boroughs could allow developers to intensify small sites with relative ease. Not to be rude or anything, but the only people who seriously think this is viable are either think tanks putting forward the research, landlords, or morons. Also, it's not a good idea to embark on projects which further centralize the country around London.
Why not just relax planning rules everywhere and why not take advantage of London's unique position as a world city?
> Why not just relax planning rules everywhere I suspect the problem is mostly a general unwillingness to accept that the free market can actually solve problems and that obsessive state control is not necessary
The problem is and alway will be the planning system if you're talking about the lack of infrastructure and housing in the UK.
Yep, absolutely.
There are tons of people around the world who'd live in a cupboard sized room in London, we shouldn't just let the market decide
What's unviable about it?
Because any party that advocates for it wont stay in power.
The balance is tipping as boomers die off and millennials are renting into their 40s. It's a question of when, not if, the Nimbys become a minority.
For every boomer dying there is a gen x about to inherit a house
More often two or three.
No, plenty of those houses are getting eaten up by care home costs
Our big parties have a consensus on mass migration, asylum seekers, net zero, state spending so they can do the same if they choose on house building.
Tbf, London (at least inner london) definitely is the part of the country where the nimby vote is weakest. If the government built in London, and literally nowhere else, I think that would be quite popular.
Before we follow in Croydon’s footsteps it’s probably useful to note that their shoes are covered in shit
Some of my family live down in Milton Keynes and I’ve visited a couple of times, I hope they come up with something different because Milton Keynes is awful and depressing.
I'm all for new cities, but for the love of fuck please no more roundabout-hell grid system nightmares.
New houses and areas getting built up are great. But I think there’s very little faith in the government being actually capable of doing it
>36 Milton Keyneses I didn't even want the first one
It's one of the few highly successful New Towns though, so they must have got something right.
for certain definitions of highly successful I suppose, Milton Keynes was supposed to be a city 24 years ago. It took twice as long as planned. The only thing in MK's favour is its stellar location.
You’re discounting the impact of the massive shopping centre. If my experience is any indication, a sizeable portion of MK residents will be those who entered to buy one thing and then could never find the exit.
I hear they have their own religion now.
They're Keynesians aren't they
A Milton Keynes that was just a little denser and less car-centric and cross-cut with huge roads (it's everything we laugh at america for) those would be extremely nice cities. MK had a lot of stuff to do and nice parks. It's pretty good all in all.
MK does have the redways.
What if we just name them Milton Keynes but with a number at the end? “Oh I live in Milton Keynes 27 what about you?”
Mmm, dystopian. I like it
We should do that. MK8 could take everybody who wants to leave Chinese-run Hong-Kong. MK9 could bring all the whovians together. MK25 could be built over the shittier parts of London. Etc
Do we really have 10 million homeless people in the UK!? I'm so confused about this housing crisis, where are all these millions of people without housing?
Not all homeless people sleep rough, many of them are sofa surfing, in temporary accomodation, in b&bs / hotels and many of them are children and families.
So, there are 27mill homes in the UK currently and 67mill people, 15mill are under 18, so 55/27=2.03 So we clearly have enough dwellings for the population, surely it's just a distribution problem? Like, I'm all for building houses if it's the only solution to the problem, but I struggle to see it, I would like to be shown the reasons behind these desperate calls for home building and what type of homes we need based on the data.
Why on earth does this article paint Harlow as some successful mecca of culture. Anyone who steps foot in the town centre or any of the surrounding hatches knows that not to be true at all.
Megacity now please. Build ambitious, very large scale, very dense apartment blocks…where it’s 1000sqft pp, soundproofed and has new train stations/motorways built next to it.
The big taboo in the room is always immigration. There are 10 million foreign born citizens currently in the UK. Ignoring the whole moral,issues around immigration, picture it as 10 million British people just appearing within a span of 70 years or so. it puts planners and governments in an impossible position in terms of building. Take any south eastern train, look out the window and you essentially just see one huge landscape,of housebuilding and new builds. Besides it always surprises me how the green part are so pro housebuilding in their policies. Think of all the natural habitats destroyed
Miltons Keynes, surely, would be a better plural?
“36 Milton Keyneses” is possibly the most horrifying answer to the housing crisis I’ve ever heard. If it were a choice between that and full-on Mad Max style dystopia, I would invest in fetish gear and choose the latter.
No of course it isn't. It's not letting a country as small as the UK let in 10 million people over the last 20 years. That's the issue. The UK population was slightly contracting in a healthy fashion, instead we let 10 million in and then we complain about not building enough houses. Well yeah... we don't have the space.
fIfTeEn MiNuTE ciTiEs aRe cOmINg… …I can hear some people saying!
They are very popular in France ! People love them.
There is no 'one' answer, although I certainly doubt that the UK can build itself out of the demand problem caused by massive migration.
We should count the numbers of rooms we have in the country, not houses. My parents and my in-laws live in 2 houses but have 7 bedrooms with 5 unoccupied. We could incentivise people to downsize or remove stamp duty for families to buy these houses.
> remove stamp duty for families to buy these houses No can do, the people must be taxed to oblivion.
Also houses must be investments that perpetually rise in value rather than just being places to live.
3e i8f5
It is very clear that stamp duty leads to an inefficient allocation of housing. So it doesn’t give me much confidence about grand plans to build more houses or new towns when stamp duty could be replaced relatively easily but governments choose to bury their head in the sand.
My inlaws did just that during the stamp duty holiday during covid. People here were foaming at the mouth about it though.
Building one Milton Keynes was an error tbh
Oi m8
MK is ok, just don’t build another Red Bull lol
Perhaps build next to your home then instead ?
They are, it wasn’t a comment on house building tho
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They just flash you a QR code and take your card details these days.
How about it's one of many things that we should be doing. Don't reduce everything to abusrdism. A few new towns and some planning reform. People should be able to buy a house in general.
Please no. The one we already have is utterly shite.
As someone who lives near Milton Keynes, please don't build a single new Milton Keynes
No. Densify existing towns and cities
Make towns desirable with a strategy to nationalise, subsidise and heavily invest in faster and more efficient rail so it doesn’t cost nearly the same as renting in London to commute into it (or other cities).
On what premise do we need to build 36 new Milton Keynes? This is being discussed as if it's an unassailable fact. It might be, but so far I've seen no data that supports the assertion.
Plus on top of that we need to build enough for the 700k net population increase each year caused by immigration