No, Minister! We need new models for tomorrow’s urbanism.
BRIEFING NOTE #7
This is a series of briefing notes to yet another new housing minister. Here are some dangers to avoid, some well-trodden paths to be bypassed, and some barriers to thinking that need to be overcome (if we are serious about bringing about change).….and, oh yes, here are some thoughts on how to deliver this change! Please stick around long enough to make it happen.
One of the key drivers of developing new urban models is promoting diversity of choice in our cities, towns and neighbourhoods today. Diversity does not happen by chance but is a result of the nature of housebuilding, entrepreneurship and competition, and of the environments in which they exist. The diversity of provision gives benefits to urban dwellers in a wider range of choice across the full spectrum by offering different routes to solving their housing needs.
Yolanda Barnes, Chair of Bartlett Real Estate Institute, University College London, has undertaken new research into different types of housing provision. In her paper ‘New Business Models for Tomorrow’s Urbanism’, she shows how the market is being shifted by changing demographics. The rising economic group of millennials, characterised as also being members of the new precariat or gig economy, will by 2025 form half the world population and 75 per cent of its workforce. These millennials do not want to live in suburban housing, work in business parks and play out their lives in shopping malls. They are looking for fine-grained, ‘varied and messy’ neighbourhoods that have authentic, diverse, connected communities, with all the opportunities that come with them. If this is so, why are we still building the unwanted models? As Barnes says, ‘Housebuilders are market-takers not market-makers’. The established models of risk and reward are so buried in the banking, public sector procurement and construction industries that, in the absence of being shown any viable alternatives, they will plough on until they fail.
Barnes’s research also demonstrates how the top-down ‘big capital’ concentration model of development is far less successful than the bottom-up landownership and management model. Case studies internationally show the latter achieving up to 30 per cent greater property values. This makes a convincing case for fine-grained neighbourhood formation which is ‘varied and messy’. The Berlin townhouse projects, which have their roots in the concepts of Kristien Ring’s ‘Self-made City: Self-Initiated Urban Living and Architectural Interventions’ and are based on the disposal of narrow-fronted plots in the city for multi-occupancy buildings, show an alternative land management model. By cutting out the middleman, it is reputed that housing is being delivered much quicker and at a much lower cost than the traditional developer model. On top of this, it has had far greater social outcomes, better space standards and higher property values. Because of this success, private developers are increasingly using this model as successful low-risk solutions in places like Mitte in central Berlin. These are the types models that Barnes’s report says we need to scale up and invest in. They build neighbourhoods that people want.
We need our NEIGHBOURHOOD ENABLING MODEL to embrace a wide range of development approaches, including the land management model. There is no doubt that a greater focus on urban growth and change based on bottom-up landownership will deliver the kind of places that our new and emerging market demands.