Densifying the Suburbs – A presenter’s Insight

Our President, Ben Derbyshire, provides his Insights into our recent Densifying the Suburbs event.

I welcomed the invitation to speak at an open meeting of the Forum, ‘Densifying the Suburbs’ alongside Professor Tony Travers of UCL and local planners, Paul Lewin and Justin Carr from Waltham Forest and Brent councils respectively.  My challenge – most people who have time to participate in their local civic societies will already be well housed, so what, I asked, should be our collective response to fellow citizens who are not?

I talked the sell-out audience through the full range of possibilities for housing development in the face of the collapse of home-building in London.  As ever, architects are out there flying kites for some radical alternatives.

100 mile city – Peter Barber

Peter Barber, who’s oeuvre as a whole is an illuminating exploration of tight-knit ingenuity, proposes the ‘100 Mile City’ – a belt of dense low-rise housing marking a permanent limit of the city’s encroachment into the countryside.  Russell Curtis has researched the opportunity of small sites, corner sites and development on failing golf courses which together could double the capacity assumed by the current London Plan.  My own practice’s Supurbia project, of which I have written previously in these pages, and which almost found its way onto the statute book as ‘Street Votes’ under the last government, suggests we could deliver a million new homes by doubling the density of just 10% of outer boroughs.

Turning from theoretical possibilities to reality, I presented a range projects of the kind we can expect to see much more of as the plan to unlock the target 880,000 homes per year in London grinds into gear.  Can the civic society movement rise to the occasion and become champions of a consensus over what’s right?

All the developments I illustrated were, in my view, good in their own way – a corner site replacing one home with ten near a station, a handsome mansion block scheme on a station car park, a brownfield back-land development with limited access but next to a lovely local park, a drill hall redeveloped as a community centre, public space and housing for refugees.  At increased scale, I presented modular prefabricated homes for rent in re-landscaped canal-side setting, and then some very tall buildings amongst the capital’s designated ‘opportunity areas’, including the new breed of co-living development where a very small rental flat is complimented by lavish shared facilities.

As the catalogue of opportunities unfolded, and in the discussion that followed, it became clear that the smaller interventions for London’s new homes, fitted in amongst existing communities, generate the highest ratio of resistance.  Very big schemes, often in brownfield locations or previously industrial areas are less contested by local people.  Reasons for objections are sometimes at a micro level, such as fear of overlooking, sometimes about concerns over pressure on infrastructure. One contribution from the floor was to suggest we were all wasting our time as collapsing immigration is easing pressure on housing and in any case there’s no money to build with!

But in the end, the occasion also proved hopeful.  A burst of spontaneous applause greeted my suggestion that whilst we hold out for consistent quality of new development, we must do so in a way that recognises the entitlement of those who have nowhere to call home.

This elicited a call for more public spending on housing with a warm welcome for the low-cost government loan aimed at enabling local authorities to deliver a thousand council homes a year each – potentially 130,000 council homes in London by the end of this parliament. There was a very positive discussion about the paucity of opportunities for downsizing that would free up under-occupied family homes.  Appleby Blue by Witherford Watson Man, an alms house scheme that won last year’s RIBA Stirling Prize was cited as the kind of development that might encourage a better fit of homes to housing need, radically reducing the need for new family homes.

So, if we as civic societies wish to stand up and be counted, to be seen as on the right side of history at this crucial moment, I believe London Forum members should come together and bring something of this positivity to the table.  I wish for nothing more than the movement be seen first and foremost as significant campaigners for sustainable high quality housing that meets Londoners’ legitimate needs and aspirations.

Editorial note: the Densifying the Suburbs event page has been updated with a short report and download links to the presentations.