As well as density - we need to look at opening hours. I live and work in Birmingham City Centre and I would happily go shopping in an evening but most places close around 7pm.
The fact that Oxford Street is absolutely packed on a Sunday evening *with next to zero shops actually open* is mind-boggling to the extreme. Imagine if all those people were actually able to spend some of their money instead of wandering aimlessly through the crowds.
Yes! In my Safeway days (in the late 90s) we took the same amount of money on Sundays as every other day, just in half the hours. Meaning the store was mad busy all day, queues all the time, extra staff...
I think it was the same at Wilko. The only mercy was that we got paid double time on Sundays. (And FWIW I think that when we abolish Sunday Trading we should keep the favourable terms and protections for employees etc etc.)
I was a student so my contract stopped at the end of the summer and I was a new starter when I went back for Christmas. Each time I restarted my ts and cs were worse while my mum who was a permanent employee retained hers. Lost triple pay on bank hols and double pay on Sundays was gone by 2000
"I’m struggling to imagine why a Labour government using public money to create a state property developer that will design and build and then sell off private homes can do anything other than turn a massive profit, given the wider housing pressures"
Not an economist, but the question for me is "if there's all that money on the table, why hasn't a private developer snaffled it?" And I suspect the answer is "planning", which would also be a problem for a public developer unless a) you fixed planning (in which case you'd not need the public developer) or b) you exempted the public developer (but why should they get an easier ride?)
The two reasons monopolies (public or private, doesn't really matter) will tend to perform worse than a diverse field of competing concerns is first, ability to focus. The private developer under competition wants to turn a profit as fast as possible, and anything that distracts from that tends to be unpopular. A monopoly, especially a politically controlled one, will be susceptible to fads ("all the bathtubs must be made from recycled plastic bottles, I read on Twitter that this will solve the climate crisis!") and cronyism ("the tender for recycled-plastic bathtubs didn't get any viable offers, but my golf-buddy has a landscaping business and he says he can supply those bathtubs at £4000 each, perhaps we just give him the contract to supply literally every single bathtub in the country for the next decade?"). And now we have a million brand new flats in city centres but they have massive mold problems because the bathtubs are all leaky. And yes, obviously, bathtubs still have to be made from recycled plastic bottles, and there's still eight years on the contract to supply them, why do you ask? The MPs that came up with these ideas are very influential.
Does this also happen in non-monopolies, private firms on the market under competition? Yes, but tends to be at smaller scale, and does not have the political super-structure, which leads us to: Second, a lack of competition means lack of new ideas. One of the reasons the monopoly can be more efficient (at least in theory, but also in practice, certainly in the beginning) is that is can settle on a constrained set of products and then build those rapidly at scale. Given the housing crisis, a good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week, but part of solving the housing crisis is also to give people more choice in how and where they want to live. A monopoly housing developer runs a very real risk of developing a monotonous housing stock that isn't responsive to changes in technology, trends and needs, and ends up outmoded and unloved.
But as Jamie correctly states, the key blocker isn't the lack of a national housing developer, it's the planning laws. As a side-note, I suspect O'Malleyism would be quite comfortable with a role of the government as an competent, informed and opinionated funder of services, that are then supplied at arms length by private operators ("competent, informed and opinionated" is load-bearing here. TfL busses, not Test and Trace).
Very interesting post. And I think you’re right about O’Malleyism’s ideological vision of public vs private. I haven’t got super strong opinions either way (I think there are some circumstances where a profit motive is bad, others where it is useful), but I do find myself pointing to the London Overground/future GB Railways model quite often, as that seems like an effective way to do get the best of both worlds.
There is a capacity issue around tradespeople and building resources, increasing how much gets built might need a bigger workforce and less border controls
It always baffles me why we can’t cherry pick things that work from other places, the “Not Just Bikes” YouTube channel has some interesting takes on this, and this episode in particular addresses population densities and some of the problems and benefits https://youtu.be/56b5cI2qtYQ his other episodes deal with refuse collection and public transport, all were useful pointers while I was studying.
Something similar to this is going on in Farnworth, Bolton. Its a very run down town and won some significant government money recently (even featured in PMQs back when May was PM). They're using that to knock down and rebuild the town centre.
Might not be ambitious enough with a lot of the buildings being only 4 stories, but the local transport infrastructure wouldn't be able to cope with much more; at least until HS2 is built (if it ever gets to Manchester).
The reason flats are often unpopular is that they are frequently poorly managed. Resident caretakers vanished decades ago, even in up market developments. Also families want outside space for children to play and feel safe. Maintenance of public parks falls well down the list of priorities for cash strapped local councils. The QE Olympic Park in Stratford has these facilities but it cost a fortune to build and there is a fixed charge levied on all developments, residential and business, within the boundaries.
Increasing densities in town centres is not enough without adequate open spaces, and these are often perceived as an extra cost which developers are unwilling to pay.
Tbf though, the issue of families not wanting flats is less of an issue today given that there are more people not having families at all, and those who are are generally having them later than previous generations (and smaller for that matter). So the 20-30 year old childless people are more likely to want to take up these sorts of flats, and that’s good given these are the people least likely to already own a home. And I don’t see any reason why flats need to be in worse conditions generally if we were to improve regulations to make sure landlords and the like did acc maintain homes to better standards (which we should do anyway)
What this then creates is ghettos populated by relatively young people, often renting for short periods. It doesn't build communities, and discourages older people from occupying such properties even though in many respects they would be ideal for them.
I mean I think you’re overplaying the extent to which young people will engage in community and how long they’ll stay. Plus, those people are going to need housing anyway, no matter how long they’ll stay. Our society is just marked by high geographic mobility, and where those people are housed isn’t going to change that. However their housed, whether that be in space-inefficient suburbia or high(ish) rise flats in town centres, they’ll be just as geographically mobile. Nor is there any reason why housing them in apartment blocks would be worse for community than in suburbia (Infact it’s acc likely to be better, simply in the sense that if these communities are more densely built, you’re more likely to live closer to friends/people who may become friends, so it’s easier to visit eachother. Dense apartment blocks are likely to be more affordable, and more amenable to younger populations desires for stuff like good public transport, night life etc. plus it would save suburbia for those populations (e.g: families) who you say are more likely to want to live there.
While half the working population are willing to move for work they want to move to cities like London, Manchester and Edinburgh where building flats continues apace. You're not going to regenerate run down medium sized towns simply by building flats there.
There's probably plenty of land surrounding those towns to build traditional housing. The problem is private developers don't see these areas as particularly profitable. With govt funding social housing based on mixed developments of low rise flats and traditional family housing would meet the housing needs.
The opportunity for the tories to open up building in the labour towns and cities (where the price signals are strongest) has been open for a decade. It could house people, increase productivity, encourage family formation, prevent the suburbs from turning labour... But they’re all too dummy to grasp the opportunity and too incompetent to implement it.
Very much agree - this is still the case. But no need to tear down buildings in many cities. In Glasgow, the vacant floors above (often vacant) shops in the city centre has been calculated as the same floor area as the Empire State Building.
This is probably a daft question but… what is the actual policy intervention being proposed here? By which I mean, if building 12 story buildings in the centre of Kettering is such a slam dunk great idea, why hasn’t it already happened?
The reason it hasn't happened is because the planning laws are really bad - too many veto points for people to say "no" to building and so on. (Near me a nine storey building was denied recently because of the "historic roofline", whatever that is.)
So the policy ask would be to change the planning laws, a bit like Labour has now announced - to basically make it much easier to build and in-fill density.
While it doesn’t take away from the wider point, I’m suspicious of that Centre for Cities graph that claims to be for the UK; given Glasgow isn’t listed (population density around 3,400 people per sq km) I’d be wondering that they were perhaps using England only data?
Interesting piece and I broadly agree with the thrust of it. I wouldn't personally want to live on a high street but i absolutely recognise the merits outlined, so hopefully others do/will.
One bone to pick, though; not sure I quite understand the idea of WFH and "death of the high street" being somehow interlinked. When I did the daily commute 5 days a week I might go to the local HS once every few weeks, if that. Now that I frequently WFH I'm popping there far more often - picking up essentials, stuff to make or have for lunch, household bits and pieces, getting some fresh air and 10k steps in, etc. That may just be me but regardless, I don't quite see why people no longer going to their office - not often located in residential areas, and certainly not their own - is meant to be a significant contributing factor behind people no longer going to high streets.
PS - nice anecdote about the 00s blogging phenomenon though!
Leasehold! We don't want to become glorified rental tenants with a mortgage and spiralling service charges that we can't control. Living in bondage to freeloading freeholders isn't a life. If we are to densify our cities successfully, flats need to be sold as commonhold for dignity, autonomy and control, bringing England into line with virtually every other jurisdiction in the world. Read this by the FT's John-Burn Murdoch: https://www.ft.com/content/df25ccc7-5dcf-446e-8a07-332ad5612f09
2 looking at demographic change, should this be hi rise old folks homes?
3 I used to bitch about working at Safeway on Usenet, obscure enough no-one found it
4 the current offer of city centre living is a bit grim... Noisy, drunk people, vomit everywhere. The flats are cold and converted warehouses are poorly insulated and expensive to heat.
As well as density - we need to look at opening hours. I live and work in Birmingham City Centre and I would happily go shopping in an evening but most places close around 7pm.
I'm sure density would help this as well.
This reminds me that I really need to write my big takedown of the nightmare that is Sunday Trading.
The fact that Oxford Street is absolutely packed on a Sunday evening *with next to zero shops actually open* is mind-boggling to the extreme. Imagine if all those people were actually able to spend some of their money instead of wandering aimlessly through the crowds.
Yes! In my Safeway days (in the late 90s) we took the same amount of money on Sundays as every other day, just in half the hours. Meaning the store was mad busy all day, queues all the time, extra staff...
I think it was the same at Wilko. The only mercy was that we got paid double time on Sundays. (And FWIW I think that when we abolish Sunday Trading we should keep the favourable terms and protections for employees etc etc.)
I was a student so my contract stopped at the end of the summer and I was a new starter when I went back for Christmas. Each time I restarted my ts and cs were worse while my mum who was a permanent employee retained hers. Lost triple pay on bank hols and double pay on Sundays was gone by 2000
That would be a good one !
"I’m struggling to imagine why a Labour government using public money to create a state property developer that will design and build and then sell off private homes can do anything other than turn a massive profit, given the wider housing pressures"
Not an economist, but the question for me is "if there's all that money on the table, why hasn't a private developer snaffled it?" And I suspect the answer is "planning", which would also be a problem for a public developer unless a) you fixed planning (in which case you'd not need the public developer) or b) you exempted the public developer (but why should they get an easier ride?)
The two reasons monopolies (public or private, doesn't really matter) will tend to perform worse than a diverse field of competing concerns is first, ability to focus. The private developer under competition wants to turn a profit as fast as possible, and anything that distracts from that tends to be unpopular. A monopoly, especially a politically controlled one, will be susceptible to fads ("all the bathtubs must be made from recycled plastic bottles, I read on Twitter that this will solve the climate crisis!") and cronyism ("the tender for recycled-plastic bathtubs didn't get any viable offers, but my golf-buddy has a landscaping business and he says he can supply those bathtubs at £4000 each, perhaps we just give him the contract to supply literally every single bathtub in the country for the next decade?"). And now we have a million brand new flats in city centres but they have massive mold problems because the bathtubs are all leaky. And yes, obviously, bathtubs still have to be made from recycled plastic bottles, and there's still eight years on the contract to supply them, why do you ask? The MPs that came up with these ideas are very influential.
Does this also happen in non-monopolies, private firms on the market under competition? Yes, but tends to be at smaller scale, and does not have the political super-structure, which leads us to: Second, a lack of competition means lack of new ideas. One of the reasons the monopoly can be more efficient (at least in theory, but also in practice, certainly in the beginning) is that is can settle on a constrained set of products and then build those rapidly at scale. Given the housing crisis, a good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week, but part of solving the housing crisis is also to give people more choice in how and where they want to live. A monopoly housing developer runs a very real risk of developing a monotonous housing stock that isn't responsive to changes in technology, trends and needs, and ends up outmoded and unloved.
But as Jamie correctly states, the key blocker isn't the lack of a national housing developer, it's the planning laws. As a side-note, I suspect O'Malleyism would be quite comfortable with a role of the government as an competent, informed and opinionated funder of services, that are then supplied at arms length by private operators ("competent, informed and opinionated" is load-bearing here. TfL busses, not Test and Trace).
Very interesting post. And I think you’re right about O’Malleyism’s ideological vision of public vs private. I haven’t got super strong opinions either way (I think there are some circumstances where a profit motive is bad, others where it is useful), but I do find myself pointing to the London Overground/future GB Railways model quite often, as that seems like an effective way to do get the best of both worlds.
There is a capacity issue around tradespeople and building resources, increasing how much gets built might need a bigger workforce and less border controls
It always baffles me why we can’t cherry pick things that work from other places, the “Not Just Bikes” YouTube channel has some interesting takes on this, and this episode in particular addresses population densities and some of the problems and benefits https://youtu.be/56b5cI2qtYQ his other episodes deal with refuse collection and public transport, all were useful pointers while I was studying.
Something similar to this is going on in Farnworth, Bolton. Its a very run down town and won some significant government money recently (even featured in PMQs back when May was PM). They're using that to knock down and rebuild the town centre.
Might not be ambitious enough with a lot of the buildings being only 4 stories, but the local transport infrastructure wouldn't be able to cope with much more; at least until HS2 is built (if it ever gets to Manchester).
More on the scheme https://www.capitalandcentric.com/journal/new-images-show-updated-plans-for-50m-farnworth-town-centre-redevelopment
This looks really nice!
The reason flats are often unpopular is that they are frequently poorly managed. Resident caretakers vanished decades ago, even in up market developments. Also families want outside space for children to play and feel safe. Maintenance of public parks falls well down the list of priorities for cash strapped local councils. The QE Olympic Park in Stratford has these facilities but it cost a fortune to build and there is a fixed charge levied on all developments, residential and business, within the boundaries.
Increasing densities in town centres is not enough without adequate open spaces, and these are often perceived as an extra cost which developers are unwilling to pay.
Tbf though, the issue of families not wanting flats is less of an issue today given that there are more people not having families at all, and those who are are generally having them later than previous generations (and smaller for that matter). So the 20-30 year old childless people are more likely to want to take up these sorts of flats, and that’s good given these are the people least likely to already own a home. And I don’t see any reason why flats need to be in worse conditions generally if we were to improve regulations to make sure landlords and the like did acc maintain homes to better standards (which we should do anyway)
What this then creates is ghettos populated by relatively young people, often renting for short periods. It doesn't build communities, and discourages older people from occupying such properties even though in many respects they would be ideal for them.
I mean I think you’re overplaying the extent to which young people will engage in community and how long they’ll stay. Plus, those people are going to need housing anyway, no matter how long they’ll stay. Our society is just marked by high geographic mobility, and where those people are housed isn’t going to change that. However their housed, whether that be in space-inefficient suburbia or high(ish) rise flats in town centres, they’ll be just as geographically mobile. Nor is there any reason why housing them in apartment blocks would be worse for community than in suburbia (Infact it’s acc likely to be better, simply in the sense that if these communities are more densely built, you’re more likely to live closer to friends/people who may become friends, so it’s easier to visit eachother. Dense apartment blocks are likely to be more affordable, and more amenable to younger populations desires for stuff like good public transport, night life etc. plus it would save suburbia for those populations (e.g: families) who you say are more likely to want to live there.
While half the working population are willing to move for work they want to move to cities like London, Manchester and Edinburgh where building flats continues apace. You're not going to regenerate run down medium sized towns simply by building flats there.
But it would provide denser and cheaper housing, which would still be good for many people, esp younger people in those towns
There's probably plenty of land surrounding those towns to build traditional housing. The problem is private developers don't see these areas as particularly profitable. With govt funding social housing based on mixed developments of low rise flats and traditional family housing would meet the housing needs.
The opportunity for the tories to open up building in the labour towns and cities (where the price signals are strongest) has been open for a decade. It could house people, increase productivity, encourage family formation, prevent the suburbs from turning labour... But they’re all too dummy to grasp the opportunity and too incompetent to implement it.
Very much agree - this is still the case. But no need to tear down buildings in many cities. In Glasgow, the vacant floors above (often vacant) shops in the city centre has been calculated as the same floor area as the Empire State Building.
This is probably a daft question but… what is the actual policy intervention being proposed here? By which I mean, if building 12 story buildings in the centre of Kettering is such a slam dunk great idea, why hasn’t it already happened?
The reason it hasn't happened is because the planning laws are really bad - too many veto points for people to say "no" to building and so on. (Near me a nine storey building was denied recently because of the "historic roofline", whatever that is.)
So the policy ask would be to change the planning laws, a bit like Labour has now announced - to basically make it much easier to build and in-fill density.
While it doesn’t take away from the wider point, I’m suspicious of that Centre for Cities graph that claims to be for the UK; given Glasgow isn’t listed (population density around 3,400 people per sq km) I’d be wondering that they were perhaps using England only data?
Interesting piece and I broadly agree with the thrust of it. I wouldn't personally want to live on a high street but i absolutely recognise the merits outlined, so hopefully others do/will.
One bone to pick, though; not sure I quite understand the idea of WFH and "death of the high street" being somehow interlinked. When I did the daily commute 5 days a week I might go to the local HS once every few weeks, if that. Now that I frequently WFH I'm popping there far more often - picking up essentials, stuff to make or have for lunch, household bits and pieces, getting some fresh air and 10k steps in, etc. That may just be me but regardless, I don't quite see why people no longer going to their office - not often located in residential areas, and certainly not their own - is meant to be a significant contributing factor behind people no longer going to high streets.
PS - nice anecdote about the 00s blogging phenomenon though!
Leasehold! We don't want to become glorified rental tenants with a mortgage and spiralling service charges that we can't control. Living in bondage to freeloading freeholders isn't a life. If we are to densify our cities successfully, flats need to be sold as commonhold for dignity, autonomy and control, bringing England into line with virtually every other jurisdiction in the world. Read this by the FT's John-Burn Murdoch: https://www.ft.com/content/df25ccc7-5dcf-446e-8a07-332ad5612f09
Somehow hi rise in city centres is controversial...?? https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/plan-control-amount-high-rise-8613373
Not Nottingham’s “personality”!
1 this would have to Car free living
2 looking at demographic change, should this be hi rise old folks homes?
3 I used to bitch about working at Safeway on Usenet, obscure enough no-one found it
4 the current offer of city centre living is a bit grim... Noisy, drunk people, vomit everywhere. The flats are cold and converted warehouses are poorly insulated and expensive to heat.
5 district heating!