George Monbiot on landrights & planning

[tliouk]

landrights & planning 
Rich Man's Castle

Greens must not allow themselves to be used by the wealthy to shut 
out low cost homes. 
By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 7th May 2002 

There is an inverse relationship between the attractiveness of an 
English village and the attractiveness of the society which inhabits 
it. Those ancient mossy churches, those half-timbered pubs, those 
perfect rose gardens and sculpted yew trees are preserved not in 
aspic but in vinegar. 

The conservation of the "character" of the classic English village is 
almost always double-edged. As landscape values become entangled with 
social values, the "best kept villages" appear to be those best kept 
away from the hoipolloi. As house prices have ensured that none but 
the wealthy can afford to buy into the English dream, the wealthy in 
many places are campaigning to ensure they stay that way. 

They are not alone in opposing the construction of low-cost homes in 
beautiful places. No company wants to build six pounds70,000 starter 
homes if the same piece of land can be used to build one 
pounds700,000 manor. "Exclusive" developments of luxury homes are 
advertised everywhere, and exclusive is how both the builders and 
many of the neighbours want them to remain. 

This is not to say that people should not campaign to protect 
beautiful places; simply that we must not conflate these campaigns 
with attempts to protect some very ugly ideals. It is perfectly 
possible, with sufficient government support, to build affordable 
housing which is every bit as attractive as expensive housing can be. 
But the economic cleansing in which both construction companies and 
some residents conspire is exacerbating Britain's housing crisis. 

As the builders concentrate on providing expensive homes in both 
cities and the countryside, the rich have more choice than ever 
before, just as the poor are discovering that there is nowhere to 
turn. For the first time on record, the number of households in 
England has overtaken the number of homes. In London alone, 
officially homeless households are likely to double, to 110,000, 
within ten years. Some 225,000 new homes are needed in England every 
year, according to the Rowntree Foundation, but only 140,000 are 
being built. The result is that prices in the United Kingdom last 
month rose more steeply than they have ever done before: the cost of 
a home increased in April by an average of pounds4000. By 2020, a 
report published three weeks ago suggests, the average price of a 
home could reach pounds300,000, or pounds600,000 in London. 

The shortfall is blamed by the House Builders' Federation on greens 
campaigning against new development in the countryside. In reality 
its own members appear to be the principal culprits. Last week, the 
Town and Country Planning Association revealed that construction 
companies -- of which just a handful control much of the UK's 
potential building land -- are sitting on their assets in order to 
increase the value of the homes they sell. They have little incentive 
to build now if they can ensure that prices continue to boom. They 
have no incentive whatsoever to solve the underlying crisis by 
building small cheap homes rather than large expensive ones. 

But it is also true that many of those trying to preserve the 
exclusivity of their communities have sheltered behind environmental 
arguments, providing the housebuilders with the excuses they need to 
sit tight. Some greenfield development will be necessary, and genuine 
environmentalists must ensure that their campaigns cannot be used as 
the drawbridge which keeps the poor out of the rich man's castle. 

There are plenty of solid arguments for fighting sprawl, keeping new 
development as compact as possible, regenerating run-down inner 
cities and using brownfield land before building in the countryside. 
Good urban design cuts crime, encourages social integration, permits 
effective public transport and reduces inequality. Without it, 
cities "dough-nut": the core dies, while the suburbs splurge. But 
good urban design is the enemy of the big development companies. 
Building on greenfield land is cheaper than clearing existing sites 
and, if the land was bought at agricultural prices, far more 
profitable. 

But there are also some inherent contradictions which neither 
environmentalists nor planners have properly addressed. One of these 
is the paradox of regeneration. By rehabilitating a rundown area, in 
order to improve the lives of the poor, regeneration often drives out 
the very people it is supposed to help, by raising house prices. By 
attracting companies to move into places which they have previously 
shunned, it can boost overall economic activity while reducing the 
amount of money circulating in the local economy, as small businesses 
are displaced by multinationals expatriating their profits. 

This is just one example of the clash between liveability and 
inclusivity. House prices rise fastest and furthest in places with a 
pleasant environment: by ensuring that communities stay compact and 
well-served by public transport and public spaces, both councils and 
campaigners can accidentally ensure that only the rich can afford to 
live there. 

What problems of this kind suggest is that housing provision simply 
cannot be left to the market. Environmental quality and social 
justice can be reconciled, but only if the government is prepared to 
intervene. The first measure it must take is to use planning law to 
hold down the cost of land. Development land reaches the value of the 
most lucrative use to which it can be put. If land is zoned only or 
largely for affordable housing, then its price falls accordingly. 
This zoning would have to be accompanied by a time limit (after which 
the land reverted to the community), to prevent developers from 
sitting on it pending a change of policy. 

Then the government needs both to raise revenue and to address the 
extraordinary inequalities caused by house price inflation, by 
levying a land value tax on development land and a capital gains tax 
on main residences. The money this raised could then be used for 
building the social housing Britain needs. 

There is no room for second homes where others have none. The 
privatisation of council housing should be reversed, as stock 
transfer almost always leads to rising rents (ensuring that housing 
benefit becomes an ever-growing subsidy for the banks). Car-free 
developments, whose residents receive tax rebates in return for 
relinquishing their cars, would allow compaction without sacrificing 
environmental quality, making use of the vast amount of land that 
planning law insists is allocated to parking. Perhaps, as this column 
has suggested in the past, we need to consider moving the capital, 
diverting some of London's economic activity to a place, such as 
Liverpool, in which housing is abundant and new employment is scarce. 

But none of this will happen until the greens join the housing 
campaigners for a concerted battle against social exclusion. 
Otherwise the government will have little incentive to listen to 
anyone but the target voters of Middle England, seeking to acquire an 
exclusive portion of the English dream, from which they can repel all 
comers.