Ben Cope is a communications consultant and a political commentator with Young Voices.
“I am one in a row of specimens. It’s when I try to flutter out of line that he hates me. I’m meant to be dead, pinned, always the same, always beautiful. He knows that part of my beauty is being alive, but it’s the dead me he wants. He wants me living-but-dead.”
The chilling realisation of Miranda, the prisoner in John Fowles’ novel, The Collector, about her capturer’s intentions, will mirror the horror of young Londoners reacting to Historic England’s new raison d’etre. In a disappointing intervention in the Evening Standard, the Quango’s CEO, Duncan Wilson, called for a pan-London approach to preserve the city’s historic skyline, blocking planned skyscrapers in many central areas. But such a move would exacerbate the housing crisis and turn the city into a living museum. Wilson should stick to preserving select historic buildings and stay out of housing policy.
London’s housing shortage poses an existential threat to the city’s economic and cultural vibrancy. With the average deposit for first-time buyers souring above £125,000 and average monthly rent exceeding £2500, multiples of the national averages, the city is becoming unliveable for all bar the super-rich.
Any intervention in this debate must start with a commitment to build dramatically more affordable homes for Londoners. Any other focus point is frankly unserious. Wilson’s instincts here are all wrong: to stop rather than start; preserve rather than create; and watch rather than do. This mentality is baked into Historic England’s DNA. Only last year, the Quango campaigned to block housing development in the supposedly historic Anglia Square in Norwich. Anglia Square opened in 1970.
This hesitancy to build is a generational issue. Blocking essential housing to protect a view might be desirable for those already on the housing ladder, many of whom will have moved out of the city to the suburbs. But it’s young people who are paying the price. Not a week goes by without hearing of another young professional forced to move further out, having most of their salary siphoned off for a grim bedsit. Whatever your policy solution to the housing crisis, we must first rid the debate of this unthinking nimbyism.
Wilson’s attempts to justify his right to a room with a view lead him to make weak arguments. He claims that building carbon-intensive high-rise housing blocks is inappropriate given climate change. But we’ve known for years that dense urban living is the most ecological way to live. Wilson also states that new office blocks may be left vacant given the rise in flexible work. Good. They can be converted into housing.
Historic England is a classic example of Quango overreach. Most would imagine its role is to preserve select historic buildings and monuments, from Buckingham Palace to Stonehenge. Instead, Historic England has followed the eternal rule of quangos: over time their scope widens, and their objectives become less defined. Overseeing the listed buildings process, it has doled out an incredible half a million across the country. Wilson’s latest intervention suggests he imagines a role in city-wide planning policy.
While there is value in Historic England’s core mission to protect significant buildings, its philosophy is disturbing when applied on a societal level. When Wilson says he seeks to preserve “what makes [London] special,” he doesn’t mean its people, culture, or innovation. He means its architecture. But it’s people who give architecture meaning, just as people make a city. Prioritising buildings over people for aesthetics condemns a city to be a glass jar gawked at by tourists. Cities like that aren’t living places. And just like Miranda, they end up dead.
Wilson would turn London into Venice. A quaint but ultimately stale tourist trap, basking in the fading glow of past glories. Last year, Venetians panicked that the city’s population had fallen below 50,000, a fraction of its Renaissance-era size.
Living cities need people, and people need houses to live. Ignore Wilson. Don’t let Venice happen here.