Jethro Elsden is Chief Economist at The YIMBY Initiative Strategy.
Last Friday evening as I wandered by the banks of the Seine in Paris enjoying the views of Notre-Dame in the distance, I came across an overturned wheelie bin. With the moonlight streaming down upon it, I thought it symbolic of something. Of what, I’m not exactly sure.
Perhaps the recent violent disorder the student protests have brought to France, or the tottering state of the country’s finances. Or perhaps it portends what will happen to the political system after next year’s presidential elections, in which Marine Le Pen looks in a good position to win.
Whatever it may symbolise, I’m sure it can’t relate to Paris specifically, which is still a majestic city. Walking around its streets, the main thing that struck me is how dense it is compared to London, yet in a way that doesn’t feel claustrophobic and crowded.
The statistics back this up. Looking just at London’s urban core of zones 1-3, raising density to match the equivalent area in Paris would provide 500,000 more homes. As I walked around looking at the beautiful tall Haussmann apartment blocks that populate much of inner Paris, I wondered why more of London can’t be like this.
There are, of course, some very small areas of London that are. The beautiful red brick mansion blocks in parts of Kensington are a good example. But far too much of the city, especially the inner city, is far too short. For a city with as good public transport as London, it is remarkable how much of it remains just 2 or 3 storeys tall.
Take West London where I live as proof. Areas like Chiswick or Fulham often have multiple tube lines running through stations, and unlike Paris, the bus network is also highly effective. For those living near the Thames, you can even get the Uber Boat to and from work. And yet the area is covered in old terraced housing, usually no more than 3 storeys in height.
To be fair to the last Conservative government, it at least made some attempts at densifying urban areas like London. Various reforms to Permitted Development Rights and the National Planning Policy Framework to make it easier to extend existing buildings upwards (such as mansard roof extensions) were passed, and they were months away from introducing the final couple of pieces of secondary legislation needed to finish implementing Street Votes when the last election was called.
While these reforms and moving from 2 or 3 storeys to 4 or 5 would of course be a big improvement – and might be suited to less central areas of London – to my mind this approach lacks ambition.
What we really need is a centrally driven vision for densifying whole parts of inner London and other large cities in the UK, aiming not for 4 or 5 storeys, but for 6-10. On account of a lack of house building, combined with high levels of immigration in recent years, the UK is now short of almost 7 million homes. While these homes don’t all need to necessarily go in or around London, many of them do.
We have seen the current Labour government commit to build more homes, and just like each preceding government for the last few decades, it has failed to achieve the targets it set. While they have talked a good game, they have simultaneously piled regulatory costs onto the construction industry (not to mention the increase in employer NICs and other burdensome legislation). Alongside the input cost increases the industry has borne, this has eroded viability significantly. Therefore, simply having a vision of a densified inner London will not be sufficient to deliver it. Tough political choices will need to be made about how to restore viability to the industry.
A dose of housing Realpolitik is also needed. Building the sort of numbers of new homes the country needs is bound to generate some opposition however it is done, so why not concentrate the pain in certain key areas where the Conservatives are unlikely to win such as inner London.
After all, these are the areas where demand and the economic returns from more residents – assuming you don’t just build lots more social housing – are highest. Why the Conservatives didn’t do this when they were last in government is a bit of a mystery, but the best answer I can come up with is an unwillingness to accept the need to essentially electorally abandon certain areas in order to deliver for the country as a whole.
Of course, we can’t only build in inner London and the other major cities. We need to build in suburban and rural areas, particularly in the South East as well. But at least by focussing attention and political capital on significantly densifying inner London, some of the pressure on these other areas will be taken off. Perhaps over time, larger developments with hundreds of homes in rural areas will be less likely to occur, replaced by smaller ones that the local population are less likely to complain about.
While no one has yet put a precise figure on the economic benefits, they would be significant. Half a million more homes in inner London, with probably 2 people on average per home, means an extra one million people living and working in inner London, the most productive area of the country.
The boost to London’s economy alone would be in the tens of billions per year. However, none of this will happen by itself as things stand. Given how the planning system works with local councils and unaccountable quangos holding significant authority over what does and doesn’t get built, a government that shares the vision of massively densifying London will need to be willing to drive it forward from the centre using every lever at its disposal.
Jethro Elsden is Chief Economist at The YIMBY Initiative Strategy.
Last Friday evening as I wandered by the banks of the Seine in Paris enjoying the views of Notre-Dame in the distance, I came across an overturned wheelie bin. With the moonlight streaming down upon it, I thought it symbolic of something. Of what, I’m not exactly sure.
Perhaps the recent violent disorder the student protests have brought to France, or the tottering state of the country’s finances. Or perhaps it portends what will happen to the political system after next year’s presidential elections, in which Marine Le Pen looks in a good position to win.
Whatever it may symbolise, I’m sure it can’t relate to Paris specifically, which is still a majestic city. Walking around its streets, the main thing that struck me is how dense it is compared to London, yet in a way that doesn’t feel claustrophobic and crowded.
The statistics back this up. Looking just at London’s urban core of zones 1-3, raising density to match the equivalent area in Paris would provide 500,000 more homes. As I walked around looking at the beautiful tall Haussmann apartment blocks that populate much of inner Paris, I wondered why more of London can’t be like this.
There are, of course, some very small areas of London that are. The beautiful red brick mansion blocks in parts of Kensington are a good example. But far too much of the city, especially the inner city, is far too short. For a city with as good public transport as London, it is remarkable how much of it remains just 2 or 3 storeys tall.
Take West London where I live as proof. Areas like Chiswick or Fulham often have multiple tube lines running through stations, and unlike Paris, the bus network is also highly effective. For those living near the Thames, you can even get the Uber Boat to and from work. And yet the area is covered in old terraced housing, usually no more than 3 storeys in height.
To be fair to the last Conservative government, it at least made some attempts at densifying urban areas like London. Various reforms to Permitted Development Rights and the National Planning Policy Framework to make it easier to extend existing buildings upwards (such as mansard roof extensions) were passed, and they were months away from introducing the final couple of pieces of secondary legislation needed to finish implementing Street Votes when the last election was called.
While these reforms and moving from 2 or 3 storeys to 4 or 5 would of course be a big improvement – and might be suited to less central areas of London – to my mind this approach lacks ambition.
What we really need is a centrally driven vision for densifying whole parts of inner London and other large cities in the UK, aiming not for 4 or 5 storeys, but for 6-10. On account of a lack of house building, combined with high levels of immigration in recent years, the UK is now short of almost 7 million homes. While these homes don’t all need to necessarily go in or around London, many of them do.
We have seen the current Labour government commit to build more homes, and just like each preceding government for the last few decades, it has failed to achieve the targets it set. While they have talked a good game, they have simultaneously piled regulatory costs onto the construction industry (not to mention the increase in employer NICs and other burdensome legislation). Alongside the input cost increases the industry has borne, this has eroded viability significantly. Therefore, simply having a vision of a densified inner London will not be sufficient to deliver it. Tough political choices will need to be made about how to restore viability to the industry.
A dose of housing Realpolitik is also needed. Building the sort of numbers of new homes the country needs is bound to generate some opposition however it is done, so why not concentrate the pain in certain key areas where the Conservatives are unlikely to win such as inner London.
After all, these are the areas where demand and the economic returns from more residents – assuming you don’t just build lots more social housing – are highest. Why the Conservatives didn’t do this when they were last in government is a bit of a mystery, but the best answer I can come up with is an unwillingness to accept the need to essentially electorally abandon certain areas in order to deliver for the country as a whole.
Of course, we can’t only build in inner London and the other major cities. We need to build in suburban and rural areas, particularly in the South East as well. But at least by focussing attention and political capital on significantly densifying inner London, some of the pressure on these other areas will be taken off. Perhaps over time, larger developments with hundreds of homes in rural areas will be less likely to occur, replaced by smaller ones that the local population are less likely to complain about.
While no one has yet put a precise figure on the economic benefits, they would be significant. Half a million more homes in inner London, with probably 2 people on average per home, means an extra one million people living and working in inner London, the most productive area of the country.
The boost to London’s economy alone would be in the tens of billions per year. However, none of this will happen by itself as things stand. Given how the planning system works with local councils and unaccountable quangos holding significant authority over what does and doesn’t get built, a government that shares the vision of massively densifying London will need to be willing to drive it forward from the centre using every lever at its disposal.