A solution to our housing problems: self-build, modular and community

Tonight saw the last episode of Grand Designs: The Street:
Grand Designs: The Street - All 4
Q&A with Kevin McCloud on Grand Designs: The Street - Grand Designs Magazine

There's been a lot of interest:
Grand Designs The Street: Do couple end up homeless in finale of 2019 show? | Express.co.uk
Definite heartbreak and financial ruin: is the dream of a Grand Designs self build really worth it?  | Daily Mail Online
Grand Designs: The Street six-part series ends with a challenging £280k Modular House — built in a factory in nine weeks and assembled on site | Homes and Property

Here's The Sun's take at the beginning of the series: 

COUNTRY STYLES 

Life on Grand Designs street where 10 families have built their own homes in £100k plot on ex-MoD land in UK first

The pioneering community spent between £60,000-£500,000 on their charismatic builds in a UK first

By Hana Carter
4th April 2019

NESTLED among trees and Oxfordshire greenery is a cluster of very unique homes, all built from scratch by a tiny community of creative self-builders. After a plot of ex-MoD land was put up for sale, ten families bought their own slice of the 188-acres for £100,000 to design their very own stunning build. Every single home is completely different on the brand new street with each one made from different materials and seemingly inspired by various eras and tastes.

The little community near Bicester Village, Oxfordshire will be Britain's largest self-build project, all starting and finishing at the same time. With each patch being sold by Cherwell District Council and they invited buyers to be as ambitious as they pleased when it came to deciding on how they were going to build their dream home. And they did just that, in fact, the residents of Graven Hill were so innovative that Channel 4's Grand Designs will be featuring them on tonight's episode.

Kevin McCloud, who visited a self-built town in Amsterdam in 2010 had been looking for a British counterpart ever since, so was elated when he discovered the commuter town adjacent to the A41. He said that constructing your own house means "you get a highly bespoke home that's suited to your needs and reflects who you are."

The homeowners on the street vary from age 24 to 72 and each spent between £60,000-£500,000 to build their stunning properties.

Lynn, 65, who originally lived in an 18th-century cottage in Northamptonshire, said she decided to apply for the scheme with her neighbours, Terry and Olwen. All three of them got their homes accepted and retired school teacher Lynn got to work on her clay tiled house. Her property is made from Siberian larch with an oast house-inspired roundel. Light spills into the rooms which are spacious and bright.

She told The Daily Telegraph: "Every day, I come down and can't stop smiling that this is where I live. I've wanted to build a forever home before someone puts me in one."

With rolling fields, nature all around and a safe community, what better place to bring up a child and for Blanka and Paul that couldn't be more true. They live in their eco home with their two kids, which worked out to be the cheapest on the street.

Prior to the build, they were renting a cottage nearby. If they were to buy something similar it would have cost them £700,000 - something the couple didn't want to part with. So they whimsically decided to build one themselves with a budget of just £60,000.

Paul, a human rights lawyer, said: "I just thought, 'how hard can it be to build a house?'"

Their home is built using Hempcrete, a biocomposite made from hemp hurds and lime - an environmentally friendly and cheap material. The couple ended up spending £300,000 on their home after admitting that they had massively under-budgeted. But their home was completed after Paul took a few courses and watched a load of YouTube tutorials.

In the next decade the spot of land is expected to house up to 1,900 homes which will all be variations on a short list of home blueprints.

Graven Hill managing director Karen Curtin said: "The opportunity to showcase the first 10 self-builders at Graven Hill on the national stage is a milestone not only for the development and its community but also for the future of UK house building. The series will give viewers an insight into a bold and unique type of housing project, which has the potential to revolutionise the way that people approach both choosing – or building – a new home, and the environmental challenges the UK currently faces."

It will also have a new primary school, village centre, supermarket, village green, pub and maybe even a gym. All the residents at Graven Hill are friends and have a tight-knit community and for Paul, his advice to those wanting to turn their hand to building is - "just go for it."

Grand Designs: The Street will air tonight at 9pm. 

Life on Grand Designs street where 10 families have built their own homes in £100k plot on ex-MoD land in UK first
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Campaign to change the law to ensure every new house has 'Swift bricks' > encouraging results

Back in February, the 38 Degrees campaigning group put a petition out to encourage us all to do our bit to give swifts a home:
Futures Forum: Campaign to change the law to ensure every new house has 'Swift bricks'
Here's the latest email from Norman Pasley, who created the Save our Swifts campaign:

Dear friends,

Thank you for your responses to my email dated 16 April.

Since then about another thousand of you - increasing the total to over 128,000 - have signed up for the petition that the government legislates that all UK house builders shall install Swift bricks in all new-build homes, and give incentives for retrofitting nest boxes on older properties.

Your responses have been encouraging.

Bob Dickson from New Wortley (Leeds) writes: “Thanks for your email. At its last meeting, the Board of the New Wortley Housing Association agreed that swift bricks will be fitted to all properties in our current development, and our architects have enthusiastically taken this into the designs. Best wishes, Bob Dickson, Chair, NWHA”

Thanks Bob. What can be better than that? That’s evidence of the developer doing the right thing!

Has anyone else experienced a house builder agreeing to one swift brick per property?

Rose Parkhouse of Chepstow Swifts writes: “‘Great campaign Norman! We're a small Swift group in Chepstow, RSPB trained last year. We survey for nest sites in the town and have just written to Barratt’s, who are due to build a new estate here, about increasing the number of swift bricks in the new buildings.

“Barratt Homes do install some swift bricks but nothing like one in every building! For example, the plans for the Chepstow development show 29 swift bricks in 348 homes. This particular development is on a site where old factory buildings with known swift nests have been demolished (not by Barratt’s but by previous industrial owners) so it's a key site and we're going to push hard for a lot more swift bricks there.

“We've learnt masses about swifts in the last year since our training, and found nest sites around the town that we didn't know about before. The Glamorgan Swift Group have been a brilliant help and I've arranged for one of them, Alan Rosney to do a public talk for us through Gwent Wildlife Trust on 20th of this month - hoping to spread the word further locally!”

My question is: how costly can it be for Barratt’s to supply each house with a swift bricks? And how costly in reputational terms not to?

Sarah Hellings Smith in North Berwick writes: “In our local Tesco in North Berwick, as I was walking to the outside entrance, I heard cheeping, and looked up and saw several nests in the hollows created by the large size corrugated roofing overhanging the entrance . I spoke to customer services who were aware and seemed very happy about the birds. I was worried that somebody might complain about the possibility of droppings but that does not seem to be the case.

(I suggested that Tesco might advertise ‘Tesco looking after everybody’s families’.)

“It would seem that that the profile of this particular industrial large corrugated iron roof provides enough space in the dips to give the birds somewhere to nest : so this might be worth bearing in mind when asking companies to help - especially since it would involve no extra cost.”
Dick Newell set up and runs the blog called Action for Swifts. His blog is: http://actionforswifts.blogspot.com/ 

Edward Mayer runs the Swift-Conservation website which again has lots of useful information and links on it: https://swift-conservation.org/

Tim Norriss of Hampshire Swifts comments: “Well done with the petition. I would definitely send to Michael Gove. Urban biodiversity is in freefall due to current building regs and requirements for more air-tight homes to reduce CO2 emissions. The fixing of upvc fascias and soffits on older homes is also having a large effect. We need to be aiming for an average of one swift brick per property as proposed by the RIBA. There are lots of different types available but it’s best if they use one of the ones mentioned in Dick’s leaflet Swift Bricks V5 or his new Model S attached. Other species such as House Sparrows and smaller birds like blue tits, great tits and wrens will also use the boxes.

“Sarah Roberts has shown that house buyers are not negatively affected to buying if swift bricks are included in houses as house-builders would have you believe. This is purely a matter of economics ...“
Tim believes legislation is essential and that is what this campaign is about.

Some people are unhappy with plastic swift bricks. I agree most single-use plastic is a menace, bought today and thrown away tomorrow. However, I feel more tolerant of a designed bird box installed in a building that may do its job for swifts for 50 or 100 years.

Nest bricks are available in a variety of materials; see the Action for Swifts website for example (above). Some people have asked for a terracotta brick to be shown on the 38 Degrees website; I’m working on this.

Please continue with your personal and group campaigns to support Swifts, wherever you are. All of your stories will give extra weight to the petition. Where house builders are doing little or nothing for swifts, please put fingers to keyboards and ask them why. Ask them: why do you risk reputational damage for the cost of a swift box?

My new nest boxes, fitted last week, are ready for occupation. Hopefully my call player will attract new swifts to Warsash in the next few days!

Best wishes for now

Save our Swifts | Campaigns by You.
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From cul-de-sacs to retail parks > Why is Britain so bad at planning cities?

There have been some strong advocates of good design of towns and cities:
Futures Forum: Ben Hamilton-Baillie: architect and leading voice in the promotion of ‘shared space’
Futures Forum: 1819: John Ruskin on the built environment: "A structure’s beauty or ugliness is also a lens into the moral quality of the society in which and for which it was made."

Unfortunately, such voices have generally been ignored, as the chair of the Academy of Urbanism at Manchester University points out: 

Why is Britain so bad at planning cities?

From cul-de-sacs to retail parks, Britain’s planning rules cause environments that are bewildering, illogical and ugly. We have forgotten that urban areas are grown

David Rudlin
Thu 11 Apr 2019 06.00 BSTLast modified on Fri 12 Apr 2019 11.44 BST

Comments 441 

Bradley Stoke, Bristol, an example of the late 20th-century housing estates that followed rules set out in 1977’s Design Bulletin 32. Photograph: SWNS

Here is something you might try if you live in Britain. Go to your favourite urban place, whether it be the centre of a large city or a small market town. Close your eyes, turn around three times and walk in that direction for 15 minutes (or an hour if you’re in London). I can predict with a reasonable degree of confidence that the place where you end up will be crap.

You may be stuck in the no-man’s-land around the ring road, or in a brutally functional industrial estate, or among the endless rows of parked cars in a retail park, or lost in a tangle of suburban cul-de-sacs. Wherever you are, the environment will generally be bewildering, illogical and ugly.

It is likely that your favourite place, where you started, was built before 1947 – quite possibly long before – and the place you ended up has been created since. This is not an argument against modern architecture. I love modern architecture and, with the possible exception of the council estate, it can’t be blamed for the problems of the place where you are now standing.

Town planning is a different story. My reason for choosing 1947 is that it was the date our modern planning system was conceived, the result of the Town and Country Planning Act – part of a raft of postwar legislation to, among other things, establish the NHS, set up the welfare state and tackle the problems of our cities: chiefly congestion, slums and pollution. It is a sad indictment of this system that most of the places it has created have been a disappointment. They may be healthier, safer and more efficient – but they lack the character, diversity and human scale of a city street, market town or village.

Retail parks: the unwitting result of a set of planning rules that have led to a result no one foresaw. Photograph: Michael Heath/Alamy

We can’t blame designers for this, because the reality is that most of these suburban estates, retail parks and highways schemes were never really designed at all. They are the unwitting result of a set of planning rules that have led to a result no one foresaw.

Most of the rules were well-intentioned. They were designed to stop us getting killed by cars while allowing traffic to flow, to improve the quality of our environment and give us access to green space, to separate housing from polluting industry, to make business more efficient, to encourage light and healthy housing, and to give places for our children to play. All worthy aspirations, and all the responsibility of different professionals who have likely done a good job in their particular area of responsibility. It is just that no one has been looking at the bigger picture, at what sort of environment is created by the combined effect of all of these well-meaning rules.

Take the late 20th-century housing estates which encircle most of our towns and cities, and of which the sprawling Bradley Stoke district of Bristol is perhaps the most infamous example. These were largely the result of rules set out in the innocuous-sounding Design Bulletin 32 from 1977. Design Bulletin 32 stipulated, for example, that all new estates should have a hierarchy of roads, or that houses could only front on to the most minor roads. Mix in rules about every house having two off-street parking spaces, privacy distances between windows and the complex arrangements for ongoing maintenance, and hey presto: you get the cul-de-sac.

A cul-de-sac in suburban London. Cul-de-sacs became more prevalent in the UK as a result of 1977’s Design Bulletin 32. Photograph: Dan Chung/The Guardian

In the early 2000s, government did try to reform Design Bulletin 32, first publishing a companion guide called Places, Streets and Movement, and then a new version called Manual for Streets in 2007. But research last year by the Urban Design Group showed that fewer than 20% of highways authorities had updated their guidance.

I don’t deny that many people like suburbs. But it is undeniable that the UK suburb – a tree with cul-de-sacs branching off the stem, unconnected to each other – is confusing, makes walking inconvenient and unpleasant, suffocates local shops and makes public transport unviable.​

Contrast this to that favourite urban place of yours, where we started. Its spaces are likely to be human in scale, with walkable streets that connect to each other and make it easy to get around. It is probably quite busy, supporting all manner of shops, bars and restaurants. It is made up of lots of different buildings, many of which are not particularly interesting in themselves but frame streets and spaces that are a pleasure to be in. Some of this may have been “designed”, but there are many attractive urban places that never were. The Academy of Urbanism gives out awards for these good urban spaces each year: last year, the shortlist included places as diverse as Barnsley, Chelmsford, Paisley, Kelham Island in Sheffield and Hackney Wick in London. These are not pretty or quaint, but they have a satisfying, self-organised urbanity that we humans used to be pretty good at.

Kelham Island Quarter in Sheffield: not pretty or quaint, but with a satisfying, self-organised urbanity that we humans used to be pretty good at. Photograph: Alamy

In Britain, any piece of land left undisturbed will first be colonised by small plants, then shrubs and then trees. After a hundred or so years, it will become mature broadleaf woodland – and, having reached that steady state, will remain that way for ever – a state known as “climax vegetation”.

Do human societies go through a similar process when building cities? People come together to live in a particular place, negotiate their relationship to each other, build homes and businesses that combine to create streets and squares that are just the right size to accommodate urban life. We might call this climax urbanism.

In the 1960s the great urbanist Edmund Bacon, describing the Umbria hill town of Todi in Italy, wrote:

"The collective mind of the citizens … must have conceived the space volumes of the two squares as abstract entities, and then brought them into being by the construction of individual buildings over many years."

It is a process that can be seen at work in Syrian refugee camps in Jordan, as documented by Husam Alwaer at Dundee University. In the Zaatari camp, residents have invented a contraption with wheels that allows them to rearrange their UN-provided cabins. What started as regimented rows of cabins has gradually been reconfigured into family groupings, with those cabins on the “main street” turned into shops, so the result is not unlike a traditional Syrian town. The same process can be seen in Indian slums, which, despite their often dreadful living conditions, could be seen as a form of proto-urbanism: they may be built out of corrugated sheeting and tarpaulin, but their function and form is not so different from a historic Indian city such as Jodhpur.

Zaatari refugee camp, north Jordan, close to the border with Syria. Photograph: TASS/Barcroft Images

Did that beautiful English market town or city street where we started our journey go through a similar process before it reached its climax state? Is the problem with the modern planning system that it just doesn’t understand this process of city growth? Does it think new neighbourhoods can be designed on paper and wished into existence like the new towns of the 1960s, the council estates of the 1970s, the Docklands development of the 1980s or the clearance of terraced housing in the 1990s? Maybe planners need to understand that urban areas are grown, rather than wished into existence under their blue utopian skies.

There is an academic field that explores these ideas. Complexity theory was originally developed to explain the “design” of insect colonies or slime mould communities, but groundbreaking work in the 1970s by people like Lewis Thomas and Christopher Alexander sought to apply these ideas to cities. Ants live in hugely complex and beautifully regulated colonies without any form of leadership. A small number of pheromone signals by which ants communicate, combined with a millennia of natural selection, have fine-tuned these colonies to perfectly meet their needs. What if the interaction of humans over many years worked in a similar way to create settlements that are ideally suited to the needs of the community?

It is an appealing thought, though there are a few problems with the idea. The first is that humans no longer seem to be very good at optimising their settlements. Entirely unplanned development is more likely to create a slum, barrio or shantytown than an attractive neighbourhood. The journalist Peter Popham, in the book City of Darkness, summed it up well when he wrote about the Walled City settlement in Kowloon, Hong Kong:

"All this intensity of random human effort and activity, vice and sloth and industry, exempted from all of the controls we take for granted, resulted in an environment as richly varied and as sensual as the heart of the tropical rainforest."

Except, as he points out, “it was so obviously toxic, full of brothels and drug dens, pollution and poverty.”

The slums of the Walled City, Kowloon, Hong Kong. The settlement was demolished in 1992. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Maybe the Walled City just needed more time to reach its idealised or “climax” state. But what is perhaps more likely is that humans are no longer very good at acting in society’s (or even their own) best interests. The terrible conditions in the unregulated city were the reason that planning was invented – and why it is still needed.

The second problem with the application of complexity theory to cities is the fact that humans fail one of the basic tests of a complex system. As Stephen Johnson, whose book Emergence is one of the best overviews of the field, writes: “The relative stupidity of the individual ant is, as the computer programmer says, a feature not a bug.” If a group of ants (let’s call them planners) were to become sentient and start trying to direct and shape the colony, they would cause havoc and probably destroy the system.

It may be true that planners do not understand the natural process by which traditional places were built. But that is not the lesson to be drawn here. There have always been authorities with an overview of human settlements. As my colleague Shruti Hemani shows in her research, even in slums there are “founder families” that exercise a degree of control. The point is that planners do not sit above the system, bending it to their will: cities are complex, emergent patterns that result from the interaction of a huge number of variables, including society’s norms and values, the working of markets and the impact of technology. Planning is just one of the inputs to the system, and probably not the most important one.

But planning has gone too far. In attempting to “create” cities by regulating every tiny facet of them, it has unwittingly caused what complexity science calls a “phase transition”: it has dissolved the pattern of the traditional town and turned it into the retail park, the suburban cul-de-sac and the industrial estate. These are not places that anyone designed, but a new, emergent climax state that the people drawing up the rules never even envisaged, let alone intended.

There is a place in Holland where an experiment is taking place to rewrite these rules. The Homeruskwartier district of Almere in the Netherlands has been divided into plots that are being sold to individuals and groups to build their own homes. The rules of the plot, like the pheromone signals of the ant, are very simple: they can be written on one side of A4 paper regulating the position, size, and use of what can be built on the plot. The neighbourhood is being built one house at a time and no one knows quite what the result will be. There is a masterplan that gives it structure, but provided they stay within the parameters of their “plot passport”, and are able to negotiate with their neighbours, residents can build what they want.

This is a neighbourhood that has been coded rather than planned, and ideally over time the programme parameters would be tweaked to create the neighbourhood residents want. It may seem radical, but actually it is the way that we used to do things, before 1947, when the well-meaning planning system planned away the art of building good places.

David Rudlin is currently director of URBED, chair of the Academy of Urbanism, honorary professor at Manchester University and co-author of Climax City: Masterplanning and the Complexity of Urban Growth

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Why is Britain so bad at planning cities? | Cities | The Guardian
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"Rural inequality is not just a matter for rural dwellers."

There are huge problems around inequality in the countryside:
Futures Forum: Devon has among the lowest average salaries in the UK
Futures Forum: Rural poverty, rural immobility > "opportunities in rural areas are not as abundant for young people as they are in cities"
Futures Forum: How prevalent is income inequality in rural areas?

Here's an excellent piece looking with a fresh eye on things: 

Rural inequality is just a matter for rural people…

And by that logic, I guess it doesn’t need attention because it doesn’t affect the majority? Some people, and some areas, are disadvantaged, they don’t have facilities that people need.

Felicity Humphrey
07:00 April 16, 2019
But don’t fear, you can just move into an area that has facilities, like an over-crowded city.

But hang on, those areas are already quite full aren’t they?

Slowly pushing more people into them just doesn’t seem like a good idea.

Housing is already tight, traffic is definitely an issue and jobs are so competitive. Surely keeping towns and cities the only serviced areas will only add to over populated, stressed, congested areas, seeing more traffic, more pollution, more congestion, out of reach house prices (London) more tiny flats, more HMOS, overcrowded schools, overcrowded hospitals…

*Takes a breath*

…whilst rural areas, that are underserviced are left to become beautiful ‘chocolate boxes’, with only the Bountys left.

They’re inhabited by retirees, seasonal visitors and even more seasonal ‘hospitality’ workers. It’s ludicrous because we’re crying out for more space – but who wants to live somewhere you can’t even get a last-minute toilet roll.

I’m not sure at all that it makes sense to force a huge population into just a few, overcrowded, urban areas.

Have you been on the tube at rush hour? Can you imagine if all aspects of life were that bad? If all the aisles in Tescos were like the tube and you had to squeeze and apologise your way through an obstacle course of bodies to get to the freezers, finally finding that they’re out of Aunt Bessie’s anyway?

Maybe I’m being dramatic, but maybe I’m not.

Right now only 17% of the population live in rural areas.

If we don’t have something in place to make sure those areas don’t get forgotten about, it’s pretty obvious that it’s going to get worse, for both urban and rural people.

So how can we avoid this dystopian Armageddon?

Well, impassioned internet crowd, I’m glad you asked. We need a rural strategy.

We need one that all local and central government have a solid commitment to.

We need a rural strategy that places rural people at its centre, because they matter. And if we look after our rural areas, maybe some of the pressure on urban areas will ease as well.

Maybe if people can get education, jobs and houses in rural areas, they might want to live there, and we won’t all end up in living in London in Tokyo-style ‘mini-pods’.

The Government must articulate a high-level rural policy objective and it needs to be implemented across all of Whitehall, because nobody should be unreasonably disadvantaged by where they live.

It’s not good for rural people, and it’s not good for urban people.

Without a rural strategy we all lose.

24housing » Opinion » Rural inequality is just a matter for rural people…
Rural inequality is a matter for everyone - Rural Services Network
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Climate action: the next steps

To what extent have the demonstrations in London been successful? 

Extinction Rebellion protests have WORKED as MPs succumb to calls for change

CLIMATE protesters who caused chaos in London last week have succeeded in getting leading MPs onboard with their demands.

By EMILY FERGUSON
PUBLISHED: 19:45, Tue, Apr 23, 2019 

After just one week of protests led by the Extinction Rebellion group, top MP’s have began taking the campaign seriously by calling for tougher action on climate change. William Hague, Jeremy Corbyn and Ed Miliband are just a few leading MP’s who have called on the UK to “step up” it’s commitment to dealing with climate change. The environmental protests commenced on Monday April 15 and saw a series of staged protests, which included climbing on trains at the Docklands Light Railway, blocking the junction of Oxford Street and Regent Street with a pink boat and occupying Waterloo Bridge.

Extinction Rebellion protests have WORKED as MPs succumb to calls for change | UK | News | Express.co.uk

Support for Extinction Rebellion soars after Easter protests | Environment | The Guardian

But where next? 

Here's a piece from the Friends of the Earth: 

What Extinction Rebellion needs to do next to win this fight

Extinction Rebellion needs clear demands and a strategy to target the real 'bad guys', writes Tim Root.

24 April 2019

Although YouGov polling suggests most people oppose Extinction Rebellion, the movement and the school strikes have undeniably raised the profile of climate breakdown.

Michael Gove said “there’s more we need to do, to move away from fossil fuels” and called for “a serious conversation” on the topic. So this is a vital time for campaigns with established reputations to put forward demands which the government might well accept, at least in part.

Clear demands

Concrete proposals for Extinction Rebellion could include:  

• Reinstating the zero carbon standard for new homes, one of the most cost-effective ways of reducing emissions
• Reinstating the fuel duty accelerator, so drivers would know that every year the cost per mile of driving would increase slightly. 
  Research shows that motorists drive quite a lot less as the price of fuel rises. For the first three years the fuel tax increase should be matched by tax credit increases, or income tax cuts, for low earners
• Cuts in public transport fares, and a scrappage scheme for high-emissions cars, conditional on any replacement vehicle being electric
• The very cost-effective investment to electrify and upgrade the least efficient parts of the rail network, which have caused tremendous inconvenience for commuters in recent years, and stand to lose the government many votes
• A large programme of investment in home insulation, cutting fuel poverty, and also providing good work opportunities, particularly for many of the three-quarters of a million under-25s not in education, employment or training.

Clearly such proposals are not the comprehensive climate plan we want. But if several were accepted, this would encourage many more people to support us – noticing that we could probably make further large advances.  

We would be more likely to get these proposals accepted by showing that they could be funded in ways unlikely to rouse strong opposition.

One option is a land value tax, which has been supported by people from across the political spectrum, and already exists in about 30 nations. This would also help to release land for much–needed housing.

The government could also fund these measures by increasing tax on alcohol. Since 2010 the government has made several cuts to taxes on alcohol, despite the harm excessive use causes to health, and through crime.

These proposals could be branded the Climate Emergency Charter, or a similar striking name.

A viable strategy

Supporters of Extinction Rebellion need to consider its strategy carefully. The group states that:

“Our current system of governance is compromised by a focus on profits and economic growth. Politicians can be influenced by lobbies of powerful corporations.”

Despite this, XR aims “to persuade the government to take emergency action”. Yet it puts forward no reasons why the focus on profits and the influence of corporations would be outweighed by some road blocking and transport disruption.

XR needs to heed the words of its supporter George Monbiot, that the political class is “strategically incapable of addressing even short-term crises, let alone a vast existential predicament.”

In addition Extinction Rebellion needs to consider how it could persuade government to take on board its concerns. Our opponents could use similar tactics. The gilets jaunes emerged to oppose a rise in fuel tax.

The more that the media report Extinction Rebellion blocking bus routes, causing large police overtime expenses, diverting police from tackling ordinary crime, and causing business losses, the less government will listen to climate protesters. We need to keep public confidence so we can exert a positive influence.

Take one scenario: an ambulance caught in a traffic jam could arrive too late, with the patient dying as a result. XR would suffer a major loss of public support. Our opponents would then influence governments to pursue other priorities.

The book This is an Uprising, praised by Naomi Klein and many others, emphasises that campaign demands need to “resonate with the public and arouse broad-based sympathy.”

This involves emotionally powerful pictures and clear slogans, such as Clean Energy for a Safe Future, or Clean Air: Healthy Children.

By contrast Extinction Rebellion’s demands, for the government to “tell the truth” about climate change, and “reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025” lack the emotional power and clarity to inspire sufficient support, beyond the core of already committed supporters.

Make it specific

Taking account of governments’ failure over decades to prioritise climate breakdown, we must not put all our eggs in one basket.

The banks exert a massive influence on our climate. From 2016-18, the world’s biggest 33 banks provided nearly $2 trillion for fossil fuel companies. Banks’ public image was badly tarnished by the financial crash, and therefore it is easy to portray them as villains.

A mass campaign by the French Friends of the Earth got four huge banks all to make significant climate commitments. This included shaming Société Générale for its support for shale gas, deeming it inferior to its competitor BNP Paribas.

A bold global campaign backed by one or more well-known organisations could gain massive support, pushing many banks to cut their support for fossil fuels soon for fear of their reputation being trashed.  

We will win sufficient prompt climate action only by boosting our public support. If we can be widely misrepresented as irresponsible and unrealistic, business and government will probably find excuses not to show the urgency required. 

Tim Root is co-ordinator of Muswell Hill & Hornsey Friends of the Earth.

What Extinction Rebellion needs to do next to win this fight | Left Foot Forward
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District Council borrowing in order to hold onto its council housing

The shenanigans of the District Council when it comes to money is often reported on by this blog...

Whether about its 'investment' in highly speculative property markets:
Futures Forum: District Council's £20m investment fund: "Property investment brings with it the potential for significant risk if things go wrong."

Or about its 'savings' over its relocation project:
Futures Forum: Knowle relocation project: an overspend on loans

The Herald has just put together a story on how much the District Council is in debt: 
East Devon District Council's has £86.8 million in outstanding loans to pay | Honiton, Axminster and Seaton news - Midweek Herald

And as covered by the VGS:
District Council borrowing goes up by £3m - Vision Group for Sidmouth

However, as pointed out by Cllr Cathy Gardner, yes, the District Council has questions to answer - but actually a lot of the borrowing it to make sure it can keep its social housing, as reported on the VGS Facebook pages:
Vision Group for Sidmouth - Home | Facebook

And by the East Devon Watch: 

EAST DEVON ALLIANCE COUNCILLOR GARDNER CLARIFIES SIDMOUTH HERALD EDDC DEBT STORY

23 APR 2019

East Devon Alliance councillor Cathy Gardner has contacted EDW to clarify the story:

“To my knowledge (as a District Cllr), EDDC has over £80m in debt because it had to borrow money to hold on to its council housing when the conservative government were making councils sell it off. So this is debt for a good & bad reason!

I’m surprised that the ‘politically neutral’ press officers have not added this to their comment to the Herald. I’ve objected to the council proposing to borrow money to invest in commercial property (to generate income), something else forced on them by the conservative government cuts to council grants (now zero).

The relocation from the Knowle is another matter. If re-elected I will continue to push for transparency on costs and to see if any of the Conservative group can ever prove break even.”

East Devon Alliance Councillor Gardner clarifies Sidmouth Herald EDDC debt story | East Devon Watch
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Climate change: and property prices

Property prices are affected by climate change:
Futures Forum: If you have an expensive house near the sea, it’s time to sell
Futures Forum: Climate change: subsidies, the insurance industry and behavioural economics
Futures Forum: Flooding: "Have decisions made by the public and politicians alike made things worse?"

Not wishing to be too alarmist, but as CNBC in the United States reports today: 

Climate change will crush real estate values for investors who don't prepare, new report says

Diana Olick | @DianaOlick Published 6 Hours Ago Updated 2 Hours Ago
CNBC.com

File:FEMA - 40651 - Flooding of Sheyenne River in Valley City, ND claims house.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

Scott Olson | Getty Images
A house is surrounded by floodwater from the Red River on April 11, 2011 near Fargo, North Dakota. Although the Red River crested in Fargo on Saturday at 38.75 feet, the fourth-highest flood on record, areas north of the city are still experiencing near-record flooding.

For any investor, measuring opportunity against risk is critical. And for real estate investors in particular, risk is rising exponentially in the age of climate change.

To that end, big real estate firms are pouring significant resources into calculating climate risk and its likely effect on property portfolios — everything from increasingly extreme weather to a rise in sea levels.

"This process will be painful for investors who are caught off guard, but those who are prepared have the potential to outperform," a new report from the Urban Land Institute said.

Damage to U.S. real estate from extreme storms hit a record high in 2017. Natural disasters, including floods, mudslides and wildfires, cost more than $300 billion in damage, the bulk of it to residential and commercial real estate.

In 2018, from May through July, much of the East Coast, down to Florida, saw rainfall up to three times normal levels, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Nine of the top 10 years for one-day extreme precipitation events have occurred since 1990, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), because as the atmosphere warms, clouds hold more water.

All of these statistics are not just alarming, they are sounding the alarm bells for the real estate investment sector, because it is most vulnerable.

"Understanding and mitigating climate risk is a complex and evolving challenge for real estate investors," said ULI's CEO, Edward Walter. "Risks such as sea level rise and heat stress will increasingly highlight the vulnerability not only of individual assets and locations, but of entire metropolitan areas."

The report highlights how real estate investment companies are now prioritizing the risk of climate change and creating new approaches to better gauge and develop mitigation strategies.

"Building for resilience, on a portfolio, property and citywide basis, is paramount to staying competitive. Factoring in climate risk is becoming the new normal for our industry," added Walter.

Some of the strategies, according to the report, include:

• Mapping physical risk for current portfolios and potential acquisitions;
• Incorporating climate risk into due diligence and other investment decision-making processes;
• Incorporating additional physical adaptation and mitigation measures for assets at risk;
• Exploring a variety of strategies to mitigate risk, including portfolio diversification and investing directly in the mitigation measures for specific assets; and
• Engaging with policymakers on local resilience strategies.

"Investors see climate considerations as a necessary layer of fiduciary responsibility to their stakeholders, as well as an opportunity to identify markets and assets that will benefit from a changing climate," according to the report. "While early adapters have committed resources to gain knowledge and improve awareness of climate risk, in the coming years, methods are likely to become more sophisticated."

It also highlights the potential return on investment from putting resources into mitigation strategies for real estate assets.

Heitman, a Chicago-based real estate investment firm with nearly $34 billion in assets under management globally, worked with ULI on the report and is putting heavy resources, both financial and personnel, into measuring and balancing climate risk.

"The industry didn't seem to be pricing in these kinds of risks," said Mary Ludgin, senior managing director and head of global investment research at Heitman. "When we began the project of trying to identify the climate risk inherent in individual properties, we first looked to our insurers. They were less of a help than we were expecting."

That is because insurers reprice annually, and therefore do not look at long-term models. FEMA flood plains are reassessed about every five years, but they still don't account for the increasingly extreme weather and heavier rainfall that parts of the United States are now seeing.

"We can't try to determine what's going to happen in 12 months beyond, because insurance is set up for what your risk is today. And it wouldn't meet actuarial science to charge you for a future potential," said David Maurstad, FEMA's deputy associate administrator for federal insurance and mitigation and chief executive of the National Flood Insurance Program.

Changing valuations

Heitman is, therefore, going beyond traditional insurance predictions to factor climate risk into its investments. It hired a Berkeley, California-based firm called 427, one of a new cottage industry of companies that assess climate risk to real estate. It's mission, according to the website, is to catalyze climate adaptation and resilience investments by enabling the integration of climate science into business and policy decisions.

Carolyn Cole | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images
An aerial view of Paradise, California off of Clark Road on Nov. 15, 2018. The Camp Fire has burned more than 7,000 structures in Paradise.

"They were able to provide us an assessment of flooding, wildfires, wind-related disasters, and we can then aggregate that up to what is Heitman's total exposure globally or a specific client's exposure on the individual buildings they own. They can assess potential acquisitions and the risk that they represent," said Ludgin.

These risks include not just the destruction from individual natural disasters but business disruptions for property tenants and higher operating and capital costs caused by increased wear and tear on properties from more extreme weather.

As a whole, the industry needs to understand the pricing impacts of physical climate risks, and how climate change is likely to have a bigger impact on valuation in the future as asset and market liquidity are affected, the ULI report says.

And it's not just storms and sea level rise, but the potential higher costs associated with protecting cities and municipalities from both. In Miami, for example, the city is investing $200 million into resilience, installing pump stations and upgrading its infrastructure. Miami Beach is on track to spend twice that, raising sidewalks and seawalls. The money is coming from new bonds — voters raising their own property taxes to protect their property.

"Are taxes going to rise?" asked Ludgin. "We are looking at scenarios where taxes quadruple in the period that we hold the property. You can assume that federal, state, and local governments will play a role, and that means a climate in which taxes are likely rising."

All of it is a new and now necessary part of what real estate investors, developers and managers need to do to factor opportunity against risk.

"They are trying to think about how their portfolio is balanced and make sure they're not overexposed in a market that has more risk," said Walter. "Not redlining markets, but investors are trying to be thoughtful about the level of exposure to those markets."

That is because higher-risk assets will eventually see downward repricing, as the market redirects capital to locations and individual assets where it is expected to be better insulated from these particular risks, the ULI report said.


Climate change will crush real estate values for unprepared investors: Report
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“Devon’s New Housing Need - A Government and Local Authority Perspective” > Housing Minister addresses CPRE seminar in Exeter > full report

The Campaign to Protect Rural England put on a very well-attended conference last month:
Futures Forum: “Devon’s New Housing Need - A Government and Local Authority Perspective” > CPRE seminar in Exeter > video report
Futures Forum: “Devon’s New Housing Need - A Government and Local Authority Perspective” > Housing Minister to address CPRE seminar in Exeter > Thursday 21st March

Devon Live has an account of the Minister's speech at the event:

Minister urges developers to build beauty for Devon's new build estates

However, Kit Malthouse MP was criticised for not reading CPRE report on housing need

Lewis Clarke
4 APR 2019

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CPRE KIT MALTHOUSE IN DEVON

Housing Minister Kit Malthouse has called on developers and local authorities to build beauty across the nation.

The MP spoke to the Devon branch of the CPRE (Campaign to Protect Rural England) at Sandy Park in Exeter on Thursday, March 21. The event was CPRE Devon’s biggest yet, drawing 230 people from across Devon as well as neighbouring counties.

Mr Malthouse MP discussed the Government’s target of building 300,000 new homes a year in England.

He said: “We promise to future generations that their lives will be better than ours, that we will start the businesses, find the cures, plant the trees and build the houses that mean future generations have a better life than we do.

“That’s fundamentally what binds us together and means my children – I own a 20-year-old and a couple of younger twins - will pay to look after me when I’m sick and elderly, and the deal is that I will provide for them in the future.

READ MORE
Villagers furious at plans to dump thousands of tonnes of soil at farmland near Exeter 

“We have to acknowledge that in the last 40 years a particular part of that contract, the housing part, has broken down. Governments of all stripes over the past three or four decades have failed to build the houses the country needs, and the crash in 2007 exacerbated that. Just before the crash, we built around 231,000 new homes in this country, after the crash that dropped down to about 124,000. That coincided with enormous changes in demographics, people living much longer, but also living alone much longer, younger people also living alone in single unit households and growing population alongside it as well. It meant that we saw some important indicators in this country start to fall, not least home ownership amongst the young.

“My predecessors and back in the days of the coalition decided that we needed to do something about this and to start to ramp up and push as hard as we could on the housing production numbers to try and restore people to where they were before. I’ve been given this enormous target or hitting 300,000 homes a year. I hope there is nobody who thinks we don’t need to build any more houses and I certainly hope nobody thinks we need to build new houses but just not in Devon.

“This is a national mission for all of us and a national obligation for all of us to the next generation.”

Mr Malthouse accepted that it was a “particularly difficult conundrum” to solve in the “beautiful” county of Devon but encouraged local debate to answer questions of how many, where and what type of housing was needed locally.



(Image: CPRE)

He added: “We are putting enormous emphasis on the desire for local authorities to think about beauty. If we’re going to get to 300,000, it is an enormous ramp up from where we are, and it means that hardly any part of the country that is untouched by development.

“In my experience 80 per cent of people’s concern about development is what it’s going to look like. The phrase I hear most from people is that it will spoil their area, and yet if we get design right, make it beautiful, and if it fits and takes part in the context of where it is place, it can enhance things.

“The charge I put down to the development community is twofold; I’ve said to them to think not just of building homes, but building neighbourhoods, and how they will live, the soul and the heart. Secondly, they need to consider if they are building the conservation area of the future. Is what they are building going to last the centuries or is it likely to bulldozed in the next forty years as so much of what was built in the 60s and 70s is now.

READ MORE
Housing minister to address special CPRE Devon seminar amidst growing concerns over the impact of new homes developments

“I hope that in four decades they will turn up with a preservation notice to the stuff we’re going to build rather than bulldoze them. I admit we’re not achieving that now, and the large builders are building the same thing whether it’s in Devon, Doncaster, Canterbury or Carlisle. It all looks the same, it doesn’t fit, they’re not using local vernacular, they’re not using detailing it’s all blank ubiquity.

“We won’t get to the 300,000 target because residents will be hostile to development, thinking it’s going to spoil areas. It’s critical that local authorities and developers make space for beauty. We’re trying hard to push the idea that if we’re building beautiful stuff, then we will be much more likely to make progress”.

However, the minister has been lambasted by Devon residents for not addressing concerns about the impact of new homes in the countryside.

CPRE Devon has produced a hard-hitting video in the wake of the Housing Minister’s address to a seminar in Exeter on the issue of the number of new homes in Devon’s countryside.

The local conservation charity is campaigning to protect Devon’s precious countryside and green spaces. Last year, it commissioned an independent report by a leading research company, which showed that more new homes are being built in Devon than are needed and that too few of them are affordable or sustainable.

The Minister was expected to respond to this evidence and people’s concerns about the scale, design and quality of new housing. In fact, he admitted on camera that he hadn’t even read the report, produced six months ago, before coming to Devon to deliver his keynote speech.

Many attendees said they were disappointed and frustrated by what they heard from the Minister, including his failure to address key concerns about the lack of investment in corresponding infrastructure such as transport links, employment, schools and health facilities.

Rebecca Bartleet, Chair of CPRE Devon said: “Kit Malthouse does not come out of this well. He failed to read our report in advance. So why come all this way on the pretence of answering the questions raised in the report?

“He did not come to hear our concerns, based on hard evidence. He came to peddle his policies and basically tell us we are wrong to disagree with them. By contrast, the presentation by Mid Devon District Council’s CEO, Stephen Wolford, added real substance to the new homes debate.”

READ MORE
Culm Valley Garden Village £300k cash boost welcomed

Penny Mills, Director of CPRE Devon, added: “We are grateful to the Minister for coming to Devon and to Sir Hugo Swire for arranging the visit. Our event was packed with over two hundred people interested to hear what Mr Malthouse had to say. Unfortunately, he neither addressed the key findings of our report nor the fact that the government has used an outdated and flawed methodology in calculating new housing figures. We will, therefore, be writing to Mr Malthouse with the questions people want answered. We will continue our campaign to challenge the number of homes the government claims need to be built in Devon and to protect Devon’s precious asset - its countryside.”

Six months after Opinion Research Services (ORS) published the report, DEVON HOUSING NEEDS EVIDENCE, Local Planning Authorities appear to be responding to pressure to take note of the evidence. East Devon District Council and Exeter City Council are commissioning their own studies to take a fresh look at the justification for continuing to build the number of new homes planned.

Latest figures released nationally by CPRE show how much brownfield land is available for development before more countryside is lost. The figures show that across Devon there are currently 337 brownfield sites, totalling over 400 hectares of available land with a minimum capacity of 14,405 homes.

Minister urges developers to build beauty for Devon's new build estates - Devon Live
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“Devon’s New Housing Need - A Government and Local Authority Perspective” > CPRE seminar in Exeter > video report

The Campaign to Protect Rural England has made it clear that new housing does not have to be built on green field sites:
Futures Forum: More brownfield land in East Devon than previously counted > CPRE says 1000 new homes could be built

It also says that not so much housing needs to be built anyway - as central and local government figures are wrong:
Futures Forum: “The current local plans are planning far too many homes.” >>> Devon CPRE to challenge Devon’s planning authorities' housing requirement figures

It met up last week to discuss these issues:
Futures Forum: “Devon’s New Housing Need - A Government and Local Authority Perspective” > Housing Minister to address CPRE seminar in Exeter > Thursday 21st March

A video of the event has just been uploaded:

CPRE Devon’s New Housing Seminar - 21 March 2019 on Vimeo
Videos | Devon Planning Applications | CPRE Devon
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A solution to our housing problems: socialisation

There have been calls for more social housing:
Futures Forum: A year on from the Grenfell Tower fire, and the debate around social housing continues...
Futures Forum: A solution to our housing problems: "A vision for social housing"
Futures Forum: A solution to our housing problems: build more council houses

But perhaps, rather than asking the state to do this, it can be a genuine grassroots initiative - as shown in Berlin - although the headline in the otherwise excellent piece in The Conversation recently calls this 'renationalise' rather than the activists' preferred 'socialise': 

Berlin’s grassroots plan to renationalise up to 200,000 ex-council homes from corporate landlords

Joanna Kusiak

Research Fellow in Urban Studies, University of Cambridge

March 5, 2019 8.38pm AEDT

In major cities throughout the world, the price of housing is on the rise: in 2017 alone, prices leaped by 20.5% in Berlin, 16% in Vancouver and 14.8% in Hong Kong. As rents keep going up, activists in Berlin are spearheading a novel proposal to nationalise housing. Such response might sound quixotic in cities such as London, but 54.9% of Berliners consider it reasonable. And instead of waiting for the government to act, citizens have taken matters into their own hands.

On April 6, 2019 the civic campaign Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen (DWE for short) starts collecting signatures, with the aim to hold a referendum that could lead to renationalisation of up to 200,000 council flats, which were previously sold to corporate landlords.

If successful, the move could provide a legal precedent for other cities to call for nationalisaton as a modern and legitimate solution to their housing crises. It could also prompt changes to international law, empowering legislation initiatives that see housing as a human right, as a strategic resource or as global commons.

For Berliners, it not only matters who owns the housing, but also how they own it. Nationalisation is often associated with centralised, if not authoritarian governance, and inefficient administration. That’s why DWE uses a different legal concept: “Vergesellschaftung” (which translates to “socialisation”) – or social ownership. This model presumes that once flats are made public, they will also be democratically managed.

The new social housing

The activists envision a new public institution aimed at providing affordable flats to Berliners of all nationalities. Tenants, administration workers and members of the public would be equally represented in its governing body, which would also include members of Berlin’s senate. All profits from rent would be used for the maintenance and modernisation of buildings, and for the construction of new housing.

But how much would it cost the city to reclaim apartments sold to corporate landlords, considering the record 20.5% leap in housing prices in 2017? While the exact amount of compensation would be negotiated in the court, there are reasons to believe that it won’t be anywhere near market prices.

Crucial here is article 15 of the German constitution, created after World War II, which allows either state or local governments to turn land, natural resources and means of production into collective ownership “for the purposes of socialisation”. This legal clause would be the key leverage to ban corporate landlords with more than 3,000 properties from of the city.

After World War II, legislators of all political factions believed economic monopolies to be dangerous for democracy. Indeed, several German industry giants had willingly cooperated with the Nazi state. Article 15 of the German constitution was designed as a tool to prevent what legal experts called a “misuse of economic power against society”.

Taking back power

According to Berlin’s housing activists, that is precisely what large housing corporations are doing today: using their economic power against society. Companies such as Deutsche Wohnen, Vonovia or Akelius – which all together own more than 200,000 flats in Berlin – can use their scale in such a way that existing mechanisms for rent control are bypassed.

For example, in Germany rent increases are usually justified in relation to the “Mietspiegel” (or “rent mirror”), calculated every year in relation to the average rent in the area. If a company owns several thousand units in one neighbourhood, its rent increases drive up the entire “rent mirror”, and so would perpetually justify further increases.

As demand for housing in Berlin has grown over the past 15 years, rents have been driven up to the point that – according to a recent study - 40% of Berliners aged between 45 and 55 are unlikely to be able to afford to stay in the city after they retire. Unless housing is socialised, that is.

Berliners are also entering into unknown legal terrain. Never in the history of the German constitution has article 15 been actually used, and until recently it seemed to have been largely forgotten. But it would be a mistake to see socialisation as an initiative confined to German law. Berlin’s housing corporations are active on the international stock market, and taking their property would lead the city government into a confrontation with international law which, in general, strongly protectscorporate private property.

This battle will be watched closely by proponents of nationalisation and other forms of progressive politics, right across Europe. While the lack of affordable housing in other cities may be driven by other factors – aside from mass housing ownership by large corporate landlords – the outcome in Berlin could lend strength to calls to nationalise empty property or vacant lots.

This would make a big difference in cities such as London, for example, where more than a third of properties in “prime” market areas remain empty. As it stands, compulsory purchase – a tool related to nationalisation – is currently being used in London for quite the opposite purpose. The city seizes council flats from tenants (who became homeowners under right-to-buy) to make space for commercial redevelopment of sites.

Enraged about the housing crisis, Berlin activists do not just push their legislators, they show them the way by actively searching for progressive possibilities inside the existing law and beyond it. However this particular legal battle pans out, Berliners have already reinvented and democratised nationalisation, turning it from a top-down state intervention, into a grassroots project. 

Berlin's grassroots plan to renationalise up to 200,000 ex-council homes from corporate landlords
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