(continued)

I suspect there is also a problem with the structure of the building industry - i.e. that there aren't any large, well run companies interested in doing such jobs in sufficient scale to achieve decent economies of scale, so that the market fragments between good quality but high price bespoke work, and the more or less dodgy. I wouldn't want to blame amenity societies for this situation, although I feel they contribute to it by reacting more to bad developments, and responding to the unthinking nimbyism of many of their members, than proactively advocating what would be good developments. In fairness to local amenity societies, in this case SydSoc - they did take a stand on what could have been an opportunity for good development of the Greyhound, but have revealed themselves, in my view, to have been out of their depth.

What we really need is more flexible housing, which I tried to get a discussion going on on the Sydenham Town Forum earlier this year. Like much of my thinking on housing, this was part triggered by a Practical Action talk I went to last year following which I posted this about lessons to be learned from Bogata

I also thought about this when someone posted on the Sydenham Town Forum about a possible development opportunity for some self build and around the same time I read something again about Walter Segal's housing ideas - how it was designed to allow people easily to extend their houses upwards. Wouldn't it be fantastic if this could be mainstream, with a healthy population of local building firms who knew exctly how to extend people's houses when they wanted, with little fuss from local authority planners because the principle was written into their Local Development Framewords, and Amenity Societies diplomatically rebuffing members who don't like the idea of new neighbours being able to peer into their gardens?

But it's not going to happen, because before we get to the architect and planning, there's one massive hurdle in the price of land, which according to that poster was more than the building cost. So this is (2) from the beginning of this double post. Before such proposals to help people who need new housing can get off the ground, dues have to be paid those elements of society who have benefited from the long run failure to build. There is a choice - join the revolution and expropriate the expropriators, or let sensibly regulated markets work as they should. Which side are the Amenity Societies on? And now, let's have a song

This post was last modified: 22-10-2012 10:24 AM by Tim Lund.