Tag: Land use planning

Articulating problems, finding solutions

I’m not sure whether anyone is tracking the frequency with which stories about the UK’s problems appear in the media, but intuitively you get the sense that it is increasing. Barely a day seems to pass now without something appearing prominently somewhere. Housing is not just on the […]

Policy unpacked #5 – Real estate and cities

For decades local and regional government in the US has attempted to capture value created in the real estate market in order to fund vital urban infrastructure.  In an era of austerity, where resources for conventional public investment are perceived to be increasingly scarce, governments around the world […]

The value of planning

Earlier this month there was a small flurry of comment in the media about the impact of planning on house prices (for example, here). The question was why house prices in Britain have grown faster than most other countries over the last forty years. A big chunk of […]

Attitudes towards new development soften

There is a broad consensus among politicians, analysts and commentators that Britain needs to build more housing. You can encounter dissent from that view, but it tends to be on the fringes – in deep UKIP anti-migrant territory or the paramilitary wing of the rural lobby. The debate […]

Shaping housing policy post-2015

It’s clear we’re already entering what is going to be a very long election campaign in the run up to May 2015. In the housing policy field we’re seeing plenty of organisations pitching ideas at the moment, with the aim of influencing the content of the manifestos for […]

Shifting ground on housing?

Something interesting is happening in the world of housing policy. At least it feels that way in my more optimistic moments. Since the Coalition government produced its housing strategy in late 2011 there has been a lot of talk about the need to deal with the housing problem, […]

This land is your land

We are used to thinking of NIMBYism as a parameter of the housing policy debate. The survey evidence suggests that anti-development sentiment is deep rooted and hard to shift. It is a constraint that we must work within – something to work around – rather than something to […]

New towns parked?

One of the few policy proposals that has been able to gain support across the political spectrum is the idea that we need a new generation of new towns. If we are going to make a serious attempt to address England’s housing problems we are not going to […]