Can we turn Nimby to Dimby by developing in our own backyard?
A new report suggests locals can avoid the headache of high-rise developments by the ‘gentle intensification’ of their own streets, writes
IRELAND has an acute housing shortage, and a political class determined not to solve it. Politicians in Ireland are not controlled by big business, as is so often alleged, but by the people who can vote for them. That is people who live in their constituencies — and the people who have somewhere to live appear to be united in their opposition to any development in their area.
Because the original planning system was designed to give voters what they wanted, developments of our towns pushed outwards into greenfield sites, increasing commuting times, traffic, and air pollution.
The result is that too many of us now live in low-density suburban housing.
Many of the first engagements most people have in political debate are about planning.
The most eagerly attended local meetings relate to new developments, where even lethargic voters’ pulses are raised by the possibility that a new scheme might destroy the ‘character’ of their area.
In the Dublin suburb of Crumlin, residents styling themselves as ‘Walkinstown and Crumlin against High
Rise Development’ are campaigning against a “monster” development, that consists of two six-storey blocks.
Local TDs who normally castigate the Government for the housing crisis expressed their support in the local campaign against the development. This drives up house prices, and acts as a bottleneck on economic activity as people are reluctant to locate in the cities that are too expensive.
As a result of the local authorities’ reluctance to allow building, especially highdensity developments, in their areas, successive governments have sought to further strip local authorities of any remaining powers they have in planning.
Planning is now filled with special development zones that remove local authority input. Developers try to push the limits of what they can get away with, often seeking permission for inappropriate building, such as the proposed 45-storey tower in Dublin’s Docklands.
The politicians then support locals as they head to court, using any argument they can find to stop new housing developments. Even if they don’t succeed, the trips to court at least have the effect of slowing down new housing from coming on stream. Neither side is right, and no one wins.
A report just published on the housing shortage in the UK points out that much of the reason that local people oppose new developments is that they get nothing out of it.
New developments rarely add value to their homes, but usually take value away through reduced house prices. New developments are often ugly, over-developed, and designed to extract maximum income from land by developers who then just move on to the next site. Existing residents will often pay for this development through disruption during building, a loss of light, parking spaces, and increased traffic congestion.
The report, Strong Suburbs, published by Policy Exchange proposes a solution to this problem. Its solution makes existing residents the developers.
The authors of the report point out that most people live in low or medium-density suburbs that underuse the land in the area. Housing is typically of just two storeys, there are generous gardens, but they are ugly and car dependent.
They call for the ‘gentle intensification’ of these suburbs by allowing these suburban streets to be redeveloped into higher density housing along the lines of a Georgian city street.
Georgian cities are quite high density, but most agree that they are beautiful. The Georgian city centres in Dublin and Limerick typically have 165 housing units per hectare, compared to below 30 units per hectare in those cities’ suburbs.
Even close to Dublin city centre there are streets of singlestorey cottages that would be quaint in a rural village but are a criminal waste of land in a city. They would be worth much more if the streets were redeveloped as mid-rise homes, of four or five storeys, bringing wealth to the owners, and easing the shortage of housing in the places where they are needed most.
Not only are these streets of one or two-storey houses a waste of land, the homes in them are usually designed for the needs of a 19th century dock worker’s family, not a 21st century twentysomething. And the suburban experiment many of us grew up in made sense when cars were rare, and traffic light, but now it just chokes the city and the suburb, making neither nice places to live.
So increasing the density of the land use in both places would make them both better places.
The city centres would no longer be choked by cars travelling from the suburbs, because the now more densely populated suburbs would be capable of sustaining more businesses to keep people there. The newly dense suburbs would become places themselves, not just an amorphous collection of houses, connected by nothing more than a name.
But how do you get people to redevelop the suburbs and other underused housing?
The authors of the report propose this would work by allowing a supermajority on a street to vote to redevelop the street. They would then create a company to do this.
The owners would become the developers, and be allowed to move back to a more beautiful housing that might follow the architectural lines of a Georgian streetscape, which can be four or five storeys in height.
They may be optimistic in expecting that streets would ever agree to do this, and I’m not sure how you could compel someone to develop their home against the owner’s will. It would seem to be a recipe for lawyers’ fees.
But the principle is a good one. And if even a small number of redevelopments go ahead, it would encourage others to try. If it worked, you could have local residents who are personally invested in redevelopment.
Instead of hearing the usual litany of complaints of developments being ‘horrendously out of proportion’, the residents would decide the appropriate use, because it is their land being developed.
‘Most people live in low or medium density suburbs that underuse available land’