Should suburban densification be part of the solution to the housing shortage?

Cornucopia

The sheer scale of housing need in London/SE is such that whole new towns are required. That's not to say that brownfield development is not useful, but it is inevitably (usually) small-scale.

I can think of two locations which would be ideal for this kind of development - one near the A229 (linking the M2 and M20) between Chatham and Maidstone - with the potential for a new station on HS1, and the other near the A614 north of Cambridge, with rail connections at Cambridge and Huntingdon, or a new link could be built between them.

Sapphire

No. Any development /redevelopment will ruin the character and lead to overcrowding

No. I think it would be an absolutely terrible idea to lose green space in the form of gardens, which as well as allowing us to breathe provides wildlife corridors to animals and plants. I also don't know whether this is an idea for compulsory purchase or some such thing (a la Corbyn's suggestion). This smacks of communism to me – similar to what happened to relatives of mine under stalinism, when the apartment they owned was split in half, with half of it given to someone else!

What should happen is that a. wealth should be generated in our other great cities so that people wanted to live there, not just in London and the south-east; b. migration must be controlled so that we don't have a free for all, for obvious reasons.

michaels

Bungalows in back gardens are OK but the street scene should be preserved

Probably worth following the link. The suggestion is that in some areas permitted development would include schemes such as bungalows with eco roofs and redevelopment of semis into triples so that where owners desired it they could increase housing density slightly in suburban areas - which obviously they would only do for a private profit - doesn't sound very socialist or Corbyn to me.

michaels

Bungalows in back gardens are OK but the street scene should be preserved

GreatApe wrote: »

I think it was 10+ properties
When I last checked there was recently a court case where the council won which meant they could and would charge for those developments of fewer than 10 properties all the way down to 1. The biggest problem/hit was that half of the development had to be for social rent which effectively means having to sell half the units at a loss which means the half you have left ends up being very expensive. It is how berkley a London developer has prices north of £1 million yet only manages profits of about 20% it means its literally costing them £800,000 to build a 3 bedroom flat.



Gas/Eletricity/Water connection is not that expensive. But a bespoke 1 off build means inexperience and mistakes which take a lot of time and add costs.




You need at least 21 meters which is what about 70 feet. 8 meters in depth for the bengalow 5 meters small garden at the back and 5 meters small parking space at the front and a 3 meters road for the vehicle.

So you are going to lose 70 of your 110 foot garden = 63% of it

Oh !!!! I forgot something crazy, Do you know how expensive a wall is?
Just a brick garden wall? When I was costing one it was shocking. You are looking at a cost of £200 per meter.

So lets say you put a 2 meter high wall around the preterm of your garden. So your garden is about 35 meters long by say 10 meters wide. You need 80 meters of wall = £16,000.....sixteen thousand pounds!

And a drive to the new bungalow at the end of the garden? 3 meters wide going back say 25 meters from the front of your house = 75 square meters plus 10 meters by 3 meters in front of the new bungalow = 30 square meters. Say 100 square meters with a decent brick drive. That is about £15,000 there

So you already have a ~£30,000 cost to just build the garden walls and drive to your bungalow.

Oh and of course you have actually lost a lot more of your garden as the bungalow eats 3 meters into the garden for the driveway. So thats another 30% of your garden lost. You are only left with about 25% of your origional garden to yourself. You also need more garden walls than this to not just go around your existing garden perimeter but to make a new perimeter for your much smaller garden. So about £8k more for your semis new garden walls too.

The bungalow would also be small, you are looking at no wider than you own semi and probably not much more deep than 8 meters so somewhere around 70 square meters. A 2 bed really.

Add splitting the land into two tittles and planning applications and you have sunk £40k before you lay a brick on the actual new bungalow

The proposed plot sizes and profitability are all in the report I linked, I assume they have done their research.

zagubov

Both rebuild and garden development would increase diversity and interest in our suburban streets

My road is like that. There are some older semi-detached houses, and in one stretch there have obviously been formerly houses with large gardens. Now there are small clusters of buildings and modern two or three-storey terraced houses with off-street parking and modest gardens. there are also gated openings into areas with small blocks of flats. The streetview is pretty good. We're in the centre of the "village" and the new housing is close to shops and the train station/bus-stops.

I was surprised to see how much land there is behind existing buildings in such a high cost suburban area.

As the linked report says, many large homes are half-empty with kids having flown the nest. Plus the gardens are never used.

I still think that land needs to be built on more rationally. The Newhall Be development in Harlow has space for cars, houses with room for extending upwards, roof garden/balconies, courtyards for space, and no extensive water-hungry lawns.

If we all wanted to have US-style suburban homes and gardens we'd have to build over 32% of the land of the UK. Not gonna happen.

GreatApe

michaels wrote: »

The proposed plot sizes and profitability are all in the report I linked, I assume they have done their research.

I have not read it all but one thing that clearly is a mistake is the following....

doubling the density of just 10% of the outer London Boroughs would create the capacity for one million new homes

That is clearly wrong, without even checking I know that is wrong as London only has 3.5 million homes.

When you check you find that 10% of the outer London boroughs = 2 boroughs and the average outer London borough has close to 100,000 homes.

So the statement should read, doubling the density of just 10% of the outer London boroughs would create capacity for 0.2 million new homes. So they are wrong by a factor of 5 x which is hardly a small error!

katebl

No. Any development /redevelopment will ruin the character and lead to overcrowding

Shops with dozens of flats above with an extra layer of flats to be bunged on top, garages knocked down and houses built on plots, 1 bedroom bungalows adjoining houses destroyed and two bed houses built on same footprint, and a small field down an access road having a development of flats/houses built on it, all within a half a mile radius. No extra school places, doctors surgeries, despite all these extra residents. Anyone who backs this values profit over quality of life for all concerned and should be held with contempt

katebl

No. Any development /redevelopment will ruin the character and lead to overcrowding

GreatApe wrote: »

I have not read it all but one thing that clearly is a mistake is the following....



That is clearly wrong, without even checking I know that is wrong as London only has 3.5 million homes.

When you check you find that 10% of the outer London boroughs = 2 boroughs and the average outer London borough has close to 100,000 homes.

So the statement should read, doubling the density of just 10% of the outer London boroughs would create capacity for 0.2 million new homes. So they are wrong by a factor of 5 x which is hardly a small error!

They won't let a small fact such as gross miscalculation or deception get in the way of those juicy figures

zagubov

Both rebuild and garden development would increase diversity and interest in our suburban streets

Sapphire wrote: »

What should happen is that a. wealth should be generated in our other great cities so that people wanted to live there, not just in London and the south-east;

Absolutely true and sadly all policies have been pushing in other directions. Devolution should have allowed places like Newcastle, the cities of the Northwest ,Yorkshire, the West and East Midlands to flourish. Instead the place that got devolution was the city we both live in, whose housing market is overheated and a total mess of low-rise moneypits or high-rise deathtraps.:(

Sapphire

No. Any development /redevelopment will ruin the character and lead to overcrowding

zagubov wrote: »

Absolutely true and sadly all policies have been pushing in other directions. Devolution should have allowed places like Newcastle, the cities of the Northwest ,Yorkshire, the West and East Midlands to flourish. Instead the place that got devolution was the city we both live in, whose housing market is overheated and a total mess of low-rise moneypits or high-rise deathtraps.:(

Yes. I can't bear to go into central/mid-central London unless I absolutely have to (nowadays mainly for museums/to meet up with people, since I work from home, thank God). So much of it is a total mess, with terrible air quality, traffic pollution, roadworks, building works, lorries, dust. I don't recognise some places that were really familiar to me until recently. People will start moving out at this rate. They are also destroying the character of London (you should see what's happened at the Angel, in Camden Passage). It is horrible.

When it comes to using up more green land, in whatever form, I don't agree with it. One thing that should happen is that the places in London built by developers that are now standing empty because they've been bought for profit by hedge funds, foreign buyers and the like should be occupied by law. It is criminal to build residential property that will remain unoccupied when there is an (apparent) shortage.

And yes – the cities in the north have wonderful architecture and history and could be great centres again. People with vision (and who care) need to spread the wealth around and start creating jobs, perhaps much more via apprenticeships than by 'uni' degrees. We were so brilliant at making things. We could be again. There is still a lot of talent in Britain, and it needs to be encouraged and nurtured.