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Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery

economist.com

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Re: Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery

#21

Post by Paul_S »

Zenst wrote: post #4

What an odd article, lambasting green area's and pushing that they must be built upon. Sorry but we like to have cleaner air as best we can and think of the green belt as the UK's Amazon. When you view it like that then you see how silly this whole article is.

That makes no sense. If you let people build in the city then they can cycle to work. If they have to live in a village 20 miles down the road they have to drive to work - longer distances equals more pollution. You want to breathe less fumes? Stop creating a false scarcity of houses in cycle-able distances.

Hectares of barren grassland don't magically cleanse the fumes.

Re: Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery

#22

Post by crdoconnor »

djmobley wrote: post #18
glomph wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. What we need is for money to be put into affordable housing on brownfield sites in and around the cities. People don't want to live miles away from anything. Why ruin undeveloped land when there is an abundance of land (and buildings) that sits unused. The reason is because the real estate companies don't want to lose out on profit by building affordable homes on high value land. If the government actually e…

People don't want to live in the London green belt? Let's lift the restrictions and see if that holds true, shall we? I think you vastly underestimate the suffering millions of people in the UK are enduring as a result of the housing crisis, and the range of alternatives that would be considered an improvement for those people.

>People don't want to live in the London green belt?

I'd rather live centrally. If height restrictions were eliminated and councils started building pretty much everybody who wanted to, could. The housing crisis was entirely a deliberate creation of both the Tories (and to an extent, New Labour).

>I think you vastly underestimate the suffering millions of people in the UK are enduring

I think you're vastly overestimating the effect this would have on alleviating that.

Corbyn's approach (let councils start building again) is a far more rational approach than this.

Re: Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery

#23

Post by toyg »

djmobley wrote: post #19
maxander wrote: post #2

I don't see a byline for the article, so I can't Google to see what sort of connections to the UK real estate industry that the author has. Oh well.

The profit maximising situation for the large UK housebuilders is not one in which planning restrictions are lifted and the price of land collapses. Why would they be trying to advance these policies?

You are mixing landowner profits and developer profits. Developers want low prices for new land in greenfield areas that will make the resulting houses appealing. Landowners want high prices but they also want to actually be able to sell - it doesn't matter how much your land is theoretically worth if nobody wants to buy it because they can't build on it.

Re: Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery

#24

Post by toyg »

Paul_S wrote: post #21
Zenst wrote: post #4

What an odd article, lambasting green area's and pushing that they must be built upon. Sorry but we like to have cleaner air as best we can and think of the green belt as the UK's Amazon. When you view it like that then you see how silly this whole article is.

That makes no sense. If you let people build in the city then they can cycle to work. If they have to live in a village 20 miles down the road they have to drive to work - longer distances equals more pollution. You want to breathe less fumes? Stop creating a false scarcity of houses in cycle-able distances. Hectares of barren grassland don't magically cleanse the fumes.

> If you let people build in the city then they can cycle to work.

You can already build in the city. In fact, New Labour put in subsidies and incentives to build multi-storey houses, which are probably still in place. So why don't developers just go and replace low-rise with high-rise? Because nobody really wants to live in flats in England if they can avoid it. It's a cultural thing and it has nothing to do with land scarcity, it's probably a result of the failed '70s projects mixed with the hardcore individualism that emerged since then. This drives down prices of flats to the point where it's not appealing for developers to build new ones (except in the immediate vicinity of SW1 or other areas that are attractive to singles and childless couples, who can be persuaded to fit into tin boxes). What sells is low-rise suburban, for which they are running out of space; hence the push for greenfield liberalisation. Everything else is divide-et-impera rhetoric, boomers vs impoverished etc etc.

Re: Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery

#25

Post by cylinder »

No, it's time to stop trying to cram everyone into the same primary cities. It's time for secondary cities to shine. We can help by leaving the stone age when it comes to transportation infrastructure. Planes like the Dreamliner means former backwaters can be connected to other sides of the planet directly. We all know the benefits of broadband. There's no reason to keep trying to cram into primary cities.

Re: Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery

#26

Post by Paul_S »

toyg wrote: post #24
Paul_S wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes no sense. If you let people build in the city then they can cycle to work. If they have to live in a village 20 miles down the road they have to drive to work - longer distances equals more pollution. You want to breathe less fumes? Stop creating a false scarcity of houses in cycle-able distances. Hectares of barren grassland don't magically cleanse the fumes.

> If you let people build in the city then they can cycle to work. You can already build in the city. In fact, New Labour put in subsidies and incentives to build multi-storey houses, which are probably still in place. So why don't developers just go and replace low-rise with high-rise? Because nobody really wants to live in flats in England if they can avoid it. It's a cultural thing and it has nothing to do with la…

There's more to the UK than London.

You can't knock down buildings here. They're all listed. Where they are allowed to they build flats which go for half a mill (and are sold out before building completes - so much for your claim about people not wanting to live in flats). House building is cheap - it's the land that's expensive and it's only expensive because it's illegal to build anywhere outside of town.

There are sleeper villages all around the town. It's an insanely inefficient configuration only propped up by house owners' short-sighted interests.

Re: Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery

#27

Post by toyg »

Paul_S wrote: post #26
toyg wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you let people build in the city then they can cycle to work. You can already build in the city. In fact, New Labour put in subsidies and incentives to build multi-storey houses, which are probably still in place. So why don't developers just go and replace low-rise with high-rise? Because nobody really wants to live in flats in England if they can avoid it. It's a cultural thing and it has nothing to do with la…

There's more to the UK than London. You can't knock down buildings here. They're all listed. Where they are allowed to they build flats which go for half a mill (and are sold out before building completes - so much for your claim about people not wanting to live in flats). House building is cheap - it's the land that's expensive and it's only expensive because it's illegal to build anywhere outside of town. There are…

> only propped up by house owners' short-sighted interests.

I disagree. Those sleeper villages exist because people don't want to live in cities. If they wanted to, they'd be elsewhere; but until very recently, you couldn't pay people to live in central Manchester, Liverpool or Birmingham.

If you think developers want the greenfield to build high-rise, you're sorely mistaken. They will build more and more low-rise suburbia, because that's what people want.

Re: Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery

#28

Post by PhantomGremlin »

Neither the article nor the comments here have said anything about foreign money coming into London and buying up property as a hedge against problems in their own countries. And then the houses and apartments sit vacant.

Is this a real, widespread, problem, or does this only apply to a small number of expensive properties in the most desirable parts of London?

Re: Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery

#29

Post by mrec »

crdoconnor wrote: post #22
djmobley wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't want to live in the London green belt? Let's lift the restrictions and see if that holds true, shall we? I think you vastly underestimate the suffering millions of people in the UK are enduring as a result of the housing crisis, and the range of alternatives that would be considered an improvement for those people.

>People don't want to live in the London green belt? I'd rather live centrally. If height restrictions were eliminated and councils started building pretty much everybody who wanted to, could. The housing crisis was entirely a deliberate creation of both the Tories (and to an extent, New Labour). >I think you vastly underestimate the suffering millions of people in the UK are enduring I think you're vastly overestima…

> Corbyn's approach (let councils start building again) is a far more rational approach than this.

Leaving aside the question of where the money and land comes from (both main parties have announced impressive housebuilding targets at the last few GEs, and nobody's even come close to hitting them), doesn't this run afoul of parliamentary sovereignty?

If "no Parliament can pass laws that future Parliaments cannot change", then even if under the current government councils manage to build a zillion new homes, won't the next Osbornean Tory or Blairite Labour government just give them all away again as electoral bribes?

My gut feeling is that the #1 problem is excessive lending on housing and way too much tolerance for housing as a speculative investment. That's certainly not the only problem, but it's addressable relatively cheaply via macroprudential measures and tax law, so I'd like to see uk.gov start there and then see what further action is needed.

Re: Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery

#30

Post by djmobley »

toyg wrote: post #23
djmobley wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The profit maximising situation for the large UK housebuilders is not one in which planning restrictions are lifted and the price of land collapses. Why would they be trying to advance these policies?

You are mixing landowner profits and developer profits. Developers want low prices for new land in greenfield areas that will make the resulting houses appealing. Landowners want high prices but they also want to actually be able to sell - it doesn't matter how much your land is theoretically worth if nobody wants to buy it because they can't build on it.

1) House builders are big land owners;

2) The price of the land is passed on to property buyers in its entirety.

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