Tips on climate, planning and economy
- #1: Don’t plan "affordable housing" with car parking
- #2: Cars take too much space
- #3: House of Commons: Cars kill the planet
- #4: Greenbelts screw the poor
- #5: Reduce industrial agriculture
- #6: Planners: Your plans enrich the affluent
- #7: Don’t trust UK government on climate
- #8: Create visions of low carbon living
- #9: Planners should map wealth & inequality
- #10: Encourage neighbourliness
- #11: Greenhouse gas emissions by neighbourhood
- #12: National Planning Policy Framework
- #13: New settlements are best car free
- #14: Wealth increases greenhouse gas emissions
- #15: A new motorist into a town creates large emissions
- #16: Greenbelts reward the rich and affluent
- #17: Just say no to demolition
- #18: Ignore UK Business Department "lie"
- #19: SCATTER data ignores many emissions
- #20: Campaign on emissions
- #21: High emissions violate planning policy
- #22: Tell us about planning gain
- #23: Reduce demolition
- #24: Explain land ownership
- #25: Let them eat cake
- #26: Be more aware of Climate Change
- #27: Again: Be aware of Climate Change
- #28: Don’t bet on electric cars
- #29: Where are residents with the worst greenhouse emissions?
- #30: Be ashamed of what we are doing
- #31: Property Location Rights
- #32: Green belts and the view
- #33: Cheat with parklets
- #34: Pay motorists to give up cars?
- #35: Beware the Gulf Stream weakening
- #36: A better use for brownfield sites
- #37: The public need to know about climate
- #38: Keep telling the public
- #39: Degrowth to save the climate
- #40: Follow the funding
- #41: Watch for El Nino
- #42: E-congestion is still congestion
- #43: Ban meat advertising
- #44: No jobs on a dead planet
- #45: World glaciers are in retreat
- #46: Floods, drought and famine
- #47: Heat risk to food supply
- #48: Give bees a chance
- #49: RTPI projects won’t stop climate destruction.
- #50: A new breed of town planners needed
- #51: Start each day with a minute of silence for the climate dead
- #52: Climate tipping points — too risky to bet against
- #53: Permafrost Melting 70 Years early
- #54: Don’t sneer at cheap tiny homes
- #55: Growth limited by carbon budgets
- #56: Keep a watch on Arctic sea-ice
- #57: Watch for extreme weather events
- #58: Bike is best
- #59: Cargo bikes for local deliveries
- #60: Greenhouse emissions did this
- #61: Subsidise goods that use lots of labour
- #62: Local inequality in greenhouse gas emissions
- #63: Net-zero is a smoke screen
- #64: Perverse language in IPCC SR15 downplays Ocean Heat Content
- #65: Lucky old Sun – and a common myth
- #66: Cars and choice
- #67: The York Local Plan
- #68: Are BEVs better than ICE cars?
- #69: Does GWP*, cheat on climate targets?
- #70: Land value tax could bring a little fairness
- #71: Embodied carbon and climate
- #72: Food and the remaining carbon budget
- #73: Carbon budgets and transport
- #74: We are not short of land
- #75: Construction and prefabrication
- #76: Pollution in the countryside
- #77: Pollution in towns
- #78: Density and disease
- #79: Greenbelts
- #80: Economist Lionel Robbins misunderstood science
- #81: No cars in the city
- #82: Friends, neighbours and architectural determinism
- #83: No more high buildings
- #84: Oscar Newman: Look, learn and improve
- #85: Five planning policies
- #86: Cheap, neighbourly and doesn’t screw the world up
- #87: Needed: Enhanced town planning
- #88: A new Ministry of Works
- #89: Cut methane emissions now
- #90: Cumulative climate damage
- #91: Problems with Garden Cities
- #92: The Paris Agreement and the CCC
- #93: Car-free living
- #94: Starter homes for 20ドルK
- #95: Stop the planning racket
- #96: Needed: Green and pleasant jobs
- #97: Fund Lifestyle R&D by planning gain
- #98: Small scale microwave pyrolysis
- #99: Tax income from planning gain
- #100: Raise VAT rates, subsidise jobs
- #101: Net zero: A good wheeze for the rich
- #102: In 2022, climate tipping points get noticed
- #103: EcoTowns aren’t Eco
- #104: Green belts restrict housing development
- #105: Car free housing for affordable homes
- #106: It’s hard to persuade people with cars to use buses
- #107: Brownfield sites should be nature reserves
- #108: The ONS is wrong on land values
- #109: Listen to the BBC for Government greenwash
Bring back the prefab
Bring back the prefab – PART 1.
Dear Councillor,
In the Daily Telegraph, Philip Johnston has written:
Bring back the prefab: they are the solution to Britain’s housing crisis
The AI program ChatGPT agrees. Here is a summary of a ChatGPT session:
Post-war prefabs were a successful emergency measure, especially in terms of:
- Speed of construction
- Quality of life for early occupants
- Popular reception
and
- Prefab estates often fostered strong, close-knit communities, despite their temporary nature.
- This was one of the most enduring social successes of the post-war prefab experiment.
Prefab estates were of relatively low density:
- Compared to later tower blocks or cramped terraced housing, prefabs gave people space and light, creating a more relaxed environment for community life.
continue reading…
York exiles the poor (from 2002)
Planning, Wealth Transfer And Environment
(A response to the Green Paper “Planning: Delivering a Fundamental Change”)
For the past four decades at least, the planning system in the UK has been responsible for massive transfers of wealth. This is directly attributable to the manipulation of the market in planning permission. In key areas especially, the value of planning permission has increased enormously so that its value far exceeds the cost of buildings (for which planning permission is required) and the land that they occupy. This affects both commercial and residential development. However, here I concentrate on the domestic market.
continue reading…
My websites from 20 years ago
- SmugBastardsAtTheBeeb
- BluePoets
- Prefabs are for People
- Greening the Greenbelt
- PlannersAtTheODPM
- PollutionTaxAssociation
- PlanningForTerrorism
- MediaStudiesStrikesBack
- GuardianReadersRobThePoor
- GatewayReview
- DonttrustYourGP
- CccqOrgUk
- CashForQuestions
- AuntieJayneSolvesYourPoem
- AreStudentsMiddleClassWankers
- ActionAgainstTranquillisers
- Cappuccinos
Letters to York Council 2023
- #17apr23: York’s shameful open secret
- #03apr23: Local plan tilts towards developers
National Planning Policy & Green Belts
The Government have asked for views on their approach to updating to the National Planning Policy Framework.
This is Part 3 of my submission.
The "value of land" has soared of the past few decades
continue reading…
Consultation on the National Planning Policy Framework
The Government have asked for views on their approach to updating to the National Planning Policy Framework.
This is Part 1 of my submission.
The National Planning Policy Framework &
a House of Commons report
NPPF Clause 1
This says the National Planning Policy Framework "provides a framework within which locally-prepared plans can provide for sufficient housing and other development in a sustainable manner".
NPPF Clause 7
This includes "The purpose of the planning system is to contribute to the achievement of sustainable development".
continue reading…
Car free development lessens inequality
The Government have asked for views on their approach to updating to the National Planning Policy Framework.
This is Part 2 of my submission.
Car free development
Planners now realise there is a section of society that can’t afford cars. Some London Boroughs have housing developments for "affordable" housing where residents give up the right to keep a car.
Also, new planning ideas aim to improve city life in "15 minute cities" where there are fewer cars. This is being applied in Paris by the Mayor, Anne Hidalgo. The term "15 minute city" was coined by Professor Carlos Moreno in 2016. He argued that the daily urban necessities should be a 15-minute reach on foot or bike, including work, hope, shops, education and healthcare. More like British streets before mass ownership of cars moved these facilities to out of town centres …
continue reading…
Housing: Winners and losers (July 2018)
Affluent areas have seen enormous increases in house prices, adding wealth to the rich. In poorer areas, they pay more rent. The intergenerational story is similar. The older generations gain from house price inflation. The young pay higher rents. The biggest cause of the rise in prices is the housing shortage caused by planning restrictions.
Agricultural land increases in value when planning permission is given. Government figures for 2015 gave the average price of agricultural land as 21,000ドル per hectare. In Wakefield, building land, at 1ドル.0 million per hectare, was valued nearly 50 times as much. In Enfield this was over 700 times. The extra value is the planning premium – a windfall to landowners.
continue reading…
How York can help climate, young and poor
The previous post showed how York Council plans to damage the climate in defiance of its resolution declaring a climate emergency that was passed in 2019. The outlook for future generations is bleak.
Although the cost of housing doesn’t threaten life on Earth, York’s young and those citizens with lower incomes will pay high rents without possibility of owning their own homes. Many will be exiled.
In short, York Council plans will screw the climate and exile the poor.
In this post, I will present a policy that could address both issues. But first a reminder of the report led by Professor Gouldson from Leeds University that gave the fair remaining carbon budget for emitting greenhouse gases to be 50 tonnes CO2e per person – from the beginning of 2020. That’s a total figure not an annual one. Some parts of York will exhaust this budget next year.
The policy I propose can be simply said: Refuse planning permission for any development that is not car-free: It can be shown that a development that includes car ownership is not compatible with the National Planning Policy Framework because of the greenhouse emissions of car use.
The climate issue is the most important: The World is heading to the sixth mass extinction when life on Earth, as we know it, will end. Saving the climate is impossible with a high level of car ownership – as the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee has noted "In the long term, widespread personal vehicle ownership does not seem compatible with significant decarbonisation."
Put bluntly this means motorists screw the climate. This is borne out in York using the underlying data from carbon.place, which shows the enormous impact of extra motorists coming to York.
People who believe that we can "get out of this mess" by transferring to electric cars are fantasising: The carbon emissions from manufacturing any car take a big chunk out of any carbon budget. Manufacturing an electric car emits more greenhouse emissions than a conventional car powered by fossil fuels. For example, the battery electric Polestar 2, leaves the factory having caused emissions of 26 tonnes of CO2e – with the remaining budget is falling rapidly from the 50 tonnes per person it was at the beginning of 2020.
Of course, reducing car use is necessary to stay within climate targets, it is not sufficient. We must decarbonise the electricity grid, reduce energy use in our homes, stop most flying and cut much meat & dairy from our diets (especially beef & lamb).
Politically these changes may be very difficult to achieve but the alternative is the ending of life on Earth as we know it.
However, building new settlements, which are car free (with a limited number of exceptions) may not be so politically difficult – living in car-free neighbourhoods has many advantages to non-motorists. Such neighbourhoods, if they are of sufficient size, can support local facilities such as shops, pubs, cafes, schools, libraries. All these create local jobs and so would the introduction of market gardens to create local food production.
A big plus, would be much lower house prices for the car-less lower income group: Most affluent people who have cars, would not compete for such housing. The house prices would be lower because the planning gain that goes into the pockets of developers would be greatly reduced.
The car-free development would not directly change the values of existing housing. For those living near to car-free housing would be able to take advantage of car-free facilities so, where possible, new car-free developments should be near existing housing.
Importantly, car free developments would not cause a drastic drop in existing house values threatening negative equity or destabilising banks through mortgage defaults. Lots of new chheap housing is something that worries the Bank of England.
Car free development makes localisation easier. Localisation has become a political objective, with initiatives like the 15 Minute City promoted by the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo. This idea is influencing many architects, town planners and commentators.
The basic premise of a 15 minute city "is that no matter where they live, all residents should be able to go to school, enjoy leisure activities, work and shop within walking or cycling distance of their homes – and enjoy a better quality of life as a result." Such qualities are much easier to attain in car free neighbourhoods.
Carlos Moreno, the French academic who coined the 15-minute city idea, said, the idea is "not to wage a war against cars". However, Research by the University of Leeds found that, providing the choice of other means of transport did not reduce car use. Broadly, if people have cars, they will use them. For example, they will patronise remote hypermarkets rather than use local shops. With less customers these shops become economically unviable and close.
Historically, increasing car ownership has caused local facilities to close. Let’s reverse the trend.
Car-free development cuts planning gain making houses cheaper for the non-motorist, probably much cheaper but does not damage existing property values and avoids the difficult decision to ban cars from existing areas.
So let’s have car free development round York to save the planet and make York affordable for those on lower incomes – including pensioners like me.