Can We Create Enough City Homes?
The Future of Cities Summit was held by Tortoise Media on November 25th, 2021. This article draws from two of the sessions in particular: “What is London for now?” hosted by James Harding, and “Can We Create Enough City Homes?” hosted by Hashi Mohamed.
London is a well established metropolis of business and commerce. While the city should be for everyone, there is a clear focus on business, especially given Brexit. Philip Hubbard used the term Institutional Thickness to describe the city of London, which makes it a good city to do business, and nearby cities can assist with other areas of production regarding future production of green technology and infrastructure.
The characteristics that make a city enjoyable to live in are some of the hardest hit sectors during the Pandemic like the fields including creative workers. In a recent poll shared by Hubbard, approximately two-thirds of Londoners enjoy the quality of life, and approximately 40% plan to leave in the future due to affordability. The same poll in Paris resulted in 20% of residents saying affordability a concern.
Photo by: Nathan Cohen. In London, the Bridge of Aspiration connects the Royal Ballet Upper School to the Royal Opera House. The 23 square portals with glazed sections, supported by aluminum beams showcase an elegant design with complex simplicity. A clever solution that integrates well with the existing adjacent buildings. For more stories like this, follow @theengineeringnomad
There is a push in the city of London for more affordable living spaces in new housing developments, and at the same time reducing the number of “rabbit-hutch homes” in the city. Adding to existing amenities or converting existing structures into multi-use areas like public gardens greatly improve the quality of life of residents. In cities like Toronto, there is a program that allows for community gardens to be set up and maintained along hydro corridors that are otherwise void of development.
Green spaces help improve both physical and mental health in cities. Physical activity is important, and creativity as well. One of the challenges with the geography of London is that artsy areas have lots of passersby; these areas tend to be identified as well-off places that are not necessarily affordable for artists. One of the easiest ways to improve quality of life of residents is to increase the amount of street furniture to encourage people to use public spaces.
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Photo by: Nathan Cohen. Habitat 67 in Montreal, Canada is a housing complex designed by Architect Moshe Safdie. The complex consists of 354 prefabricated concrete structures. The Structural Engineer was August Eduard Komendant. The complex is a well known landmark along the St Lawrence River. The development was designed to combine high density living with the bennefits of suburban homes: cost effective use of space while having amenities like gardens, privacy, and outdoor spaces. follow @theengineeringnomad for more stories
Affordable housing is an ongoing challenge in many countries including Canada. In the Future of Cities Summit, Dr. Deborah Pots spoke in length on housing with the focused question of can we create enough affordable and decent city homes.
The culture around housing is different around the world. North Americans tend to focus on owning a house, while many Europeans are content to rent. Singapore is a unique case where approximately 80% of people live in housing built and subsidized by the government, where affordable mortgages are available. This approach is possible as the government owns approximately 90% of the land in Singapore. One in six households have at least 1 million US dollars in disposable wealth. In Britain, there used to be policy (incentives) to encourage buy to let (buy to rent) housing.
Across the world the migration out of cities is typically seen due to lower incomes, and the primary cause based on Dr. Pots discussion is due to the labour markets. There are many people working jobs that do not earn enough to live in decent, safe legal housing. As a result of the increased inequality, housing markets have become segmented; this problem has only ever been overcome by government subsidization.
Deregulation has been central to driving prices up in housing. People seeking safe-havens for their capital have landed on using homes as investments. The solution to affordable housing will not be through profit-seeking endeavors. We need to develop a broad range of models for living together and more sustainably and being able to share more things.
The immediate goal is to ask for a definition of the term “affordable” wherever it is used in housing legislation because in many cases these housing projects are not actually affordable to the local incomes in the area.
Aside from affordability, we want to create communities where people really want to live. Agamemnon Otero is CEO of Energy Garden, which is a project to get more people engaged in their local communities. This project makes people more engaged in their local communities through community gardens and the installation of solar power infrastructure in underutilized areas. The projects aims at creating a more holistic process of creating spaces where people want to be.
Finding a pathway to creating enough affordable city homes means challenging the status quo. All new investment needs to be done with reasonable terms over a long period of time to reduce the focus on profit when creating housing and zoning bylaws must be flexible enough in various countries to allow for building creative housing solutions.
The U.K. has had public housing policies in the past that worked, why not increase planning budgets and go back to a tried and true method? We know what cities look like now, but what will they look like in the future?
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What is London now Host: James Harding, Co-founder and Editor, Tortoise Media
Speakers: Clair Bradbury, Author of Dwellbeing: Finding home in the city, Philip Hubbard, Professor of Urban Studies, King’s College London; Editor Urban Studies., Muniya Barua, Managing Director, Policy & Strategy, London First
Can we create enough city homes Host: Hashi Mohamed, Barrister, Broadcaster and author of People Like Us
Speakers: Dr Deborah Potts, Author of Broken Cities: inside the global housing crisis, Maria Smith, Director, Buro Happold, Agamemnon Otero, Energy Garden, co-founder of Repowering, Brixton Energy, Community Energy England, Melanie Leech, Chief Executive, British Property Federation