It was, I suppose, sadly predictable that environment secretary Steve Reed should give his “first significant interview since Labour took power” to the home builders’ house magazine, the Sunday Times. He certainly managed to sound house builder friendly. Campaigners to protect green spaces should not expect the right to a veto over planning, he warned them. As if. Who are […]
Binary numbers
One of the most depressing aspects of contemporary debate on major issues is the way lobbying cynically reduces complex issues to simplistic, binary choices. On energy production it’s: Concentrating on wind and solar is the only route to carbon reduction. or If we don’t it’ll be back to coal, oil and gas for our power. On mainline rail capacity it’s: […]
New towns, old mistakes
New towns are much in the news at the moment – not least at the house builders’ house magazine, The Times. Just this week, Emma Duncan’s column was apologising for the mess that post-war towns created and claiming the “next iteration” (you have been warned) needs to get five things right: place, politics, plan, people and money. No pressure then. […]
A national housing and planning illusions unit
The last time a Labour government took power, in 1997, it began with big ambitions to unite policy on planning, the environment and transport through a super-ministry overseen by deputy prime minister John Prescott. His Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions achieved great things in the four years of the first New Labour Parliament. Its Urban Taskforce and […]
Outside housing
Sir Keir Starmer has set out his plans for house building for Inside Housing magazine – a paper I used to write for. But I can’t help feeling that if I’d written such a confused and contradictory piece, I’d have been in real trouble with the editor. After a routine complaint about the difficulties young people have in buying a […]
For the many, not the few
General election campaigns are strange affairs, and occasionally politicians reveal more than they mean to. Labour’s current lead is so strong that few doubt the party will emerge without some kind of Commons majority, possibly an enormous one, and Sir Keir Starmer and his colleagues will be in charge of law-making. But given the way Sir Keir is already laying […]
Integrated action – the world needs it
When Smart Growth UK was set up, a key objective of the organisations that created it was to get integrated action across a range of planning, transport and regeneration issues. And that’s what we set out to do. Today, 17 years later, the need to integrate policy across these – and wider – policy areas is stronger than ever. Environmental […]
Progressive commissions and settlements
With the forthcoming general election still Labour’s to lose, there’s no shortage of advice for the party on what to spend its energy on if and when it wins power. Leading the pack, of course, is the Yimby Lobby, keen as ever to get planning abolished or, at least, reduced to nothing. Now it’s extending its attack to building control […]
Time to “defang” the propagandists?
A popular technique among propagandists is to take a single example of something, distort it, and then present it to those they wish to persuade as a disgraceful but typical example of something or somebody they wish to attack. It’s cheap, easy and mendacious. Commercial promoters have also long used the technique to big up the product or service they […]
Something to ruminate about
I was an early enthusiast for “rewilding” at a time few people had heard of it and vividly remember a reporting visit to the nascent Carrifran Wildwood project in southern Scotland 25 years ago – in a snowstorm. At that time the Carrifran valley was like most of the Moffat Hills – grazed into nothing much ecologically by sheep and […]