How demolition is a vital step in revitalizing our cities, reducing carbon emissions and solving the housing crisis The recent Guardian article ‘Demolition is an act of violence’ took an interesting view of construction. It lectures us that demolishing an M&S London store is the ‘carbon-hungry’ option and we should Read more…
Good news for those who care about housing supply – a team of researchers have found that we can meet our housing target of 300,000 new builds a year, while staying within our carbon commitments. When modelling the UK’s current housing strategy, they find that, by 2050, just 8% of Read more…
Islington is a by-word for middle class aspiration. The area is relatively close to central London, without being as famously expensive as somewhere like, say, Kensington and Chelsea. Given that the average price of a terraced house in the borough of Islington today is about 1.7 million pounds, the relative Read more…
It is possible to destroy the aesthetic merit of a listed building by building something big enough and ugly enough next to it. We have all witnessed this happen; usually the damage was dealt several decades ago. A perfect example in my locality, Norwich, was the decision in the mid-20th Read more…
Council tax brings in over £34 billion every year. It’s a vital source of revenue for public services – schools, social care, pest control, waste collection and much more. It’s also an increasingly arbitrary, highly regressive tax, levied most heavily on those who are least able to afford it. It’s Read more…
There are two main kinds of NIMBY. The first, the “classic NIMBY”, was lucky enough to buy a home before the year 2000 and believes that the youths of today need simply cut down on takeaway coffees and avocados in order to afford the home of their dreams. This NIMBY Read more…
Homelessness in the UK is out of control. Today, there are more than 270,000 homeless people in the UK – more than 120,000 of them are children. Most are in temporary accommodation while an estimated 2,400 ‘sleep rough’ any given night. Homelessness in the UK has been steadily growing for Read more…