I hope I can make this one interesting without being acrimonious, and that we can agree this is the right place for it. But I would still appreciate criticism of what I have to say here - that would seem to me the right context.Rachael wrote: perhaps it would be more productive to raise them in the original thread then carry on the conversation else[where].
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Effective communication is all about the context...
Anyway, it's about how another bit of planning conventional wisdom - and actual practice, is IMHO, misguided, and it forms a natural follow on of what I wrote in that same thread:
The news item triggering it is this from the BBC The rush to turn offices into flats, and the report starts offTim Lund wrote:The area I was thinking of (no surprise) was Town Planning, having recently heard one say that in his world people tended to occupy silos - you were either a town planner as such, or a civil engineer, or an architect, and you tended to come up with solutions just using your own discipline. ... I'd say the problem is worse than that, with a fourth profession, economists, also thinking they basically have the answers.
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In the case of SydSoc's Kirkdale Masterplan, it's me who's thinking more like an economist, while Mary and SydSoc are thinking more like architects
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it would be good for experts from a range of disciplines, and local people, to come up with solutions, but I am not sure how it would best be done. Quite happy to exchange ideas, however
The miscalculation, if there is one, is of the number of such conversions which are now happening:It was billed as a clever wheeze to create new homes - but could scrapping planning rules turn out to be a major miscalculation?
Planning Minister Nick Boles claimed the move would create 130,000 badly-needed new homes, using up 5% of vacant office space.
Officials at the Department for Communities and Local Government were far more cautious, suggesting it might result in as few as five extra conversion projects a year across the whole of England.
The early signs are that they were both wrong ...
In one London borough, Richmond, 107 schemes which will create hundreds of new flats, have already been given "prior approval" since the new rules came into force in May.
DCLG officials estimated a maximum of 175 office-to-residential changes in the first year, but research by Planning magazine in the summer found 46 councils had already received more than 260 applications between them.
To me, the benefits of this seem so obvious - housing people, removing the blight of empty building, at no cost to the tax payer, and the lowest possible environmental cost for creating new homes - that I can't see why it is written up as if it's on balance a problem. If you look at the negatives given in the article, they come down to:
- There will not be subject to proper planning control;
- Not enough social housing will be provided;
- Having designated office space is important for a local economy; and
- Local control is lost
Archway Tower, a vacant 17 storey former social security office in North London, is to be turned into flats without planning permission
Like other developers they [Essential Living] say councils can no longer realistically demand the inclusion of "social housing" if they want the big increase in rented accommodation they say is needed
London Mayor Boris Johnson managed to gain exemptions for some areas including the City of London, seen as being of national economic importance, and the West End
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"The danger is you end up with a dormitory situation, with more people forced to commute for work, which is environmentally unsound and changes the character of the area," says David Linnette, Conservative chairman of Richmond Borough Council's planning committee.
None of these arguments stack up for me."Where is the spirit of localism in this?" says Mr Linnette.
"It is not as if we are dinosaurs, sticking our head in the sand, all we are asking is that we are able to make up our minds locally about this."
On the first, all that's happening is a relaxation of one part of the planning system. There is no reason to think that other requirements - fire exits, adequate car parking, etc. are also going to go by the board. It really is panic mongering.
The second is one I do have some sympathy with, because what we need most of all in London is more affordable housing (and the lack of quote marks here is deliberate). In the long run, this will happen by increasing supply, and this is what this change is doing, so what's the problem? Well, maybe it's because this new accommodation will still not be affordable for many people who we need still living in London to maintain its rich social mix. Fine. So just stick to the normal guidelines on "affordable" housing percentages, but don't stop the conversion of redundant buildings.
The third is the big one - does conversion to residential adversely impact local economies? I can't imagine there are many actual economists now who would think it does, but because zoning for office use has for so many years been written into our planning system, and explained as being for economic reasons, many non economists assume that it must be right. There is some sense in it, in that buildings adapted for living in are not so good for working in, but this is far less true now than once; many people work from home, with perhaps a room or outbuilding converted into an office. An economist, looking at the problem, would ask what are the costs of switching use of space between residential and business, and as a matter of policy, try to help manage them down. It then becomes a challenge for planners to think out how planning rules should change so that this flexibility is maintained, and for architects to think how to make the changes, and make these sad abandoned buildings live again. There's also a role for civil engineers to calculate what the impact will be on building structures, and infrastructure required, but that's probably the least difficult. So not abandoning planning, but adapting it for the 21st century.
As to the last - loss of local control - this seems fairly bizarre. Local governments, like anyone part of civil society, including individuals and businesses, can stay in control of what they are responsible for as long as they behave sensibly. But if they act perversely, insisting that office buildings stay empty in the belief that businesses will one day return to them, they should be taken no more seriously than adherents of a cargo cult
Notable examples of cargo cult activity include the setting up of mock airstrips, airports, offices, and dining rooms, as well as the fetishization and attempted construction of Western goods, such as radios made of coconuts and straw
