This is an excellent article. The mention of the Croydon "SPD2" planning document was really interesting too - I hadn't heard about it. It's exactly what we need in cities if we want to truly increase density and reduce house prices.
What's unfortunate is the backlash - it seems that there was a lot of outcry over "greedy developers", and the result was the election of a new mayor who cancelled it.
It seems obvious to me that the only real way to achieve the needed housing growth in the places people want to live is to allow suburban and urban densification. Most English cities are shockingly low density - it's crazy that relatively unloved 3 bedroom terraces sit in the shadow of 50 floor apartments.
The current status quo is that a lot of these terraced houses are converted into low quality flats. The density of people is often still there, but they live in terrible accommodation. Building houses in cities should not be a controversial thing to do. Even if it means knocking down a few which aren't suitable any more.
I lived in one the buidings mentioned in this article.
Pros: It was the most spacious flat I've lived on. I'm not talking about area, but the layout itself, it was amazingly well architected. Massive windows too, great lighting (but see cons).
Cons: Single glaze windows (and a protected facade) meant eye-watering energy bills. Poor quality subfloor (with carpet) meant 24/7 creaking when walking over it.
I live in a similarly protected flat in Scotland and in the last decade there has been quite some development with double glazing for historic buildings.
Quite a bit more expensive than normal double glazing though but at least you can get quite decent windows for historic buildings.
Historical homes are energy efficient. They don’t require any new resources to build, and will typically last much longer if they were built with old growth lumber.
Retro fitting is the way. Don’t tear them down for some new crap.
That's not what I meant, sorry... Not being able to install proper double- or triple-glazed windows because of historical preservation is really backwards.
I used to live in one of these London art-deco apartment blocks and it was a beautiful building, nice grounds, quirky but well laid out apartment. So much nicer than the generic "affordable" apartments built today. But it was also incredibly cold in the winter! No insulation, thin windows that couldn't be replaced as they were listed and the decades old central heating & hot water system kept breaking down. Cheaper to buy but a money pit to maintain.
Pretty sure the windows could be replaced with actually insulating ones, but it would be expensive and the landlords prefer not to do that. However having single-glazed windows in the 21st century is simply inexcusable. Experienced the same when I was living in London years ago (not a listed building). The underinvestment into insulating old buildings was staggering when compared with Central Europe.
There's an entirely short term outlook that's caused by the "housing ladder" IMO. If you spend any time on reddit, you'll see people asking "Why would I want to spend £10,000 insulating my home if the payback period isn't 4-5 years?" Instead of thinking about comfort and maintaining a building, they're thinking about ensuring that they maximise the value of their current property so that they can sell and upgrade to a bigger one.
I live in an old stone building in Scotland - the previous owners installed a kitchen in 2019, and at that time they replaced the flooring. They _could_ have insulated under the floor, and done internal wall insulation but that would have added a few hundred pounds onto their renovation job, and they didn't care, they were content with the asthetic upgrade of the room.
For listed buildings, you've got to get permission from the council. For most buildings they'll let you put in double-glazed windows if you can get them in a style that matches the existing windows.
One of the iconic features of many Art Deco buildings is curved windows [1], and the flat windows having very skinny frames. That means nonstandard "heritage" windows, which can be several times the price of normal, mass-produced windows.
Blocks of flats have the additional problem that it's unlikely every owner will have the cash to replace their windows at the same time. So it's tough to save money by getting them all done at once.
> For listed buildings, you've got to get permission
Sure - it's the same in our country, with the additional trouble that there is a special institution that has to approve any changes in protected buildings and they are pretty harsh. And even then lots of them get updated.
> Blocks of flats have the additional problem that it's unlikely every owner will have the cash to replace their windows at the same time.
We have that too and what usually happens with changes that apply to the whole building (like the whole facade) is that the community of the owners finances changes like that with a credit on the whole building, there are special laws for that. Happens less often with just the windows because they are so cheap most people can afford them on their own.
> The underinvestment into insulating old buildings was staggering when compared with Central Europe.
Nominally, GDP per capita is ~2.6x higher in the UK than in Poland ($46.5k/$18k) while domestic gas prices are only about 20% higher [1]. Renovations are mostly labour costs so the expected return on investment is almost twice as good in Poland as the UK.
Ultimately the issue is that energy prices in the UK are too low.
A lot of the housing stock here is very poor quality, run-down and filled with ancient plumbing and electrics, no insulation, single glazed, draughty windows. For some reason British people are extremely attached to old buildings and favour "character" over comfort, warmth, light, efficient storage space, etc.
I'm not sure it's about attachment, although the fact large residential areas of London are somehow 'protected' does not help. I'd guess it's mostly two things:
* Landlords don't care their tennants pay too much for energy because there is no competitive pressure, the apartments will rent regardless. And many homes in London are rented.
* The government does not care. The British society is very classist in my experience and the ruling class does not care the general public is freezing. So even while the UK was in the EU and the EU had various drives to improve energy efficiency of buildings, the UK mostly ignored them.
Lots of people really do prefer the old awful buildings.
There was a story just a couple of days ago [0] where residents are protesting having their windows upgraded, despite their existing windows being cold, draughty, rusty, and mouldy. One man felt so strongly about it that he said he'd electrocute anyone who tried to change his windows.
They're concerned new slightly thicker window frames might destroy the character of their 60s water-stained concrete brutalist eyesore.
> They're concerned new slightly thicker window frames might destroy the character of their 60s water-stained concrete brutalist eyesore.
As a huge fan of both brutalist architecture and so-called 'tilt and turn' windows, I had already braced myself for feeling conflicted about this when I clicked through. But no, there's nothing particularly distinctive about the windows that would be lost in a renovation. Here's a high-resolution picture for those who want to see for themselves:
Notice that only a few of the sliding windows are even open on what appears to be a very pleasant day, so sliding-vs-tilting doesn't seem relevant. I don't think the extra centimetre of window frame is going to be visible from the seaside anyway!
You have to read between the lines. Apart from the nutter OAP, 150 objections can easily be explained by occupiers actually having to contribute to the replacement. When a landlord does a big renovation program like this, they're going to get the money back somehow - be it with a large lease increase or compulsory contributions.
But arguing about money makes people look greedy - or worse (in classist Britain) cheap, aka poor. So they will argue about windows, character, anything.
England has always been run for the benefit of the landowning and homeowning class, in whom the greatest portion of political power, wealth and status are concentrated. This has been the case for at least 1000 years.
This is not a "1%" thing; about half of all UK adults live in a home they own. For homeowners, the current setup is pretty sweet. And for a while, the number of homeowners was increasing, hitting an all-time high in 2003 - making it not too undemocratic that the country should be run for their benefit. But now with that figure reducing, mainly at the expense of younger people, it's not surprising that discontent is on the rise (particularly online, where the youngest are the most visible).
I call bull on that. As the first country to industrialize, and arguably the first to de-industrialize too, Britain has massive amounts of brownfield ready to be used.
The problem is just that developers have to pay to clean up those sites. You can simply look at the Houchen affair: as soon as the local authority foots the bill, developers will jump on the dirtiest stretch of brownfield, no questions asked.
i.e. more cost, which gets passed onto buyers/renters. Different entry point, same result. Plenty of brownfield sites do get redeveloped, particularly in city centers, but they don’t become affordable housing, they become trendy apartments with industrial heritage museums next door (and not enough of them).
The population of Britain has increased nearly +10M in the 21st century, but the housing supply has lagged far, far behind.
I'm not denying there is a supply problem, what I don't agree with this that it'd be because of some silly obsession with protecting greenbelts. Protecting greenbelts is important, and there are alternative policies that can incentivize house-building without losing more green spaces.
If there is one British obsession, is the expectation that every family should aspire to a semi-detached in the suburbs, with the result that (outside of London) developers only build small flats for singles and childless couples. The semi-detached model does not scale, while flats do. Developers should be forced to include larger flats in new builds, and councils should start thinking in terms of making town centres denser and more attractive to families.
I lived in a 1930s art-deco apartment building in London, and it was the nicest place I lived in England.
At some point all the windows had been replaced with UPVC double glazed ones. The heating system had some redundancy, so when they closed half of it off to replace it we just had a day or two where they asked us to limit hot water use. (I don't remember but I assume this was done during the summer.)
Takes me back! I always wanted to live in a 30s mansion block when I lived in London, and did once look around a flat in the building pictured in Belsize park, the one which recalls the sort of ocean liner a Wodehouse character would use to travel to New York. And it was beautiful and the rent not too dear. (This was around 2010.) And it also smelled strongly of mildew.
Interesting! Central rotterdam seems to be experiencing a high-rise appartment building boom, with multiple towers of hundreds of apartments each under
development; close to central station. Some artist impressions: https://www.dehavenloods.nl/nieuws/algemeen/44855/nieuwe-bee...
Oh wow, I now suddenly understand why Welwyn Garden City is named so. I'm not sure how much of a success it is, given how small the town actually is, but maybe that was the plan all along.
I thought Art Deco was distinctly American architectural/art contribution to the world. Way better than the modern utilitarian glass boxes, or the Brutalisim of the Communists. Wish it would have stayed popular longer.
Art Deco inspired cars are some the coolest looking things on this planet.
It originated in Paris and was heavily influenced over time by various other European styles. The association with the US is probably at least partly a reflection of how much iconic Art Deco architecture there is in NYC.
There's an interesting summary here - https://www.platformspace.net/home/what-are-suburbs-for-pavi.... What's particularly interesting is how successful it was - Croydon seems to have had 4x the number of "homes in small (<10) developments" in the 4 years after it was brought in. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5d01a7efbf4ae5... That's an incredibly good result!
What's unfortunate is the backlash - it seems that there was a lot of outcry over "greedy developers", and the result was the election of a new mayor who cancelled it.
It seems obvious to me that the only real way to achieve the needed housing growth in the places people want to live is to allow suburban and urban densification. Most English cities are shockingly low density - it's crazy that relatively unloved 3 bedroom terraces sit in the shadow of 50 floor apartments.
The current status quo is that a lot of these terraced houses are converted into low quality flats. The density of people is often still there, but they live in terrible accommodation. Building houses in cities should not be a controversial thing to do. Even if it means knocking down a few which aren't suitable any more.