Flats and Densities in England: A Reply to Barry Goodchild

Introduction

We are indebted to Barry Goodchild for his comments on our paper. It is probable that the factors that he mentions, the growing buy-to-let market and a desire for the buzz of central-city living, will have affected the market for flats in the central area of the large cities of England.

Yet, in concentrating on the construction of flats in those central cities, we would feel that he is ignoring the bigger picture, the increased construction and sale of flats all over England. Certainly, if the inhabitants of flats in the centres of these large cities are surveyed one would expect to find that they would speak positively of their location—after all, they have chosen to live there rather than elsewhere. Leon Festinger’s Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1962) would suggest that—i.e. they would amend their thinking after making a decision so that the decision feels the right one to have made. The interesting thing about the survey we quoted in our paper was that a majority of the respondents, despite living in or near the city centre, seemed to have little desire to remain there and every intention of moving out in the near future.

At the beginning of our paper, the question we set out to answer was presented as follows: was the increase in the construction of flats the result of a change in tastes or did it result from a combination of government policies mediated by economic pressures? Despite Barry Goodchild’s apparent view that there was a change in taste, we would still hold to our view that the increased construction of flats is more accurately interpreted as a consequence of government policies and we shall attempt to demonstrate why in this response to his comments.

England and Scotland

In his Comment, Goodchild argues that the planning guidance issued in Scotland was not that different from the guidance issued in England; both encouraged the use of brownfield sites, both encouraged the ‘efficient’ use of land in the form of higher densities. This is, in general, true, but whereas the Scottish guidance was just that—guidance—the English ‘guidance’ was mandatory in nature and specified a minimum residential density for planned housing developments.

Goodchild himself provides some useful evidence which actually tends to support our view. He points out that the suggested English minimum density of 30 dwellings per hectare “was fully consistent with the development of family houses in the form of terraces rather than flats”. He cites this to show that it was not necessary to construct flats in England if there were no demand for them. He argues therefore that if houses were wanted then it would have been possible to provide them by building terraced houses. Yet in so doing he shows the crucial difference between the Scottish and the English guidance. His own evidence shows that it was not possible to achieve the English minimum housing density by building detached houses. The consequence of the difference is evident: the proportion of newly constructed homes in England which were detached houses or bungalows fell from 48 per cent in 1999 to 13 per cent in 2008; in Scotland, on the other hand, the proportion of new homes which were detached houses or bungalows never fell below 40 per cent between 1997 and 2007. The conclusion is absolutely clear. Planning guidance had an impact on the types of housing being constructed in England which it did not have in Scotland. Thus the mandatory nature of the English guidance had an impact on dwelling construction which the non-mandatory guidance issued in Scotland did not have. By looking at the evidence regarding houses rather than flats, the difference is obvious and Goodchild’s comment to the effect that flat construction was not necessary in Scotland because there are a large number of flats already in the central areas of the large Scottish cities, is shown to be missing the point. It may also be noted that, though less evident to the tourist, there are actually a large number of houses in Scotland everywhere outside the inner areas of the large Scottish cities. According to the Scottish housing census, only about 38 per cent of Scottish homes are flats; more than 62 per cent are houses.

The English Regions

Goodchild talks of the increase as being primarily in the centre of large cities, but we would point out that the increase in the construction of flats occurred in all the English regions and not just in the centres of large cities. Indeed, the sharpest increase in the construction of flats occurred in what is probably the most rural region, the Eastern region, which has no very large cities, but where the proportion of dwellings built as flats increased from 12 per cent in 1999 to 45 per cent in 2008. Goodchild argues that there was an increase in the demand for flats in northern central cities but, in fact, in Yorkshire and Humber the proportion of new dwellings which were built as flats increased rather less—from 10 per cent in 1999 to a peak of 37 per cent in 2006.

There was also a substantial increase in flat construction in the South East which, since it excludes London, is also a region with no very large cities. There, at the peak, over half of the new dwellings were flats. Clearly, the construction of new flats in the small towns of southern England was not driven by any desire for the ‘buzz of big city living’. To demonstrate this, we would point to the kind of flats which were being built during this period. We could point to numerous examples of flats being constructed in the suburbs of London, but we shall cite an exemplar from the Reading area.

On the southern edge of the Reading built-up area, a new housing development was built between 2005 and 2007. This new housing is beyond the houses with large gardens built just to the south of the University which date from the 1950s and 1960s. It is even beyond the new homes with small gardens built in Lower Earley in the 1980s. As a development built in the first decade of the 21st century, clearly English planning guidance determined the character of the development. It consists of 149 dwellings of which 107 are houses, mostly terraced, although with 18 semi-detached and 11 (three-storey) detached houses. The other 42 are in five blocks of flats. Two of these blocks are social housing with a total of 20 flats, and three are owner-occupied housing with a total of 22 flats. Through these flats, the minimum density of 30 dwellings to the hectare is achieved and planning permission could be obtained.

Thus even here, in the outermost suburb of a small town, thirty per cent of the dwellings constructed were flats. There can be no question that the flats were constructed and sold on this site were because of any ‘city-centre buzz’. The only buzz might come from bees flying in from the countryside to the south.

Obviously, we cannot enumerate every recent development, but this example clearly shows beyond any reasonable doubt the influence of English government planning policy on what was built and demonstrates that it resulted in the construction of flats in a location where one would not otherwise have expected them to have been constructed.

Other Factors and Conclusion

Of course other factors may have also had an impact, such as the impact of ‘buy to let’. However, in concentrating on central cities Goodchild ignores the fact that buying to let was fairly ubiquitous. In the London suburban housing estate in which one of the authors lives - an estate of some fifty detached houses all some seventy five years old - three of the six or seven houses which came onto the market between 2000 and 2008 were bought by investors to be let out. Buy-to-let did not only impact on the market for new flats, it had an impact diffused across the whole housing market.

Finally, we would note that the Urban Task Force Report (1999) set out a manifesto for English planning in which it was argued that the English should live at higher densities and that this would be good for them and good for the environment. The Planning Policy Guidance issued in 2000 set out to ensure that these higher densities were achieved. The evidence presented by us demonstrates that these higher densities were being achieved and that they started to be achieved shortly after the new guidance was issued, largely through the increased construction of flats.

In his comments, Goodchild refers to a similar boom in the construction of flats (largely prefabricated off-site) that occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s but once again the evidence he quotes seems to support our view rather than his. As described by Dunleavy (1981) this was boom in the construction of tall blocks of flats for local authorities, heavily supported by subsidies from central government—the taller the block the higher the subsidy—with the intention of saving land. When it was found that tall buildings did not save much land and, a little later, one of the blocks—Ronan Point in east London—partially collapsed, so did the boom.

The recent boom in flat construction in England has been in the private sector, not the public. The parallel, as Murie and Rowlands (2008) point out, is that both were stimulated by an architectural vision, in the first case that of Le Corbusier, in the second that of Richard Rogers, and heavily supported by central government.

On the recent boom Murie and Rowlands comment that

They also comment that the policy requires strong steering by central government through, amongst other things, ‘the Secretary of State’s planning powers’.

This conclusion would seem to support our view—namely, that the change was not a change in taste, but was a result of government policies mediated by economic pressures. Thus even in the evidence cited by Goodchild we find little to support his view rather than ours.

Finally, it does seem paradoxical for Goodchild to argue that, in effect, the planners failed since the increase in density would have occurred anyway because of a change in taste. That this change in taste occurred just after the new Planning Policy Guidance came out was, apparently, in his view, just a coincidence. Given the evidence which we have presented here and in our previous paper, we remain unpersuaded of this. We conclude that the English government and its planners set out to increase densities and that they succeeded in doing so.