A new suburbia is about a family sitting in their garden, surrounded by good comfortable things and looking at the home they own. As the sun shines, that family knows that the efforts were worth it.
“The suburbs of big cities like London, New York, Sydney or Auckland are now filled with people who had a family once. All those fifty-, sixty- and seventy-somethings who once had growing families now live in suburban homes unaffordable for all but the most fortunate twenty- or thirty-something.”
As a 62 year old living in a large house with a large garden on the edge of the countryside 25 miles north of London, I plead guilty as charged. But I don’t feel guilty of any real offence.
You argue cogently that different styles of dwelling suit different people at different stages of their life. The dense and bustling inner city isn’t the place to bring up a family, but it’s probably ideal for young adults at the pre marriage and family stage of life (say 18 - late 20s) who thrive on the variety and intensity of activity available and perhaps the bigger pool of potential life partners with whom to create the next generation.
Suburbia suits the next stage but what do you envisage as suitable for the 50s and above who are in your analysis now blocking suburbia? Are we, now child free, supposed to return to the city? For some certainly that will be attractive with the money and leisure to enjoy what the city offers within walking distance. For others that pace of life now holds less appeal than the cultivation of one’s garden with periodic forays into the city - that’s me and my wife.
My view is that the problem would be solved if the planners got out of the way and the market was allowed to respond to the demands of consumers. So we would probably create more suburbia rather than leaving it static with a wider range of properties including smaller ones to allow the older generations to downsize while maintaining their preferred suburban lifestyle and keeping their local friendship circle. We are only blockers if supply is constrained and prevented from rising to meet demand.
You make some good points, but I disagree. I live in Norfolk. In my late teens and early twenties I lived in London. Don't get me wrong- the facilities, landmarks, and culture were wonderful. There was a basement bar in Leicester Square which played garage music, and served particularly cheap (for London) bottled beer. We used to walk to the drop of Alexander Palace and look out across the city at night. The Tube and the buses were great for getting around. But on the weekends when I travelled back to the family home, I used to experience a feeling when the train hit the green fields, which can only be described as a natural high close to elation.
Here's the thing- there is plenty of land to build on. There are numerous old concrete sites in the greenbelt exclusion zone, with zero value in terms of biodiversity and with decent access to roads. I opined to a senior civil service friend that the only reason why the local authorities didn't want the houses built was because the people of Henley aren't exactly thrilled at the prospect of white van man's children joining their kids school. He came close to snorting his beer all over the table. He was similarly amused by my quip about the government being all for tackling climate change, providing it didn't involve collapsing the commercial real estate bubble, by permitting more remote work.
The real problem is roads. In England, less than 1% of land is utilised for buildings, when one excludes gardens, but roads account for 2% of total land use. A significant problem is carparks, which take up between 0.2-0.3% of all land in England. Studies show this land use could be reduced by 50-70% with more MSCPs. The way to tackle road congestion is with incentives for exploring alternatives to single person per car trips to and from work. Many people I know would be far more happy to car share if it meant they could earn up to three days additional annual leave (employers would only lose around 1.1 days per year, and reduce their liability through less long-term sickness).
I will admit that a lot of the new rural developments are crammed and built by developers as estates, but the way to tackle that is to raise the VAT threshold for small builders, have statutory government-backed building plot lending facilities (the banks don't want small builders building homes, or the pipeline of new homes opening- because it deflates their most lucrative form of lending), and rolling back a lot of more nonsensical regulations which produce administrative costs for small builders. Only around 20-36% of government regulations survive cost benefit analysis.
I know several small builders. They would love to build houses, rather than renovate, build extensions or effect housing repairs. More than one has expressed an interest in taking on young lads and training them in the high value end of the building trade. But the VAT threshold is too low, the regulations are already a huge burden below £80,000, and the banks don't want small builders playing a more prominent role in home building, because unlike the large developers they don't have a stake in keeping the supply of housing artificially low.
According to Grok, approximately 127,500–148,750 builders (sole traders and small firms) in England operate below the VAT threshold of £90,000. This accounts for ~60–70% of the ~212,500 construction businesses in England, reflecting the sector’s dominance by micro-businesses and sole traders.
It's not all infeasible that the small sector could produce 100,000 new homes a year in rural or suburban settings, without substantially changing the character or nature of the environments in which they are set. The government has raised the VAT threshold, but not enough to make the sort of difference which is needed. The government also announced a very generous £3 billion scheme to encourage SME building, but this ignores the basic problem that lenders don't want housing supply increasing for the simple reason that mortgage debt as an ever-inflating asset class with ever better returns, is probably their biggest source of profits.
Mortgage debt alone only accounts for 10-15% of total finance sector profits, but once one includes leveraging this figure rises to 15-25%. Once one expands the criteria to include profits made on the investment side, particularly though private equity, 25–45% of all finance sector profits are derived from the UK housing market. Little wonder they don't want supply expanding. Grok noted that previous schemes to encourage lenders to lend more for building plots to SME builders had failed, even though the building plot itself means it's secured lending, and we're talking about government stepping in to reduce the risk!
Liam Halligan called it an Iron Triangle of Interest in his book 'Home Truths'.
I don't look down my nose at anyone, certainly not people who live in suburbia. But I love, love, love cities.
I grew up not too far from you in Sidcup and Bexleyheath but couldn't wait to get away. In my time, I've lived in Whitechapel in the East End, downtown Manhattan, the centres of Portsmouth, Palo Alto, Plymouth, Portland OR, Mountain View, and now the centre of Bristol. I didn't have a car in any of those places.
I love the centre of a city for all the reasons that you said people say they love it. I have about 100 pubs within a mile of me and about 10 that I frequent often. I have friends in every pub. I walk to the shops.
I also lived on the far edge of Suburbia in Silicon Valley for way too long. It was a lovely house with a lovely garden but I couldn't wait to get away. I had to drive miles to the nearest pub which was inside a Whole Foods supermarket and 25 miles to work. Traffic was horrible.
Anyone who enjoyed this post should enjoy this book:
https://www.amazon.com.au/NEXT-AUSTRALIAN-CITY-SUBURBAN-EVOLUTION/dp/1923224050
“The suburbs of big cities like London, New York, Sydney or Auckland are now filled with people who had a family once. All those fifty-, sixty- and seventy-somethings who once had growing families now live in suburban homes unaffordable for all but the most fortunate twenty- or thirty-something.”
As a 62 year old living in a large house with a large garden on the edge of the countryside 25 miles north of London, I plead guilty as charged. But I don’t feel guilty of any real offence.
You argue cogently that different styles of dwelling suit different people at different stages of their life. The dense and bustling inner city isn’t the place to bring up a family, but it’s probably ideal for young adults at the pre marriage and family stage of life (say 18 - late 20s) who thrive on the variety and intensity of activity available and perhaps the bigger pool of potential life partners with whom to create the next generation.
Suburbia suits the next stage but what do you envisage as suitable for the 50s and above who are in your analysis now blocking suburbia? Are we, now child free, supposed to return to the city? For some certainly that will be attractive with the money and leisure to enjoy what the city offers within walking distance. For others that pace of life now holds less appeal than the cultivation of one’s garden with periodic forays into the city - that’s me and my wife.
My view is that the problem would be solved if the planners got out of the way and the market was allowed to respond to the demands of consumers. So we would probably create more suburbia rather than leaving it static with a wider range of properties including smaller ones to allow the older generations to downsize while maintaining their preferred suburban lifestyle and keeping their local friendship circle. We are only blockers if supply is constrained and prevented from rising to meet demand.
You make some good points, but I disagree. I live in Norfolk. In my late teens and early twenties I lived in London. Don't get me wrong- the facilities, landmarks, and culture were wonderful. There was a basement bar in Leicester Square which played garage music, and served particularly cheap (for London) bottled beer. We used to walk to the drop of Alexander Palace and look out across the city at night. The Tube and the buses were great for getting around. But on the weekends when I travelled back to the family home, I used to experience a feeling when the train hit the green fields, which can only be described as a natural high close to elation.
Here's the thing- there is plenty of land to build on. There are numerous old concrete sites in the greenbelt exclusion zone, with zero value in terms of biodiversity and with decent access to roads. I opined to a senior civil service friend that the only reason why the local authorities didn't want the houses built was because the people of Henley aren't exactly thrilled at the prospect of white van man's children joining their kids school. He came close to snorting his beer all over the table. He was similarly amused by my quip about the government being all for tackling climate change, providing it didn't involve collapsing the commercial real estate bubble, by permitting more remote work.
The real problem is roads. In England, less than 1% of land is utilised for buildings, when one excludes gardens, but roads account for 2% of total land use. A significant problem is carparks, which take up between 0.2-0.3% of all land in England. Studies show this land use could be reduced by 50-70% with more MSCPs. The way to tackle road congestion is with incentives for exploring alternatives to single person per car trips to and from work. Many people I know would be far more happy to car share if it meant they could earn up to three days additional annual leave (employers would only lose around 1.1 days per year, and reduce their liability through less long-term sickness).
I will admit that a lot of the new rural developments are crammed and built by developers as estates, but the way to tackle that is to raise the VAT threshold for small builders, have statutory government-backed building plot lending facilities (the banks don't want small builders building homes, or the pipeline of new homes opening- because it deflates their most lucrative form of lending), and rolling back a lot of more nonsensical regulations which produce administrative costs for small builders. Only around 20-36% of government regulations survive cost benefit analysis.
I know several small builders. They would love to build houses, rather than renovate, build extensions or effect housing repairs. More than one has expressed an interest in taking on young lads and training them in the high value end of the building trade. But the VAT threshold is too low, the regulations are already a huge burden below £80,000, and the banks don't want small builders playing a more prominent role in home building, because unlike the large developers they don't have a stake in keeping the supply of housing artificially low.
According to Grok, approximately 127,500–148,750 builders (sole traders and small firms) in England operate below the VAT threshold of £90,000. This accounts for ~60–70% of the ~212,500 construction businesses in England, reflecting the sector’s dominance by micro-businesses and sole traders.
It's not all infeasible that the small sector could produce 100,000 new homes a year in rural or suburban settings, without substantially changing the character or nature of the environments in which they are set. The government has raised the VAT threshold, but not enough to make the sort of difference which is needed. The government also announced a very generous £3 billion scheme to encourage SME building, but this ignores the basic problem that lenders don't want housing supply increasing for the simple reason that mortgage debt as an ever-inflating asset class with ever better returns, is probably their biggest source of profits.
Mortgage debt alone only accounts for 10-15% of total finance sector profits, but once one includes leveraging this figure rises to 15-25%. Once one expands the criteria to include profits made on the investment side, particularly though private equity, 25–45% of all finance sector profits are derived from the UK housing market. Little wonder they don't want supply expanding. Grok noted that previous schemes to encourage lenders to lend more for building plots to SME builders had failed, even though the building plot itself means it's secured lending, and we're talking about government stepping in to reduce the risk!
Liam Halligan called it an Iron Triangle of Interest in his book 'Home Truths'.
I don't look down my nose at anyone, certainly not people who live in suburbia. But I love, love, love cities.
I grew up not too far from you in Sidcup and Bexleyheath but couldn't wait to get away. In my time, I've lived in Whitechapel in the East End, downtown Manhattan, the centres of Portsmouth, Palo Alto, Plymouth, Portland OR, Mountain View, and now the centre of Bristol. I didn't have a car in any of those places.
I love the centre of a city for all the reasons that you said people say they love it. I have about 100 pubs within a mile of me and about 10 that I frequent often. I have friends in every pub. I walk to the shops.
I also lived on the far edge of Suburbia in Silicon Valley for way too long. It was a lovely house with a lovely garden but I couldn't wait to get away. I had to drive miles to the nearest pub which was inside a Whole Foods supermarket and 25 miles to work. Traffic was horrible.
Cities are nice. I wrote more about mine here.
https://raggedclown.substack.com/p/urbs-vs-suburbs