Urban densification without planning reform won't solve our housing crisis

Densification is a coping strategy based on the view that it is politically impossible to make planning reforms that would allow the market to deliver a new suburbia

Every so often a new and exciting fix to Britain’s housing crisis is released by one or other YIMBY group. All of these fixes have two characteristics: firstly they are well-researched and interesting; secondly they won’t fix the problem. At times these proposals seem to me like an exercise in coping with the fear that the, till recently, dominant, NIMBY lobby will not allow any more land for housing (at least anywhere sensible) so we will be obliged to cram everybody into the existing footprint of housing.

The first of these ‘cram everyone into the existing housing footprint’ idea came from an organisation called ‘Create Streets’ who set out this wonderful thing called ‘gentle density’. Create streets described what they mean by ‘gentle density’: 3-7 storeys high, up to 65% of the land used for physical development, and blocks 50-150m long.

I must admit to having been quite shocked that ‘gentle density’ was so big and blocky. Moreover, even Create Streets acknowledge that this kind of urban densification isn’t exactly the best environment for people, especially children:

There you have, clearly labelled with “impaired child development, a five storey block of flats - the very definition of gentle density that YIMBYs are pushing for London. Indeed anything much above three stories is, according to Create Streets, pretty much bad news for raising children.

None of this, of course, stops people from advocating for greater urban densification, usually at the expense of family housing. Single, thirty-something people look at a three-bed semi-detached house in Grove Park or Harold Hill and immediately want to flatten it to build seven storey mansion blocks with no gardens (or an actively policed, anti-child, communal garden). Of course, the plan here isn’t to create new streets of family homes but rather to make a place suited to the lifestyles of thirty-something single people and childless couples. Instead of working out how to make places for families and children, these fixes for the housing crisis act to ossify the childless nature of elite urban Britain.

There is a close and negative relationship between urban density and total fertility rate (TFR) but we don’t talk about this (despite rising concerns about the decline in Britain’s TFR) when we discuss the housing crisis. Perhaps this reflects the fact that most of those people facing - and talking most loudly about - housing problems are single people or childless couples. But this doesn’t prevent the ‘pile it high and cram ‘em in’ strategy being seen as the only resolution to Britain’s housing problems. While people (or at least the YIMBY campaigners) realise the urgent need to increase housing supply, they either fail to see that there are huge social consequences for different strategies or else see urban densification as an exercise in social engineering that will get us out of cars and onto urban mass transit thereby finally making public transport viable. Linked to this is the common idea that urban densification, by its very nature, will boost agglomeration effects and be brilliant for the economy. Problem is, however, that if you don’t have any children there’s not really much point, beyond hedonistic selfishness, for having an economy.

Almost all of the influential thinking about housing in Britain (and elsewhere) is done entirely without considering either what people want or the social impacts of the proposed housing. Here’s what estate agents think people want:

“More than four-fifths (81%) of those surveyed across the UK believe there will be an increased desire for properties with gardens or balconies.

Nearly three-quarters (74%) predict an increase in demand for homes near green spaces, such as parks, and just over two-thirds (68%) think properties with more private space and fewer communal areas will be more desirable.

At the other end of the spectrum, 78% think there will be a fall in the appeal of tower blocks and 58% believe properties in urban areas which are very built up will be less appealing.”

Now partly these comments reflect the impact of the pandemic but we probably need to recognise that, even with the UK’s crazy house prices, suburban family housing remains one of the most popular housing forms. Over 70% of new build housing in England since 2020 has been family housing and there is no sign of this trend changing. If we are to meet the expectations of future families there is an imperative for us to build family housing and lots of it. And given that we know dense urban environments impair child development and that they (perhaps not unrelatedly) push down fertility rates, the need to build suburban family housing has never been greater.

This brings me to Russell Curtis’s latest work looking at opportunities for suburban densification in London. As ever this is a comprehensive and well-researched piece of work identifying (as Curtis did before with land proximate to railway stations) how 900,000 new homes could be built in London by densifying suburban streets close to London’s transport network:

“Land in London is precious, yet suburbs have a hegemony over it. Those lucky enough to own a house in the suburbs and, in particular, those living close to public transport, have a moral duty to allow more housing to be built around them so that others can benefit from convenient access to all of the amenities that the city offers.”

I agree that there are opportunities to build more housing in London’s suburban fringes. After all, nearly a quarter of London’s land area is designated as green belt and the city’s urban boundaries have barely shifted since 1945. But Curtis does not propose the development of green belt land but rather, through  some not entirely clear means of land assembly, the redevelopment of existing suburban housing into more dense, dare I say ‘gently dense’, environments. Curtis is right that, if you lift some local planning rules, you will get some development of this sort simply because of the economic opportunity it provides for developers, but the result is to meet basic needs for housing without considering longer-term factors such as family formation. Replacing one four-bed detached suburban home with a block of six flats increases the total quantum of housing at the expense of reducing the quantum of family housing. Following this densification approach (and let’s remind ourselves again that dense urban environments impair child development according to Create Streets) exacerbates the existing ‘child desert’ that Curtis acknowledges has resulted in school in Hackney closing for lack of pupils.

The whole approach is, as I said in opening, a coping strategy based on the view that it is politically impossible to make the sort of planning reforms that would allow the market to deliver, as it did when those London suburbs were built, the sort of housing that meets people’s need for space to raise a family while sustaining access to the benefits of the wider city. With the changing nature of commuting and newly emerging patterns of working, there is less imperative for short journeys. If people are only in their office two days a week a longer commute becomes more tolerable and acceptable. Yet YIMBY researchers too often ignore the opportunities that would come from a radical change to planning laws, preferring fiddly little fixes that fail to address the fundamental shortage of development land that is the real driver of our housing challenges.

In the context of a comprehensive planning reform, Curtis’s work sits much better because it doesn’t compromise the supply of family housing so as to resolve overall supply problems. New family housing on land previously barred from development would replace the older family homes redeveloped into low- and mid-rise apartments near stations. But if there is no comprehensive planning reform, the result of the strategy outlined by Curtis is to reduce the supply of family housing meaning that, for future Londoners, the sort of family home my Dad bought on an insurance clerk’s salary in the 1960s will be something only available to the very richest people.

The resolution to the housing crisis in England lies in the rapid and significant expansion in the supply of market housing and the only way to ensure this happens is to undertake radical planning reform including, if not its abolition, then fundamental changes to the purposes, function and scale of London’s green belt. Simply densifying London without allowing for new family housing will act to make London even more of a childless city than it is today. Nearly eight in ten central London households are childless already, the sort of densification proposed by Curtis means that this childlessness is likely to extend further into historic suburbs as family housing is replaced by apartments.