To Fix London House Prices, We Should Learn From The 1930s

[chris08876]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Yeah, I don't understand the opposition to micro-units. The right is like "that looks like a dystopian hellhole; everyone needs to live in a McMansion on 10 acres" and the left is like "how dare working class people live in such small quarters; we need subsidized housing with more space than the market rate housing".

I lived in something that would qualify as a micro-unit, for years, and my quality of life was very high. Lots of people would trade space for location and amenities.

Exactly. It if helps with costs, folks will take it. For many folks out there, if they could have their monthly costs cut, which micro units would make possible, and in the mass quantity needed in "X" city... it would do wonders for that person.

The issue with these places is the lack of supply, to many folks wanting to live in certain cities, and if micro units can help the demand, I don't get the opposition to them.

Tons of folks are for the lifestyle, and as mentioned, amenities. Not many folks need 3000-4000+ sq ft.

[chris08876]

Originally Posted by Crawford

You could have rising housing prices in tandem with rising share of micro-units due to changes to geographic distribution of units. The micro-units will tend to be in more central, high-cost areas, so one would certainly expect higher prices psf. But that doesn't mean that micro units aren't increasing overall affordability.

I see a lot of the costs in this country or in some Western countries as self induced. If folks in Asia can build mass housing, we can too. The will is just not there, and too many folks (landlords) are taking advantage of the system along with political lobbying.

We know of the issues (by we... "we" = city officials) but nothing is done or at least not at the level needed.

A lot of the housing issue is self-induced.

[chris08876]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

In expensive markets, unit costs are largely dictated by land costs. If developers can increase their profits by cramming more small units into their buildings, the cost of land zoned for such uses will rise accordingly.

And that's the thing that a lot of people need to understand. Developers need to make a profit. If the city or town or village allows the developer to increase the profit margins, more the merrier.

But often, developers are LIMITED by zoning and arbitrary rules/limits. The minute there is a strong localized climate for building, is the moment a lot of units will rise. And also the cities or towns need to be upfront with the developers. Provide benefits or bonuses for "X" units. FACTOR in the supply/demand issue into bids for parcels at these community or city reviews.

City Councils and these community meetings could be put to good use. To actually foster a development to meet the supply... but they aren't. Its instead a NIMBY festival which only drives up the costs and enriches the current landholders due to prices rising... and this is at the cost of others seeking housing or to get their lives in order.

Some folks want all of the cake, and have no desire to share a crumb.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by chris08876

And that's the thing that a lot of people need to understand. Developers need to make a profit. If the city or town or village allows the developer to increase the profit margins, more the merrier.

But often, developers are LIMITED by zoning and arbitrary rules/limits. The minute there is a strong localized climate for building, is the moment a lot of units will rise. And also the cities or towns need to be upfront with the developers. Provide benefits or bonuses for "X" units. FACTOR in the supply/demand issue into bids for parcels at these community or city reviews.

City Councils and these community meetings could be put to good use. To actually foster a development to meet the supply... but they aren't. Its instead a NIMBY festival which only drives up the costs and enriches the current landholders due to prices rising... and this is at the cost of others seeking housing or to get their lives in order.

Some folks want all of the cake, and have no desire to share a crumb.

Yeah, there are lots of problems with our current housing model and the artificial constraints placed on the market - zoning being chief among them.

But if the problem is zoning, then let's change the zoning. Smaller units aren't the solution to restrictive zoning or overly punitive approvals processes.

[10023]

London already has lots of “micro-housing units” and always has. They’re called ‘bedsits’.

Purpose-built ones might just be a bit more private and hygienic.

[muppet]

Originally Posted by badrunner

Looks like some generic North American style development, the kind of project you'd see in a Canadian development thread or something. It's a pity.

Well tbf, Wembley is not the most salubrious area but the developments have their moments, although not exactly prize-winning. It's hit n miss, depending on the age -there are generally two waves
of development interrupted by the hiatus of the '08 crash.

Bear in mind the original plans with the worst identikit buildings (2006):


https://wallpapercave.com


got added to by the 2014 plan:





Detailing's much better on the newer stuff, yet still austere


https://www.buildington.co.uk/images...5.68771100.jpg









[/IMG]
www.homeviews.com





2006 buildings - a bit loud/ dated (due to the '08 crash some of these went on hold for nearly a decade, but a good mix of development and community in the end)




https://www.youneedtovisit.co.uk/wp-...2-1024x768.jpg



www.realm-village-outlets.co.uk


Ugly AF shopping centre, but at least it's popular



www.quintainliving.com


The local community centre/ civic hall/ library:



www.hopkins.co.uk


Approaches to the stadium are lined with displays and food vans


https://wembleypark.com/




...versus 2015, more reserved, yet more expense paid to it



www.homeviews.com



www.constructionmanagermagazine.com, https://galostar.co.uk



https://static.gridarchitects.co.uk/...two-thirds.jpg, www.walkermodular.com


www.theconstructionindex.co.uk

It's even got a boxpark now (designer shipping container stores, start ups and food).


https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restau...n_England.html


The district is only halfway completed, there's another whole area on the other side of the stadium that's lying fallow and industrial.

[badrunner]

Yeah all that looks generically North American, is what I'm saying. It doesn't say London. It says Edmonton or Minneapolis.

[muppet]

How is that more Edmonton or Minneapolis (than London)? I would say that architecture at least has a 'look' similar to the London industrial history that's the fad (scrubbed two-tone brick, lots of squares and metal ribbing, candy stripes, that London's been doing since the 80s). I'm sure you'd get similar in Minneapolis etc, but how more than London? Were you expecting Tudor or Gothick?







1980s conversions -about 1/8 of the city looked like this, especially in the east


https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-sOGxZUB1G...ridge+(42).jpg

This was turning up by the late 90s for the Docklands developments, it went on from there:






And even then, let's say that these buildings have no grounding in London history... why is it still more Minneapolis or Edmonton than London to have them? Do you think that those styles were invented in North America? Or modernity in general? If anything I think you may mean generic period, generic international.

[badrunner]

lol you added a bunch of pictures after I replied? Anyway, it's not just about the individual buildings, it's the project as a whole. There's a certain look and pattern to it that is recognizable. It's very reminiscent of North American sports/retail/residential megaprojects. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

[MonkeyRonin]

It's not specifically "North American" so much as it's just part of the global architectural monoculture. Most of those could be copy & pasted anywhere from Edmonton to Singapore and they'd fit right in.

Some of the bricky high-rises do have traces of an identifiably British DNA though. Stuff like this could be anywhere, but London or Manchester would still be my first guess.

[muppet]

Originally Posted by badrunner

lol you added a bunch of pictures after I replied? Anyway, it's not just about the individual buildings, it's the project as a whole. There's a certain look and pattern to it that is recognizable. It's very reminiscent of North American sports/retail/residential megaprojects. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Actually your message doesn't show until after I finish the edits. That certain look and pattern -how is that a uniquely North American thing? Tbh I dont see that many midrise residential districts, plus pedestrian retail in new NA sports developments. Plus there's no car parking for London.


Excuse for some some gorgeous stadia porn:


https://populous.com

https://media.lasvegasweekly.com



www.gannett.com

https://i0.wp.com

www.twincities.com


^lovely stadia btw.

The nearest I can find is this plan for Harlem


https://soccerstadiumdigest.com


Though once again, let's pretend that this is all generic - how is that allowable in North America but not in London??? Polite reminder, NA did not come up with this style, nor with modernism in general (hence the name the International style). And what on earth would we propose London build like? Victoriana? (...Even if it were to build giant Victorian builds again, please note they'd still resemble Victorian buildings from all round the world).

[MonkeyRonin]

I think you're getting too fixated on the stadium part. Otherwise, it looks like countless other brownfield redevelopment schemes in Canadian cities and suburbs. Likewise for the US, Australia, Netherlands, etc.

Not that that's necessarily a bad thing. It's just the standard global template for urban redevelopment.





















Etc.

[Crawford]

That soccer stadium site is in the Bronx, not Harlem.

I don't understand what the stadia have to do with housing styles. London's stadia appear very well-integrated with the urban fabric. The issue is more around the modern residentials, which don't have much of a local vernacular. You see new housing in say, Paris, or Mexico City, or Cape Town, and there's a local vernacular. But this stuff looks airlifted from some random Canadian suburb or Singapore new town. That isn't a bad thing, necessarily, but it pales in comparison to London's prewar built fabric, so it arguably jars the streetscape.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by Crawford

That soccer stadium site is in the Bronx, not Harlem.

I don't understand what the stadia have to do with housing styles. London's stadia appear very well-integrated with the urban fabric. The issue is more around the modern residentials, which don't have much of a local vernacular. You see new housing in say, Paris, or Mexico City, or Cape Town, and there's a local vernacular. But this stuff looks airlifted from some random Canadian suburb or Singapore new town. That isn't a bad thing, necessarily, but it pales in comparison to London's prewar built fabric, so it arguably jars the streetscape.

The difference I think with these high-growth Anglosphere cities - the Londons and Torontos and Dallases and Melbournes of the world - is in no small part driven by their cultural propensity to treat single-family areas as sacrosanct, thereby limiting new development to the slivers of land zoned for density. And given the demand - both real and speculative (ie. lots of investor-driven projects), values for these lands become extreme, necessitating high density development by large-scale builders to be profitable. This tends to result in the use of international starchitects (or their local imitators) and generically placeless insta-city redevelopments.

In comparison, development in places like Paris and Mexico City more commonly comes in the form of small to mid-scale infill developments, which both allows for local architects and developers an opportunity to play a bigger role, and for them to build in a more locally-informed vernacular. And because development is more incremental and infill-based, it's less disruptive to the traditional cityscape.

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

It's not specifically "North American" so much as it's just part of the global architectural monoculture. Most of those could be copy & pasted anywhere from Edmonton to Singapore and they'd fit right in.

Some of the bricky high-rises do have traces of an identifiably British DNA though. Stuff like this could be anywhere, but London or Manchester would still be my first guess.

You wouldn't want to copy and paste it into Paris or Brussels though. And it's not about any particular building or individual style of architecture, it's the overall style of development that is North American. European cities are nothing if they are not organic. It's a key distinguishing feature compared to American cities. And yet here you have a master planned megaproject - a city within a city, with a fake town center and fake retail streets (what we'd call pedestrian malls here). It just screams generic North American "mixed use project," but perhaps that's what most of London will end up looking like in the future.

[biguc]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

I think you're getting too fixated on the stadium part. Otherwise, it looks like countless other brownfield redevelopment schemes in Canadian cities and suburbs. Likewise for the US, Australia, Netherlands, etc.

Not that that's necessarily a bad thing. It's just the standard global template for urban redevelopment.

Amsterdam is even planning a new island district they've explicitly described as "Canadian". There are only so many ways a master-planned, mixed-use highrise development can look. I'm not sure what else anyone would expect. The neo-brutalist stuff is definitely consistent with the London vernacular. I mean, I guess they could double down on that and just replicate the Barbican Estate over and over--really manifest Clockwork Orange futurism or whatever.

But even if that's a good idea, there's a reason some spaces are special, and it's not easy to replicate them, or wise to try. Paris isn't building anymore Tours Aillaud, for example, even if doing so would be more quintessentially Parisian than building something they might build in Edmonton. The anglo-international, towers-in-a-mall model basically works; bad design can only fuck it up so much.

[muppet]

So it sounds like to me, it's okay for North America to have 'generic' work (and when people claim generic they show pics of high end contemporary infill), but not for London. Neither is it okay for London to create new districts, which btw it's been doing throughout the modern era, and how much of the Victorian city was built too. Bear in mind London had one third of the city destroyed in the war (pound for pound as much damage as Berlin or Warsaw), 600 'estates' built after, then tore down 500 of them and rebuilt again. 1/8 of the city was derelict as recently as the 1980s, ex-industry now reclaimed - the city is no stranger to district building, it pretty much propels it, and why the place is an aria to different architectural styles and periods. London is LITERALLY ground zero for regeneration.


https://assets.londonist.com/uploads...utside_875.jpg

And seriously Europe is not trapped in a time warp, nor a Disneyland of historicism. The centres may well be protected, but the 80 percent of people who live and work outside it need centres too. The whole winning laurel with the continent is it combines the best of the new with the old -which bear in mind all its 'old' architecture was jarring and new for then also, and proliferating round the world. Bear in mind too modernism came about in Europe.

Decrying what a shame these styles have a place on the continent is akin to me decrying why European styles have been exported to North America -equally as inaccurate. Once again, it's called the International Style, created by architects and thinkers from around the world, sourced from ideologies in Japan and aesthetics from Morocco. What we have today may well be generic, and sure feel free to bemoan the fact, but you can't point at any place different to having it from the rest. Especially when it's sourcing from there.

[muppet]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Etc.

^Case in point, I could decry these developments as being generic because they're the styles drawn up in London a decade ago. How disappointing. It has no place in North America. They need to come up with something else.




https://faulknerbrowns.com



https://www.mylondonhome.com/


https://cdn.vox-cdn.com, www.buildington.co.uk/


www.labc.co.uk


https://2csjj93y1t1a1cak4z2wr44n-wpe...ings-Cross.jpg


https://conranandpartners.com



Of course that would be wrong, but it's the same thing that's being levelled at London.

[biguc]

Originally Posted by muppet

^Case in point, I could decry these two developments as being generic because they're the styles drawn up in London a decade ago. It has no place in North America. They need to come up with something else.

I was actually thinking that, if anything, Edmonton and Minneapolis were probably the ones biting London, not the other way around. Now London catches shit for looking too much like the imitators. How the world turns.

[badrunner]

Indeed. After all, these artificial town centers and pedestrian malls you see all over the place are just modernized, Americanized simulacrums of European urbanity. Seeing an imitation of an imitation popping up in the place where the real thing originates is precisely what is so jarring about it!