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What monoculture am I proposing? The same basic building form can be scaled up and down. If market dynamics mean a street is only worth being 3 storeys tall then it can have conventional terraced houses and/or flats. You could have one consistent ridgeline and appearance along a street, with the...

I think we need to take a step back and look at the sort of building type I actually think is appropriate for Cambridge. 13/3 Moray Place New Town, Edinburgh, EH3 6DT - https://www.rettie.co.uk/property-sale/per250237 This is a a flat, or an apartment. This is the sort of thing I think would...

Yes, and because they go for £1m each they are now completely and utterly unaffordable to young families planning to have kids. That is, unless they both work at DeepMind or they have the Bank of Mum and Dad or Granny and Granddad to call upon. That window of 25-35 is critical for family...

I'm talking specifically about the bottom end of the terraced house design, like working class railway terraces where the front door leads directly into the living room because there's not enough room for a separate hallway. The pretty fundamental problem with the terraced house design is that...

Why would it be without a manifesto pledge? And why is this such a change in the intention of the policy? Councils used to use CPO powers even more. What changed was our political willingness to make alterations to our built environment, not the law itself. But the dam is close to bursting when...

The planning system is the main restriction on residential development. There is no amount of tax break fiddling you can do to fix it. If the law of the land is that only a very small number of new houses can be built, then it doesn't matter how much money you can pour in. There's only a...

Demand is sky high because cities are what generate economic growth and opportunity for individuals. Whatever job you have, the best version of that job and lifestyle should exist in a city. Even if you're just a cleaner, the quality of life that you can achieve in a city is far higher than you...

What you're claiming is that there is just not enough demand for housing in Cambridge for it to be worth replacing 2 storey houses with 6 storey flats. This is not true. If the demand exists for flats or indeed any new housing in new towns like Tempsford or Cambourne, then the demand exists for...

The financing isn't hard. It's actually the easiest part. Investors want opportunities to park their capital. Pension funds more than anyone else are looking for things to get a good, solid return on. They can't and don't want to put everything in the stock market, so they are already major...

You're talking about two different kinds of attachment. People are attached to the homes they themselves have lived in because of all of the memories. Then there's attachment to an old building with meaningful history. The first one is difficult with redevelopment, yes. But once you go down...

No means of financing it? You draw up a plan, which is some consultancy and legal fees. Then you pick out individual groups of plots that you can redevelop first into the final new building form. You only demolish what the city can take at a time. So long as the construction sector is confident...

What's an accounting trick? Knocking down 1926 sprawl suburbs and replacing them with modern buildings that meet modern requirements, and thus meeting our needs for more housing without building in car dependency? If the accounting trick is anywhere, it's the idea that continuing to sprawl out...

Water privatisation does not change the facts on the ground by anywhere near as much as you're claiming. Water privatisation is essentially an accounting trick to try to get the borrowing required for water upgrades off of the national balance sheet. Unfortunately, as with most accounting...

These are planning issues. It may not come under the strict purview of the Town and Country Planning Act but it is a planning issue, just as we can describe problems as being defence or health problems. Fundamentally, the UK has been operating under the assumption that strict governmental...

You're describing Nth order consequences of the planning system. The water companies aren't interested in investing in upgrades because they're unable to raise water charges by enough to cover the cost of building them, given that the cost of construction is outpacing our willingness to pay for...

You've just described how the city is being held back by planning. All of these other infrastructure projects which are necessary for housing are held back by the same planning system that also prevents housing. Indeed, one of the reasons that people are opposing East-West Rail is that they know...

It's absolutely possible to use modern industrial technology to make development viable in places. Modern irrigation (including things like the Hoover Dam) are absolutely critical for settlements in the south-west of the US. Air conditioning is absolutely critical for development in the Sunbelt...

Hong Kong is at the entrance to the Pearl River Delta. There have been human settlements in the general area for a very long time. With industrialisation, the region has developed into a megalopolis with a population larger than all individual European countries. The river delta means fertile...

Ironically the most successful local authority (ish) we have at balancing the needs of residents and of the wider economy and non-residents is the City of London. It does this by giving companies votes based on how many people they employ in the City. Not far away, we have a pretty clear...

Much of the problem is that our existing housing stock is either old, or it's just crap. It's not normal or reasonable to expect that the housing solution for 2026 is whatever a sprawl housebuilder put up in 1926. We have had society wide housing replacement programmes in the past, when we...