Michael Edwards

Some rough notes from conference 19 January. My 10-minute talk is here. edwards for js kings 20130119 First contributions captured only in tweets – which I have pasted together and slightly edited. (more…)

Residents, with only 5 minutes time to speak, hold up their statements

January 15th 2013 Southwark Council planning committee met to determine planning application from LendLease for redevelopment of Heygate Estate.  This is just a preliminary post, for later expansion.  It is the most substantial example of the disastrous process going on in London where council estates are being emptied and cleared to create space for private development and the crisis is being used to lower drastically the % of replacement social rented housing on “viability” grounds: a kind of downwards ratchet. More at 35% And there’s a reasonably good report in London’s evening paper, the Standard. (more…)

One of the most remarkable things about last week’s EiP on the Mayor’s proposed changes to the Plan was—on reflection—the London Boroughs’ vigorous defence of their capacity and need to develop social rented housing at low rents. (more…)

The Examination in Public (EiP) on the Mayor’s Revised Early Minor Alterations to the London Plan (REMA) is in its crucial day: debating the Mayor’s switch of emphasis, away from housing those in the greatest need (who may be able to afford social housing rent but not “affordable rent” at 65-80% of local market rents) towards those higher up the income scale.  The opposition is very strong indeed, coming from Borough Councils (!), many of whom have been doing good analytical work and whose views were powerfully put by officers (including some ex-students of ours) from Westminster, TH,  Islington, Kensington and Chelsea, plus a very wide range of tenants and residents groups.

Benson (GLA Hsg) the new system is shifting public spending burden from capital grant to revenue (HB). (more…)

 Yesterday saw UCL students union hosting a public debate on this proposal, with speakers from the local residents groups, GamesMonitor, UCL academics (me and Prof Murray Fraser) and active students. UCL management was represented by Andrew Grainger, head of Estates, and two other men whom I don’t know. Minutes will appear, I guess, and the BBC was filming so it may figure in a broadcast sometime. Earlier in the day there had been a routine staff meeting of our UCL department ( the Bartlett School of Planning ) for which I had prepared a briefing paper.

This post is just my texts for these two events + some links. (more…)

Some students here at UCL / Bartlett asked if I could suggest some people they might follow on Twitter.  So I started putting some suggestions together.  More welcome. (Note that it is divided into groups.) (more…)

The Evening Standard in London solicited a letter from me.  In the end they didn’t print it (no hard feelings) so here it is for a select readership. [Later: they printed a précis later - see end.]

The coalition is like an emperor with no clothes, now reaching for a loin cloth. Having followed policies the exact opposite of what we needed to lower the ratio of debt to GDP, it now finds debt still rising and GDP still falling while the misery of austerity continues to take its awful toll on low and middle-income Britons.

Yes housing is in a crisis and yes a massive increase in infrastructure investment would help to put their disasters into reverse. But these proposals are a tiny softening of the deflationary storm and are likely to have some perverse effects. (more…)

31 July 2012  Today (1700h) is the last day for submission of objections to the changes which Boris wants to make to the 2011 London Plan. We are working on a Just Space coordinated response – see http://justspace2010.wordpress.com – and the following is what I just sent in on my own account in response to an invitation from Nicky Gavron.  The summary is:

The overwhelmingly important feature of the Alterations is the weakening of London’s capacity to meet its people’s most serious housing needs.  The evidence is that needs for housing among low and middle-income Londoners are becoming even more acute and that any alterations to the Plan should increase, not decrease, the emphasis on social rented housing.

20120724 Assembly REMA

These are (probably very patchy) notes taken during the INURA meting organised by Linnalabor in Tallin, Esthonia.

Margit Mayer on urban activism today.  Struggles shaped partly fy the hsistory of earlier struggles. (more…)

I just did a post on London Remade‘s Debate column about what economic policies we should demand from the next Mayor. That’s very short-term. Then tomorrow (20 April) I’m giving the first talk in a UCL event about the London Economy in 2062. Yes 50 years ahead. A bit long term. I’ll post some stuff here and tweet a bit if I can. #L2062 My talk here Edwards London Economy 2062 and all is on web now http://bit.ly/JVQo1g#L2062

Royal Holloway recently held an excellent event Speculating on Slums in which there were talks on rent theory etc by Anna Haila, Louis Moreno and me.  All the material is online now.  My talk  has audio here http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2012/05/michael-edwards-some-things-we-can-do-with-rent/ and slides here Edwards Rent 20120523.  There were a lot of excellent talks, all audio at  http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2012/05/speculating-on-slums/