UEL seminar on post-Olympic regeneration in East London

Notes taken at a seminar hosted by the University of East London (UEL) in the offices of the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC). 30 January 2013. Ralph Ward in the chair, ex-DCLG (Department of Communities and Local Government) now prof at UEL. “East London’s big projects stop at their edges as though dropped from aky… – Canary Wharf (CW), Westfield, Excel…”  (very scrappy notes so far but I’ll try and edit them, clean them up) Continue reading “UEL seminar on post-Olympic regeneration in East London”

Sell-out to developers at Heygate, Southwark (+links)

image of Southwark council meeting
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. Continue reading “Sell-out to developers at Heygate, Southwark (+links)”

London Plan EiP

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). Continue reading “London Plan EiP”

UCL proposed new campus at Stratford, replacing the Carpenters Estate

 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. Continue reading “UCL proposed new campus at Stratford, replacing the Carpenters Estate”

At last: a manifesto for progressive planning

***London launch 5 February 1330 for 1400 at TCPA. Second launch soon in Sheffield. Details at http:pnuk.org.uk***
After a lot of drafting and re-drafting we now have a usable draft of this great document, aimed at people working in and around planning in the UK (especially England, so far as the detail goes) from PNUK Planners Network UK. We hope it will rally dispirited souls who have been sucked or seduced into market-led orthodoxy or just feeling lonely in their scattered resistance. The team has been Bob Colenutt, Tim Marshall, Andy Inch and me + some others at earlier stages and with a feed-in on housing from Duncan Bowie. All white males so far. Please read, comment, discuss. Some meetings in various parts of the country coming up. The draft is here as a PDF: http://bit.ly/Vduhe6

Desperate UK government hits planning again

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. Continue reading “Desperate UK government hits planning again”