Michael Gove’s speech a few days ago set out a radical plan for which will be music to YIMBY ears: an ambitious raft of housebuilding—where people want to live—to be combined with public services, active travel, and, in the much-discussed case of Cambridge, lab space. This isn’t the first time Read more…
The few homes we do build today are an expression of the environment in which they are built. This is a political environment: shortly, it is based on what builders are allowed to do and what they are not. Contemporary housing, therefore, registers the successes and failures of our planning system like Read more…
Islington is a by-word for middle class aspiration. The area is relatively close to central London, without being as famously expensive as somewhere like, say, Kensington and Chelsea. Given that the average price of a terraced house in the borough of Islington today is about 1.7 million pounds, the relative Read more…
It is possible to destroy the aesthetic merit of a listed building by building something big enough and ugly enough next to it. We have all witnessed this happen; usually the damage was dealt several decades ago. A perfect example in my locality, Norwich, was the decision in the mid-20th Read more…