Listen: Patricia Brown
Chair of the London Festival of Architecture, on all through this month, Patricia Brown argues that in order to meet housing needs, London must build much more densely but, crucially, without losing the character that makes the capital unique
I spotted it long before I eventually bought there. Taxi drivers call it 'the road that time forgot'; part of a small cluster of central London's Bermondsey streets - sandwiched between the council blocks and light-industrial sites. What attracted me wasn't just its form and the pollarded London plane trees; rather it was witnessing the regular huddle of people - OK, women - chatting over their gates every time I went there.
My hunch paid off, and since buying my home some 15 years ago, I have been part of this strong community. I joined people who have lived there for decades, as well as more recent neighbours who either settle and put down roots, or move on when circumstances change. We look after each others' keys, take in deliveries, and watch out for each other.
In the intervening years the surrounding neighbourhood has changed, as factories and industrial estates have been given over to housing. Bermondsey's manufacturing past - biscuits and jam, leather and fur - lives on only through the names of new apartment blocks and the memories of older people whose communities have changed forever. This is being played out across London, as the city shape-shifts in response to the greatest growth in population since the Thirties.
Back then, before the girdle of the Green Belt was thrown around London, the increasing population was largely accommodated by creating swathes of suburbia, supported by an expanding transport infrastructure. Now we are struggling just to attempt to keep up with housing demand, shoehorning new homes into existing neighbourhoods or, as with Bermondsey, transforming former industrial land.
Already the impact of growth is highly visible, including on the transport system. Yet since it's likely London will need to house more than 10 million people by 2030, we should be building homes for 70,000 more people and making space for 40,000 new jobs every year. In this space-constrained city, it's obvious we need to build much more densely, and do so within the context of the existing urban fabric and, crucially, communities.
Constrained supply and growing demand have pushed values across London to record levels, with the consequence that the current pattern of development is resulting in a generation of buildings that are taller and denser than ever before - radically changing London's skyline and ground plane, with significant impacts on surrounding communities.
Those impacts cannot just be left to chance: London must be an intelligent client, welcoming and encouraging investment. The conditions for building successful places largely hinge on how we plan and design homes, streets, infrastructure and social spaces. Decisions made now will have exponential and lasting implications for ongoing affordability and social sustainability. And architecture and architects should be at the fore of this.
The Mayor's Design Advisory Group (MDAG), of which I am deputy chair, has just published its Good Growth Agenda, setting out a range of recommendations to help achieve a future London that we will still want to live in, one with a balanced mix of young and old, of housing tenures, of jobs. It allows for vitality and change, building on the 'London-ness' that is a crucial part of the capital's character and enduring appeal. It looks at getting the right mix of uses and enough skilled staff inside our planning departments who understand the complex cocktail behind successful places. It highlights the impact of development on the cumulative density of a neighbourhood, rather than only focusing on an individual site, and makes recommendations, including 'personal planning' consents, to stop the watering down of design quality when developers sell on a site with a permission.
London is not the only city grappling with 'good growth'. New York mayor Bill de Blasio is re-zoning swathes of relatively low-density, low-rise, districts to create space for the 200,000 homes he has pledged to build over 10 years. Like London, this has resulted in a push back from communities, and the city trying to counter it with guarantees of affordable homes plus community and social infrastructure to support growth.
London, like New York, is a global city. To most of its inhabitants it remains home, even if home is now cheek by jowl with new neighbours, where once there were biscuit factories or open space. Designing homes and workplaces that can build on London's success as a magnet for people and investment, that can make space for the city's complexity alongside needs, hopes and dreams, is probably the most important thing currently facing London. In June we invite Londoners and people beyond, through the London Festival of Architecture, to take this head on.
