From Policy Exchange, published as read by The Daily Mail:
Housing and Intergenerational Fairness calls on policymakers to reform the planning system to encourage the construction of new good quality homes that will not antagonise local people. Current rules make it almost impossible for developers to build houses with extra floors which has led to a situation where only 2% of UK housing stock consists of bungalows. In 2009, only 300 bungalows were built. The report says that building more bungalows will allow older people to downsize, freeing up family sized homes for younger families.
Well yes, hooray for more bungalows* if that's what people want, but 2%? WTF?
According to the DCLG:
1.3 About one in five (19%) dwellings were flats with the rest being houses and bungalows. Looking at houses, the vast majority (80%) consisted of two storeys above ground, some 11% were bungalows and 9% had 3 or more storeys, Figure 1.2.
The majority of flats were in blocks of less than six storeys with just 8% in blocks that were higher than this. Around 1.5 million flats (37%) were situated at ground floor level.
11% x 81% = about 9% of all dwellings are bungalows. Not 2%. In the UK, most flats are low-rise, so by definition a third are on the ground floor. And, to restate what you would have assumed anyway...
1.20 There were also large variations in the mix of dwelling types in different areas. Only 4% of dwellings in village centres and isolated rural areas and 6% in rural residential areas were flats compared with 63% of those in city centres and 32% in other urban centres, Figure 1.15. One in five (20%) of dwellings in city centres were converted flats.
The most common type in suburban areas was semi-detached houses, whereas in rural areas, detached houses were more common. One in five (22%) of dwellings in rural residential areas and 17% in village locations were bungalows.
It's the Holy Trinity. Build densities are driven by location values; location values are driven by population density; population density is driven by location values and limited by build density; and so on ad infinitum.
* So called because the first man to build one ran out of bricks after he'd finished the ground floor and decided to just bung a low roof on.
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2 comments:
Are location values driven by population densities though?
Most of the value of land is the value of its proximity to centers of economic activity surely. So even if one normally would expect increasing population density as a result of higher levels of economic activity it is the economic activities that is the driver. Hence land values in some of the worlds biggest slums are not so great but in London and New York land prices are astronomic. Or am I just splitting hairs?
PC156: "Most of the value of land is the value of its proximity to centers of economic activity surely."
Correct.
And people are drawn to centres of economic activity and also, by and large, the economy functions better if there are lots of people (more specialisation and more trading hence more efficient/productive).
So you're saying the same thing, it is all the same thing.
There is nothing special or magical about the physical land on which most major towns are built.
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Of course, there are rich countries and poor countries, but within each country, the general rule holds.
So land rents in Rio are a million times as much as in the rain forest. Land rents in Mumbai are a million times as much as farmland in the mountains. Etc.
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And you can't just shove a million people together in a field and wait for a miracle to happen, they need sewers, roads, a police force, transport links, mains electricity and so on, but that is all means to an end (enabling more people to live more closely together and trade with each other).
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