1 00:00:00,840 --> 00:00:02,880 - Hi, welcome to the Works in Progress podcast. 2 00:00:02,880 --> 00:00:05,850 I'm Sam, I'm here with Ben Southwood and Samuel Hughes. 3 00:00:05,850 --> 00:00:08,250 Samuel, what was the Great Downzoning? 4 00:00:08,250 --> 00:00:12,510 - So historically cities grow in two ways. 5 00:00:12,510 --> 00:00:13,800 Like putting it simply, they grow 6 00:00:13,800 --> 00:00:15,870 outwards or they grow upwards. 7 00:00:15,870 --> 00:00:19,410 Today, most cities around the world still grow outwards. 8 00:00:19,410 --> 00:00:21,270 In fact, there's like massive outward expansion 9 00:00:21,270 --> 00:00:23,370 of cities in most countries, 10 00:00:23,370 --> 00:00:26,460 but in suburban areas, which is most of the surface area 11 00:00:26,460 --> 00:00:29,130 of cities, they don't really, really go upwards anymore. 12 00:00:29,130 --> 00:00:30,690 They tend to be regulatory constraints 13 00:00:30,690 --> 00:00:33,120 that say once you built a suburb at a low density, it has 14 00:00:33,120 --> 00:00:34,530 to stay like that forever. 15 00:00:34,530 --> 00:00:35,700 So it's completely novel. 16 00:00:35,700 --> 00:00:38,280 Historically, it's all changed since the late 19th 17 00:00:38,280 --> 00:00:39,990 century and the present day. 18 00:00:39,990 --> 00:00:44,400 So I call this process the Great Downzoning process whereby 19 00:00:44,400 --> 00:00:46,260 zoning restrictions have gradually introduced 20 00:00:46,260 --> 00:00:47,820 and lowered such that neighbourhoods 21 00:00:47,820 --> 00:00:49,590 were frozen in place forever. 22 00:00:49,590 --> 00:00:51,630 - And basically this happened what, 23 00:00:51,630 --> 00:00:54,300 around the second World War or before the Second World War? 24 00:00:54,300 --> 00:00:55,350 - It's a bit more complex. 25 00:00:55,350 --> 00:00:59,820 So it's starts in actually the German Empire 26 00:00:59,820 --> 00:01:02,250 and Austria-Hungary in the late 19th century. 27 00:01:02,250 --> 00:01:05,220 It spreads in the interwar period to the United States, 28 00:01:05,220 --> 00:01:08,010 Canada, then to Australia. 29 00:01:08,010 --> 00:01:09,090 And then it comes in in Britain 30 00:01:09,090 --> 00:01:13,440 and France, really in the postwar period, quite a kind 31 00:01:13,440 --> 00:01:15,450 of a strange way we can discuss later. 32 00:01:17,190 --> 00:01:19,080 But it's proceeded by a kind 33 00:01:19,080 --> 00:01:21,120 of private sector downzoning, which happens much earlier. 34 00:01:21,120 --> 00:01:24,210 That goes back into the 19th and even the 18th centuries. 35 00:01:24,210 --> 00:01:26,793 So the long story begins in the sixteen, seventeen hundreds 36 00:01:28,440 --> 00:01:30,630 with the first development 37 00:01:30,630 --> 00:01:32,730 of like not really low density suburbia, 38 00:01:32,730 --> 00:01:35,820 but at least like medium density elite residential 39 00:01:35,820 --> 00:01:37,260 suburbs in Britain. 40 00:01:38,610 --> 00:01:40,770 And those have private 41 00:01:41,640 --> 00:01:44,910 zoning rules pretty much from the start names 42 00:01:44,910 --> 00:01:47,460 that then gradually expands 43 00:01:47,460 --> 00:01:49,620 around the world in the 19th century. 44 00:01:49,620 --> 00:01:52,560 So Germany, France, United States, Canada, 45 00:01:52,560 --> 00:01:54,570 they all develop low density suburbs 46 00:01:54,570 --> 00:01:58,080 and they've all got, like, again, 47 00:01:58,080 --> 00:01:59,100 pretty much from the start, 48 00:01:59,100 --> 00:02:00,300 they're getting more sophisticated 49 00:02:00,300 --> 00:02:01,830 and more detailed over time. 50 00:02:01,830 --> 00:02:03,840 They've got private zoning rules, covenants 51 00:02:03,840 --> 00:02:07,680 that are restricting density. Public zoning - 52 00:02:07,680 --> 00:02:09,810 so the state restricting density 53 00:02:09,810 --> 00:02:13,770 that comes in in the late 1800s in central Europe in 54 00:02:13,770 --> 00:02:16,410 Germany and Austria, spreads 55 00:02:16,410 --> 00:02:20,790 to North America British Empire in mainly 56 00:02:20,790 --> 00:02:22,200 the interwar period. 57 00:02:22,200 --> 00:02:24,180 And then finally comes in in kind of Britain 58 00:02:24,180 --> 00:02:26,190 and France, mainly in I think probably the forties, 59 00:02:26,190 --> 00:02:27,900 fifties in the postwar period. 60 00:02:29,190 --> 00:02:32,430 So it's the overall process 61 00:02:32,430 --> 00:02:34,590 is pretty long. 62 00:02:35,940 --> 00:02:38,160 But the short version is like whenever low density 63 00:02:38,160 --> 00:02:40,530 suburbia develops in a country elite low density suburbia 64 00:02:40,530 --> 00:02:41,730 develops in a country, 65 00:02:41,730 --> 00:02:45,270 private zoning follows pretty quickly after that. 66 00:02:45,270 --> 00:02:49,350 And then public zoning, like after the modern state emerges 67 00:02:49,350 --> 00:02:51,510 and norms start shifting about what kind 68 00:02:51,510 --> 00:02:54,480 of state intervention is appropriate, it tends 69 00:02:54,480 --> 00:02:57,930 to come fairly quickly when private zoning mechanisms start 70 00:02:57,930 --> 00:03:02,110 to fail or when low density elite suburbia comes under 71 00:03:02,110 --> 00:03:03,490 serious intensification pressure. 72 00:03:04,390 --> 00:03:09,220 So the the key thing I've learned like studying, 73 00:03:09,220 --> 00:03:11,200 so the first thing to say about the Great Downzoning, 74 00:03:11,200 --> 00:03:15,430 like an amazingly under-discussed underappreciated subject, 75 00:03:15,430 --> 00:03:18,400 Americans write a bit about the introduction 76 00:03:18,400 --> 00:03:19,780 of zoning in the United States 77 00:03:19,780 --> 00:03:22,210 and there's a bit of a kind of classic literature on 78 00:03:22,210 --> 00:03:25,570 how it arrived, but Europeans don't really write 79 00:03:25,570 --> 00:03:26,650 about it at all. 80 00:03:26,650 --> 00:03:28,120 So most British 81 00:03:28,120 --> 00:03:31,030 and French people, even if they work on housing policy, 82 00:03:31,030 --> 00:03:33,730 even if they work on suburban densification 83 00:03:33,730 --> 00:03:36,970 as a policy area, don't know where's like rules against 84 00:03:36,970 --> 00:03:38,350 densification when they started, 85 00:03:38,350 --> 00:03:40,540 why they started, how they started. 86 00:03:40,540 --> 00:03:41,980 So I've like kind 87 00:03:41,980 --> 00:03:43,960 of gone from scratch when I've been reading about this. 88 00:03:45,730 --> 00:03:48,580 The first place where public zoning, 89 00:03:48,580 --> 00:03:51,910 like the state putting in zoning policy started 90 00:03:51,910 --> 00:03:55,120 was probably, I can't quite work out the first one. 91 00:03:55,120 --> 00:03:58,420 The standard people often say it's Frankfurt, 92 00:03:58,420 --> 00:04:00,280 but there seem to be some earlier ones like Dresden 93 00:04:00,280 --> 00:04:02,920 and Budapest seem to maybe have been earlier in the 94 00:04:02,920 --> 00:04:04,780 1870s and 1880s. 95 00:04:04,780 --> 00:04:07,720 And it's very much like German speaking places that do it. 96 00:04:07,720 --> 00:04:12,640 First they have maybe a more interventionist tradition 97 00:04:12,640 --> 00:04:16,060 of state government may, maybe it goes back 98 00:04:16,060 --> 00:04:19,210 to like the Prussian state in the 18th century, 99 00:04:19,210 --> 00:04:20,560 more authoritarian approach 100 00:04:20,560 --> 00:04:22,240 to government in the 19th century. 101 00:04:23,920 --> 00:04:27,940 The big thing I hadn't appreciated at all is 102 00:04:27,940 --> 00:04:31,480 that in pretty much every country, downzoning 103 00:04:31,480 --> 00:04:35,080 by the government is proceeded by downzoning 104 00:04:35,080 --> 00:04:36,880 by the private sector. 105 00:04:36,880 --> 00:04:41,710 So what I mean by this is in the middle ages, 106 00:04:41,710 --> 00:04:43,150 cities do have suburbs, 107 00:04:43,150 --> 00:04:47,860 but the suburbs are like poverty stricken, mixed use. 108 00:04:48,940 --> 00:04:50,950 Like basically they're where like 109 00:04:50,950 --> 00:04:53,260 noxious industrial functions are placed 110 00:04:53,260 --> 00:04:54,820 and where people who can't pay 111 00:04:54,820 --> 00:04:57,310 to get into the city itself have to have to live. 112 00:04:57,310 --> 00:04:58,660 - They're actually outside the walls 113 00:04:58,660 --> 00:04:59,890 in mediaeval times, right? 114 00:04:59,890 --> 00:05:02,020 - Often it's like - Shanty towns against the wall. 115 00:05:02,020 --> 00:05:04,270 - It's the dangerous place which will get burnt 116 00:05:04,270 --> 00:05:06,250 by the authorities if the city's besieged 117 00:05:06,250 --> 00:05:08,950 to avoid giving cover to the attackers. 118 00:05:08,950 --> 00:05:10,420 So you live under constant threats 119 00:05:10,420 --> 00:05:12,610 that the authorities might burn your home down if the town 120 00:05:12,610 --> 00:05:14,440 becomes is a town is in danger, 121 00:05:14,440 --> 00:05:16,390 maybe you don't have like full protection 122 00:05:16,390 --> 00:05:19,270 of law in these places, like bad places. 123 00:05:19,270 --> 00:05:20,950 You don't want to be there if you can possibly avoid it. 124 00:05:23,140 --> 00:05:26,890 Then in the like basically England, 125 00:05:26,890 --> 00:05:29,740 you start getting something like modern suburbs 126 00:05:29,740 --> 00:05:32,140 and the west end of London is maybe the first 127 00:05:32,140 --> 00:05:33,850 - The west end starts as a suburb. 128 00:05:33,850 --> 00:05:36,490 - Well kind of, it's an elite residential area built at 129 00:05:36,490 --> 00:05:37,690 much lower densities. 130 00:05:37,690 --> 00:05:40,690 It's exclusively, exclusively for wealthy people 131 00:05:40,690 --> 00:05:42,070 and exclusively for housing 132 00:05:42,070 --> 00:05:45,640 and some kind of retail functions. 133 00:05:45,640 --> 00:05:49,330 So it's like the key tests, it passes 134 00:05:49,330 --> 00:05:51,040 and it starts as early as the 17th century, 135 00:05:51,040 --> 00:05:52,630 but really gets underway in the 18th century 136 00:05:53,800 --> 00:05:55,870 and that right from the beginning. 137 00:05:55,870 --> 00:05:58,250 So that's where like one big landowner says, 138 00:05:58,250 --> 00:06:00,770 I'm gonna make this whole neighbourhood into a 139 00:06:00,770 --> 00:06:05,270 a sanctuary from the things we don't like about urban life 140 00:06:05,270 --> 00:06:07,130 and also maybe a sanctuary from like the things 141 00:06:07,130 --> 00:06:09,620 that we don't like about mediaeval suburban life. 142 00:06:09,620 --> 00:06:12,500 So we're not gonna have any slaughter houses or brick kilns. 143 00:06:12,500 --> 00:06:15,590 We are not gonna have any like through, well little, as little 144 00:06:15,590 --> 00:06:16,670 through traffic as possible 145 00:06:17,810 --> 00:06:20,930 and the more morally dubious side of it. 146 00:06:20,930 --> 00:06:23,510 Basically we've gotta try to avoid having 147 00:06:23,510 --> 00:06:24,770 poor people living in this area 148 00:06:26,510 --> 00:06:27,950 and they've got this challenge like 149 00:06:27,950 --> 00:06:31,820 how do you preserve once I've sold homes here, 150 00:06:31,820 --> 00:06:35,900 sold plots here, like I can sell them for house building 151 00:06:35,900 --> 00:06:37,610 or I can build houses, but 152 00:06:37,610 --> 00:06:39,560 how do I keep them in that use forever? 153 00:06:39,560 --> 00:06:42,650 And in order to attract really like wealthy buyers 154 00:06:42,650 --> 00:06:43,910 to spend a lot of money on this neighbourhood, 155 00:06:43,910 --> 00:06:44,960 they're gonna want to guarantee 156 00:06:44,960 --> 00:06:46,340 that the neighborhood's going to remain 157 00:06:46,340 --> 00:06:48,770 as an elite residential suburb into the medium term. 158 00:06:49,820 --> 00:06:53,450 So what they do is they impose covenants which are like kind 159 00:06:53,450 --> 00:06:56,810 of like a contract where not only the first buyer, 160 00:06:56,810 --> 00:07:00,260 but all future buyers have to agree 161 00:07:00,260 --> 00:07:04,070 to keep the house in basically like in elite residential use 162 00:07:04,070 --> 00:07:05,690 and in single ownership, right? 163 00:07:05,690 --> 00:07:08,330 In single ownership often. 164 00:07:08,330 --> 00:07:10,460 So as a slightly technical detail, 165 00:07:10,460 --> 00:07:12,830 but often the original landowner doesn't even build the 166 00:07:12,830 --> 00:07:14,840 house, they sell it to a house, a developer 167 00:07:14,840 --> 00:07:16,010 to build the individual house. 168 00:07:16,010 --> 00:07:18,590 So they often put in some restrictions on what kind 169 00:07:18,590 --> 00:07:21,200 of house can be built, what it can be used for, 170 00:07:21,200 --> 00:07:22,970 often a minimum price. 171 00:07:22,970 --> 00:07:25,910 Sometimes they put in detailed architectural restrictions, 172 00:07:27,080 --> 00:07:29,990 sometimes they put in really like minute stuff restrictions 173 00:07:29,990 --> 00:07:31,340 on what pets you can have 174 00:07:31,340 --> 00:07:33,170 or restrictions on where you can hang the laundry 175 00:07:33,170 --> 00:07:34,790 or any of the kind of things that they think is going 176 00:07:34,790 --> 00:07:37,280 to help preserve the tone of the neighbourhood. 177 00:07:37,280 --> 00:07:39,620 - One impression I got from reading the novel, The Quincunx, 178 00:07:39,620 --> 00:07:43,340 which I gather is by based on very careful historical 179 00:07:43,340 --> 00:07:46,100 research of the period, is that everyone at this time 180 00:07:46,100 --> 00:07:47,750 who was middle class was terrified 181 00:07:47,750 --> 00:07:50,060 of their neighbourhood falling into penry 182 00:07:50,060 --> 00:07:53,180 and becoming like a very dangerous, unpleasant place 183 00:07:53,180 --> 00:07:54,860 with 20 people cram to a room 184 00:07:54,860 --> 00:07:58,370 and they gave the example of the Devil's Acre in Westminster 185 00:07:58,370 --> 00:08:00,500 where all the streets are lined 186 00:08:00,500 --> 00:08:02,960 with these crumbling grand mansions, 187 00:08:02,960 --> 00:08:05,785 which are now split into 20 people crammed into every room 188 00:08:05,785 --> 00:08:08,450 and all kind of criminality is being carried out around. 189 00:08:08,450 --> 00:08:10,520 - So it's extremely common for neighbourhoods to go 190 00:08:10,520 --> 00:08:13,640 through social decline in pre-modern times, partly 191 00:08:13,640 --> 00:08:16,010 because of course they didn't have like Europeans now think 192 00:08:16,010 --> 00:08:19,520 an older house is like prima fai better than a new house 193 00:08:19,520 --> 00:08:21,770 and it's like a heritage, heritage property commands a 194 00:08:21,770 --> 00:08:23,570 premium, but Europeans in the past didn't think 195 00:08:23,570 --> 00:08:24,680 that they thought them like, like 196 00:08:24,680 --> 00:08:25,940 cars or computers or something. 197 00:08:25,940 --> 00:08:28,730 Like you've got like a shoddy old house which is gonna have 198 00:08:28,730 --> 00:08:30,830 loads of defects and at some point gonna require 199 00:08:30,830 --> 00:08:32,390 loads of expensive work. 200 00:08:32,390 --> 00:08:36,740 So you had the properties themselves constantly degrading, 201 00:08:36,740 --> 00:08:41,120 just physically fashion, you know, it was capricious then 202 00:08:41,120 --> 00:08:43,730 as now, and then the tendency just if we they're building 203 00:08:43,730 --> 00:08:46,790 new suburbs, the new suburbs will be built to 204 00:08:46,790 --> 00:08:49,370 be maximally attractive and try to draw people out. 205 00:08:49,370 --> 00:08:51,470 So you have a constant tendency for neighbourhoods 206 00:08:51,470 --> 00:08:53,030 to fall into decline. 207 00:08:53,030 --> 00:08:55,590 People are always afraid of this neighbourhoods 208 00:08:55,590 --> 00:08:58,920 that aren't covenanted, certainly in London, 209 00:08:58,920 --> 00:09:00,930 but I generally around Europe there's like 210 00:09:01,920 --> 00:09:04,350 people often pretty comp... like it's going to happen. 211 00:09:04,350 --> 00:09:05,880 - Mm. - You've got a time limit on 212 00:09:05,880 --> 00:09:08,460 how long you can live here at the, 213 00:09:08,460 --> 00:09:10,290 with the same like expectations for the character 214 00:09:10,290 --> 00:09:12,150 of the neighbourhood as when you bought it 215 00:09:12,150 --> 00:09:13,560 and quite a short time limit, 216 00:09:13,560 --> 00:09:15,900 maybe like a 15 year time limit or something. 217 00:09:15,900 --> 00:09:19,200 Neighbourhoods that were covenanted could sometimes survive 218 00:09:19,200 --> 00:09:22,230 indefinitely, although even they would decline sometimes 219 00:09:22,230 --> 00:09:24,420 and eventually sometimes the 220 00:09:24,420 --> 00:09:26,760 like people would stop bothering to enforce the covenants 221 00:09:26,760 --> 00:09:28,740 because they think oh it's, it's hopeless at this 222 00:09:28,740 --> 00:09:29,740 point. 223 00:09:29,740 --> 00:09:30,573 And is and is this happening because 224 00:09:30,573 --> 00:09:31,890 so many people are moving into cities? 225 00:09:31,890 --> 00:09:34,740 Why is it that presumably if you have a lot 226 00:09:34,740 --> 00:09:36,480 of people considered 227 00:09:36,480 --> 00:09:39,450 to be undesirable moving into a particular area, 228 00:09:39,450 --> 00:09:40,950 they're moving from somewhere else, 229 00:09:40,950 --> 00:09:42,540 are they like moving within the city 230 00:09:42,540 --> 00:09:43,950 and does that mean that there are other areas 231 00:09:43,950 --> 00:09:46,500 that are becoming kind of less dangerous let's say? 232 00:09:46,500 --> 00:09:49,560 Or are they moving into the city from rural areas? 233 00:09:49,560 --> 00:09:51,810 - I think it, my sense is it usually 234 00:09:51,810 --> 00:09:52,950 accompanies urban growth. 235 00:09:52,950 --> 00:09:55,350 I see. So it's normally, 236 00:09:55,350 --> 00:09:58,260 there aren't usually urban neighbourhoods 237 00:09:58,260 --> 00:10:00,270 becoming more genial. 238 00:10:00,270 --> 00:10:01,440 There are normally, 239 00:10:02,730 --> 00:10:05,400 the default is all in urban neighbourhoods are in decline 240 00:10:05,400 --> 00:10:06,780 except maybe the business centre 241 00:10:06,780 --> 00:10:09,840 of which might retain like an elite character. 242 00:10:10,890 --> 00:10:12,660 All in urban neighbourhoods are in decline 243 00:10:12,660 --> 00:10:14,280 and the middle classes are slowly moving 244 00:10:14,280 --> 00:10:15,300 further and further outwards. 245 00:10:15,300 --> 00:10:16,650 That's the pattern in London. It's a bit more 246 00:10:16,650 --> 00:10:18,000 complex in other parts of Europe. 247 00:10:18,000 --> 00:10:19,560 - And this is what year, what kind 248 00:10:19,560 --> 00:10:21,180 of year period are we talking about? Again? 249 00:10:21,180 --> 00:10:24,870 - I mean it, this starts in a big way in the 18th century 250 00:10:24,870 --> 00:10:26,760 and runs all the way into the 20th century. 251 00:10:26,760 --> 00:10:31,320 Okay. This process and it's, yeah, 252 00:10:31,320 --> 00:10:34,860 but Covenanting was successful in preserving some areas 253 00:10:34,860 --> 00:10:37,680 of London from this process 254 00:10:37,680 --> 00:10:40,530 and Britain, I mean London had the particularly interesting 255 00:10:40,530 --> 00:10:43,740 process, the freehold system whereby the original landowner 256 00:10:43,740 --> 00:10:45,420 would retain a kind of ownership. 257 00:10:45,420 --> 00:10:47,550 Yeah, partial ownership in the properties 258 00:10:47,550 --> 00:10:49,590 and the, these so-called great estates. 259 00:10:50,670 --> 00:10:52,620 And these landowners were often really vigorous about 260 00:10:52,620 --> 00:10:53,910 enforcing the covenants 261 00:10:53,910 --> 00:10:56,940 because they wanted to avoid the neighbourhood declining 262 00:10:56,940 --> 00:10:59,070 because they had a long-term financial interest in it. 263 00:10:59,070 --> 00:10:59,940 - In a hundred years they would 264 00:10:59,940 --> 00:11:02,410 regain ownership and resell the leases. That's what happened. 265 00:11:02,410 --> 00:11:03,243 Yeah, they'd sell the leases for about 266 00:11:03,243 --> 00:11:03,750 80 or a hundred years. 267 00:11:03,750 --> 00:11:06,510 And so they, and because they were extreme like church 268 00:11:06,510 --> 00:11:08,340 bodies or charities or aristocratic families, 269 00:11:08,340 --> 00:11:09,600 they were extremely long termist 270 00:11:09,600 --> 00:11:10,860 and actually cared about what happened 271 00:11:10,860 --> 00:11:12,270 in 80 or a hundred years. 272 00:11:12,270 --> 00:11:15,030 So they were thinking if this neighborhood's become a slum 273 00:11:15,030 --> 00:11:16,800 in 80 years, my grandchildren 274 00:11:16,800 --> 00:11:18,035 will inherit a worthless asset. 275 00:11:18,990 --> 00:11:21,390 Whereas if I retain it as a summit of fashion, 276 00:11:21,390 --> 00:11:22,440 then they'll retain, 277 00:11:22,440 --> 00:11:24,570 they'll get to inherit this amazingly prestigious 278 00:11:24,570 --> 00:11:26,340 and and lucrative asset. 279 00:11:26,340 --> 00:11:28,410 So I'm gonna fight really hard to retain its character. 280 00:11:28,410 --> 00:11:32,730 And like Bloombury was a key like neighbourhood on the, 281 00:11:32,730 --> 00:11:35,370 on those like edge of genteel London owned 282 00:11:35,370 --> 00:11:36,690 by the Bedford family. 283 00:11:36,690 --> 00:11:39,330 And they were famously like one of the most conscientious 284 00:11:39,330 --> 00:11:41,850 of the great states in enforcing covenants 285 00:11:41,850 --> 00:11:43,710 and even supplying public services 286 00:11:43,710 --> 00:11:45,750 and this kind of thing because they were really, really keen 287 00:11:45,750 --> 00:11:47,850 to keep its character and they didn't completely succeed. 288 00:11:47,850 --> 00:11:49,620 It gradually decayed 289 00:11:49,620 --> 00:11:51,210 and became a kind of bedsit territory 290 00:11:51,210 --> 00:11:52,990 by the early 20th century, 291 00:11:52,990 --> 00:11:55,120 but it didn't completely fall through. 292 00:11:55,120 --> 00:11:57,190 And that sheltered the neighbourhoods to the west of there. 293 00:11:57,190 --> 00:11:59,170 And the mechanism here is basically 294 00:11:59,170 --> 00:12:00,670 units becoming subdivided. 295 00:12:00,670 --> 00:12:03,460 Like it's, it's like you start with a kind of ... 296 00:12:03,460 --> 00:12:04,810 I guess a nice apartment. 297 00:12:04,810 --> 00:12:06,220 Is it apartments or is it houses? 298 00:12:06,220 --> 00:12:08,680 And then the mechanism is, it's kind 299 00:12:08,680 --> 00:12:10,900 of always more economical to just cram more 300 00:12:10,900 --> 00:12:13,810 and more people into these units than to maintain them 301 00:12:13,810 --> 00:12:16,300 as being nice for a single family or whatever. 302 00:12:16,300 --> 00:12:17,410 - Yeah. So London, 303 00:12:17,410 --> 00:12:19,960 in the classic greater states period, that's, that's all correct. 304 00:12:19,960 --> 00:12:23,200 It started as houses and the main form of densification, 305 00:12:23,200 --> 00:12:26,470 it's like population densification rather than mainly floor 306 00:12:26,470 --> 00:12:27,610 space densification. 307 00:12:27,610 --> 00:12:30,010 So it's mostly just the same buildings being subdivided. 308 00:12:30,010 --> 00:12:31,540 That's not quite true because they did fit in the back 309 00:12:31,540 --> 00:12:34,510 garden sometimes, but they weren't at this point mainly 310 00:12:34,510 --> 00:12:37,060 talking about knocking them down and building flats. 311 00:12:37,060 --> 00:12:38,710 That becomes an issue in the 20th century 312 00:12:38,710 --> 00:12:41,560 or late 19th, 20th century when flats become in 313 00:12:41,560 --> 00:12:44,590 Anglo-American settings, they become a 314 00:12:44,590 --> 00:12:47,560 start becoming more common, get lift shafts 315 00:12:47,560 --> 00:12:49,180 and steel frames, which enables you 316 00:12:49,180 --> 00:12:51,070 to build really tall blocks of flats. 317 00:12:51,070 --> 00:12:53,110 And then you start getting the block 318 00:12:53,110 --> 00:12:54,550 of flats appearing in a green 319 00:12:54,550 --> 00:12:55,810 and leafy suburban neighbourhood. 320 00:12:55,810 --> 00:12:58,120 And that becomes another huge issue 321 00:12:58,120 --> 00:13:00,010 and a huge like key battleground 322 00:13:00,010 --> 00:13:01,750 around the, around densification. 323 00:13:01,750 --> 00:13:05,920 - Where are we then when the kind of dense city 324 00:13:05,920 --> 00:13:08,920 that you're talking about begins to change, like 325 00:13:08,920 --> 00:13:11,260 how do we get from what you're talking about this sort 326 00:13:11,260 --> 00:13:15,220 of 18th century, 19th century, the, the emergence 327 00:13:15,220 --> 00:13:20,220 of the suburb, how do we then get to the kind of dense, 328 00:13:20,290 --> 00:13:22,630 I guess upzoned but 329 00:13:22,630 --> 00:13:25,120 but seemingly kind of desirable place to live? 330 00:13:25,120 --> 00:13:27,640 That that, you know, we like the, the kind of 331 00:13:27,640 --> 00:13:30,160 the Georgian apartments, things like that 332 00:13:30,160 --> 00:13:32,530 or you know, in Spain, the kind of nice bits of Madrid 333 00:13:32,530 --> 00:13:34,450 or the, the, the or Barcelona, things like that. 334 00:13:34,450 --> 00:13:37,150 Like how do we get from the emergence of suburbs 335 00:13:37,150 --> 00:13:40,750 to this sort of beautiful, gentle, dense city that 336 00:13:40,750 --> 00:13:42,340 - Oh, they started as beautiful gentle density. 337 00:13:42,340 --> 00:13:44,920 - Okay, - So that's one of the, if 338 00:13:44,920 --> 00:13:47,920 for like us reading about this now, that's one 339 00:13:47,920 --> 00:13:52,150 of the elements which is a bit like surprising or confusing 340 00:13:52,150 --> 00:13:54,070 or confounds our expectations a bit 341 00:13:54,070 --> 00:13:57,160 because we have this like papier mache villain 342 00:13:57,160 --> 00:14:00,940 of low density suburbia where it's like car dependent, 343 00:14:00,940 --> 00:14:04,210 extremely low densities, totally single use 344 00:14:04,210 --> 00:14:08,320 and you know, it's a, an easy thing for us to be against. 345 00:14:08,320 --> 00:14:10,420 Whereas your early suburbs in the 18th 346 00:14:10,420 --> 00:14:14,890 and 19th century were very beautiful, gentle density, 347 00:14:14,890 --> 00:14:16,240 like far above the densities 348 00:14:16,240 --> 00:14:18,250 that you'd build a suburb out nowadays, normally, 349 00:14:19,720 --> 00:14:22,090 and they're all, I mean certainly ones from the 18th 350 00:14:22,090 --> 00:14:23,170 century, will all be under heavy 351 00:14:23,170 --> 00:14:24,580 heritage protection now. 352 00:14:24,580 --> 00:14:27,520 So when we look at these neighbourhoods, 353 00:14:29,320 --> 00:14:32,230 virtually everyone feels positive affect towards them 354 00:14:32,230 --> 00:14:35,140 and they really don't feel like, oh, this is a villain 355 00:14:35,140 --> 00:14:36,220 of the urbanism story. 356 00:14:36,220 --> 00:14:38,440 This is a real hero of the, of the urbanism story. 357 00:14:40,240 --> 00:14:43,780 But it's generally, I mean on the whole, the very fact 358 00:14:43,780 --> 00:14:46,330 that the private sector brings in these covenant 359 00:14:46,330 --> 00:14:50,080 restrictions explodes some 360 00:14:50,080 --> 00:14:53,210 of the standard narratives about density restrictions was it 361 00:14:53,210 --> 00:14:57,260 shows when these restrictions were introduced, 362 00:14:57,260 --> 00:15:00,020 they were actually value maximising for the neighbourhood. 363 00:15:00,020 --> 00:15:03,860 It's kind of seems like a paradox that by 364 00:15:03,860 --> 00:15:06,500 losing rights over your property, 365 00:15:06,500 --> 00:15:08,840 you actually gained property value overall 366 00:15:08,840 --> 00:15:11,240 because even though those rights were valuable to you, 367 00:15:11,240 --> 00:15:12,950 it was even more valuable to you 368 00:15:12,950 --> 00:15:14,570 that your neighbour had lost the rights 369 00:15:14,570 --> 00:15:16,610 to do things that might compromise your property value. 370 00:15:16,610 --> 00:15:17,630 - Yeah, I mean it's not, not 371 00:15:17,630 --> 00:15:18,830 that it's not that crazy, right? 372 00:15:18,830 --> 00:15:20,480 Like I'm very happy 373 00:15:20,480 --> 00:15:22,940 that my neighbour doesn't really have the right to play music 374 00:15:22,940 --> 00:15:24,530 after midnight and you know, 375 00:15:24,530 --> 00:15:26,660 maybe once in a few years I'd like to play music 376 00:15:26,660 --> 00:15:28,655 after midnight, but it's definitely worth it to me. 377 00:15:28,655 --> 00:15:30,650 Yeah, that's right. That we both have that, we both have 378 00:15:30,650 --> 00:15:32,570 our, our hands constrained on that. 379 00:15:32,570 --> 00:15:33,830 - Yeah, it's not crazy at all. 380 00:15:33,830 --> 00:15:35,720 And that's another thing, like researching the history 381 00:15:35,720 --> 00:15:37,850 of this has made me a bit more, 382 00:15:37,850 --> 00:15:40,940 I mean I come from a background of working on housing reform 383 00:15:40,940 --> 00:15:43,670 and specifically on like pro densification reform, 384 00:15:43,670 --> 00:15:46,280 but looking at the history has made me 385 00:15:46,280 --> 00:15:48,290 have a somewhat more nuanced view about it 386 00:15:48,290 --> 00:15:51,560 because you can see like a lot of this stuff was kind 387 00:15:51,560 --> 00:15:53,060 of solving a collective action problem. 388 00:15:53,900 --> 00:15:57,020 And these were like, in a way this is, 389 00:15:57,020 --> 00:15:58,940 these are societies without a housing shortage. 390 00:15:58,940 --> 00:16:00,320 I mean they had housing shortages in the sense 391 00:16:00,320 --> 00:16:02,480 that they were extremely poor and often very overcrowded 392 00:16:02,480 --> 00:16:04,580 and so on, but they were without a housing shortage in the 393 00:16:04,580 --> 00:16:07,880 sense that floor space values were equal to build cost. 394 00:16:07,880 --> 00:16:09,140 - What do you mean by that? Just explain, 395 00:16:09,140 --> 00:16:10,460 explain why that's significant. 396 00:16:10,460 --> 00:16:13,430 - So if you've got restrictions on house building imposed 397 00:16:13,430 --> 00:16:16,610 by the state and they're quite tight restrictions, 398 00:16:16,610 --> 00:16:19,010 then gradually floor space 399 00:16:19,010 --> 00:16:20,930 that starts being the state starts stopping you from 400 00:16:20,930 --> 00:16:22,520 creating floor space - building stuff. 401 00:16:23,510 --> 00:16:27,290 Even when the floor space that you created would be 402 00:16:28,730 --> 00:16:31,010 sufficiently valuable, that it would cover the cost 403 00:16:31,010 --> 00:16:34,010 of building it and more and the type those restrictions get 404 00:16:34,010 --> 00:16:36,020 and the more people who want to build 405 00:16:36,020 --> 00:16:38,300 and can't build, the higher prices will creep 406 00:16:38,300 --> 00:16:41,000 and you end up with a big difference between sales prices 407 00:16:41,000 --> 00:16:42,590 and, and build costs. 408 00:16:42,590 --> 00:16:45,320 And that the huge differences all across western capitals 409 00:16:45,320 --> 00:16:47,960 today, often like buildings will sell for three 410 00:16:50,674 --> 00:16:51,507 or four times more than it costs to build them, 411 00:16:51,507 --> 00:16:52,340 sometimes even bigger differences than that. 412 00:16:52,340 --> 00:16:54,890 That's all the artefact of, of regulation. 413 00:16:54,890 --> 00:16:56,150 But that wasn't there at the time. 414 00:17:00,214 --> 00:17:01,047 At the time they were building at like whatever density was 415 00:17:01,047 --> 00:17:01,880 value maximising sales prices were approximately the same 416 00:17:01,880 --> 00:17:03,890 as build cost or just enough above build cost 417 00:17:03,890 --> 00:17:05,600 to incentivize people to build. 418 00:17:05,600 --> 00:17:07,550 And as soon as sales prices were drifted 419 00:17:07,550 --> 00:17:09,320 above build cost at all, you get some more building 420 00:17:09,320 --> 00:17:11,000 and they'd push the sales prices down. 421 00:17:11,000 --> 00:17:13,610 So there was a market that was basically ine equilibrium 422 00:17:13,610 --> 00:17:16,010 and at that point in improving the immunity 423 00:17:16,010 --> 00:17:20,870 of these neighbourhoods by putting in covenants was 424 00:17:20,870 --> 00:17:23,960 in the eyes of an economist was kind of a good thing. 425 00:17:25,190 --> 00:17:27,140 Now it gets more complex than that, partly 426 00:17:27,140 --> 00:17:31,970 because like morally we might have quite mixed feelings 427 00:17:31,970 --> 00:17:35,420 about lots of the preferences that they were, 428 00:17:35,420 --> 00:17:37,700 that the market was satisfying here. 429 00:17:37,700 --> 00:17:40,100 So like in the United States, a big part 430 00:17:40,100 --> 00:17:42,680 of Covenanting was racial exclusion. 431 00:17:42,680 --> 00:17:44,930 It was white people didn't want to live near 432 00:17:44,930 --> 00:17:49,080 to African Americans, Asian Americans, Jewish Americans, 433 00:17:49,080 --> 00:17:51,000 or occasionally Catholic Americans. 434 00:17:51,000 --> 00:17:52,350 And so they put covenants in 435 00:17:52,350 --> 00:17:55,050 to exclude those people from neighbourhoods in Europe. 436 00:17:55,050 --> 00:17:58,320 That doesn't seem to have, I can't find evidence of 437 00:17:58,320 --> 00:17:59,340 that having happened in Europe, 438 00:18:00,570 --> 00:18:03,000 but obviously social class exclusion was a huge part of it. 439 00:18:03,000 --> 00:18:05,760 Like people want to bask in the reflected glow 440 00:18:05,760 --> 00:18:07,380 of living next to high status people. 441 00:18:07,380 --> 00:18:09,420 And that was like, of course the 19th century people are 442 00:18:09,420 --> 00:18:10,440 much more open about this. 443 00:18:10,440 --> 00:18:13,320 It wasn't regarded as a particularly disruptable motive. 444 00:18:13,320 --> 00:18:17,400 So, so like the landowners will be totally clear, 445 00:18:17,400 --> 00:18:19,320 like we are going to make here a neighbourhood 446 00:18:19,320 --> 00:18:20,610 for the best sort of people. 447 00:18:20,610 --> 00:18:21,750 Nobody else will be allowed in 448 00:18:21,750 --> 00:18:22,890 except as servants or whatever. 449 00:18:23,730 --> 00:18:26,820 So it's morally quite chequered. 450 00:18:26,820 --> 00:18:31,110 It's a, the preference is that the market is solving here, 451 00:18:31,110 --> 00:18:32,670 you know, the market is the, 452 00:18:32,670 --> 00:18:35,280 the reason why your prices go up when you have covenants is 453 00:18:35,280 --> 00:18:38,850 partly because people are being protected from noise 454 00:18:38,850 --> 00:18:42,900 and traffic and disease 455 00:18:42,900 --> 00:18:46,080 and overcrowding and tall buildings cutting out their light 456 00:18:46,080 --> 00:18:47,370 and all the trees being cut down 457 00:18:47,370 --> 00:18:50,400 and stuff that's like morally neutral. 458 00:18:50,400 --> 00:18:53,580 But it is also partly like various kinds of social exclusion 459 00:18:53,580 --> 00:18:55,920 and both of those are part of the story we can't like ... 460 00:18:55,920 --> 00:18:57,270 - So I wanna go back to the start of the story here. 461 00:18:57,270 --> 00:19:00,180 So we, it sounds like we're starting off with the first, 462 00:19:00,180 --> 00:19:02,190 the first bits being in lots of different places, 463 00:19:02,190 --> 00:19:04,350 the first bits of downzoning being in many different 464 00:19:04,350 --> 00:19:06,810 countries, but the UK included private downzoning 465 00:19:06,810 --> 00:19:08,760 and I'm gonna speak for you 466 00:19:08,760 --> 00:19:10,350 and say your, when you said the great estates you're 467 00:19:10,350 --> 00:19:13,050 thinking of like Belgravia and, and places like that. 468 00:19:13,050 --> 00:19:15,690 What I'm interested in is you then said the state starts 469 00:19:15,690 --> 00:19:17,010 doing it in certain places 470 00:19:17,010 --> 00:19:19,860 and I think you said Frankfurt was the, was the first place. 471 00:19:20,940 --> 00:19:22,650 What, like what do they downzone it to? 472 00:19:22,650 --> 00:19:26,070 So I can see in my mind Belgravia, we've got like four 473 00:19:26,070 --> 00:19:28,740 to six story townhouses basically. 474 00:19:28,740 --> 00:19:30,750 And instead they have gardens 475 00:19:30,750 --> 00:19:33,060 and they're not maximally full up of people 476 00:19:33,060 --> 00:19:34,890 and in the city they're presumably filling in like 477 00:19:34,890 --> 00:19:36,270 every bit of space. 478 00:19:36,270 --> 00:19:37,800 What's happening in Frankfurt, what are they, 479 00:19:37,800 --> 00:19:39,330 what are they downzoning it to? 480 00:19:39,330 --> 00:19:41,460 - So there's a tendency in all countries for the densities 481 00:19:41,460 --> 00:19:42,810 to fall over time. 482 00:19:42,810 --> 00:19:44,250 And that's basically 483 00:19:44,250 --> 00:19:47,550 because like the densities of suburbs are falling over time. 484 00:19:47,550 --> 00:19:49,200 I think probably the main driver of 485 00:19:49,200 --> 00:19:51,180 that is railways developing, 486 00:19:51,180 --> 00:19:56,180 which mean like opens up large expanses of spaces for 487 00:19:56,250 --> 00:19:57,450 low density housing 488 00:19:57,450 --> 00:19:59,850 and you can have your, 489 00:19:59,850 --> 00:20:02,310 in Germany they'd call them villa colonies. 490 00:20:02,310 --> 00:20:03,390 So they're like a colony 491 00:20:03,390 --> 00:20:07,080 of large detached houses in the middle of the countryside 492 00:20:07,080 --> 00:20:08,460 built around a railway station. 493 00:20:08,460 --> 00:20:10,050 And then you take your train, you can get into the city 494 00:20:10,050 --> 00:20:13,020 centre for work every day those, so 495 00:20:13,020 --> 00:20:15,510 by the late 19th century at the top 496 00:20:15,510 --> 00:20:19,830 of the market you are usually looking at big detached 497 00:20:19,830 --> 00:20:22,920 stories with like big detached houses with two stories 498 00:20:22,920 --> 00:20:24,900 or maybe two stories plus a basement 499 00:20:24,900 --> 00:20:27,030 or a roof story or something like that. 500 00:20:27,030 --> 00:20:31,170 And that's true probably all around the 501 00:20:32,040 --> 00:20:35,940 Britain, France, Germany, British Empire, United States, 502 00:20:35,940 --> 00:20:38,280 that's like the elite housing type that they like, so 503 00:20:38,280 --> 00:20:40,290 by the end of the 19th century we are talking about 504 00:20:40,290 --> 00:20:43,685 densities that aren't so far off what you'd get in a 505 00:20:43,685 --> 00:20:45,540 a rich suburb today. 506 00:20:45,540 --> 00:20:48,430 But covenants also operate lower points in the market. 507 00:20:48,430 --> 00:20:51,160 So middle class suburbs will also generally be covenanted 508 00:20:51,160 --> 00:20:53,290 and those will still be at somewhat high densities. 509 00:20:53,290 --> 00:20:54,280 Those are still like two story 510 00:20:54,280 --> 00:20:56,080 terraced houses at that point. 511 00:20:56,080 --> 00:20:56,913 So what happens next? 512 00:20:56,913 --> 00:20:58,390 So the problem 513 00:20:58,390 --> 00:21:03,390 with covenants is they don't, I mean people really want 514 00:21:03,610 --> 00:21:06,970 what they purport to offer restrictions on density, 515 00:21:06,970 --> 00:21:10,690 restrictions on use, but covenants are not 516 00:21:10,690 --> 00:21:11,710 very good at providing it. 517 00:21:12,940 --> 00:21:14,800 So they've got a bunch of weaknesses. 518 00:21:14,800 --> 00:21:17,770 For one thing, they're really expensive, you have to, 519 00:21:17,770 --> 00:21:18,910 I mean they're not expensive, they cost nothing 520 00:21:18,910 --> 00:21:20,920 to put in place, but to enforce them you have 521 00:21:20,920 --> 00:21:22,210 to have a lawsuit. 522 00:21:22,210 --> 00:21:23,500 I asked some lawyers about this 523 00:21:23,500 --> 00:21:26,800 and they said in Britain today you'd have a starting price 524 00:21:26,800 --> 00:21:31,360 of 25,000 pounds to bring a lawsuit to enforce a covenant 525 00:21:31,360 --> 00:21:33,310 and it could go way higher than that. 526 00:21:34,240 --> 00:21:37,120 That's to anticipate what we'll talk about later. 527 00:21:37,120 --> 00:21:39,460 That's much more money than it cost to local government 528 00:21:39,460 --> 00:21:42,520 to enforce zoning restriction - like maybe 10 529 00:21:42,520 --> 00:21:43,600 times more money than it cost to. 530 00:21:45,220 --> 00:21:49,330 They are, they're not, courts don't always enforce them. 531 00:21:49,330 --> 00:21:51,430 They're kind of taught, law courts don't always 532 00:21:51,430 --> 00:21:52,660 accept that they're reasonable. 533 00:21:54,520 --> 00:21:58,210 They also have a very serious collective action problem. 534 00:21:58,210 --> 00:22:00,880 So most of them are in London 535 00:22:00,880 --> 00:22:02,740 as we discuss the Great Estates sometimes enforce them, 536 00:22:02,740 --> 00:22:06,700 but in most countries you are reliant on neighbours 537 00:22:06,700 --> 00:22:08,320 to enforce them against each other, the system 538 00:22:08,320 --> 00:22:09,790 of reciprocal enforcement. 539 00:22:09,790 --> 00:22:12,760 So for any given neighbour you think, well I don't want 540 00:22:12,760 --> 00:22:14,650 to be the one who pays 25,000 pounds 541 00:22:14,650 --> 00:22:16,330 to enforce against this guy 542 00:22:16,330 --> 00:22:19,210 for like building an extension in its vanguard. 543 00:22:19,210 --> 00:22:21,670 Couldn't someone else in the neighbourhood 544 00:22:21,670 --> 00:22:22,840 take the, take the hit on this. 545 00:22:22,840 --> 00:22:25,540 And even if it's doing more than 25,000 pounds 546 00:22:25,540 --> 00:22:27,160 of aggregate damage to the neighbourhood, 547 00:22:27,160 --> 00:22:29,230 it's probably not doing 25,000 pounds of damage 548 00:22:29,230 --> 00:22:31,180 to any given person in the neighbourhood. 549 00:22:31,180 --> 00:22:33,190 So there's a serious free rider problem 550 00:22:33,190 --> 00:22:34,930 and that means you tend to get very little enforcement. 551 00:22:34,930 --> 00:22:36,130 The other key weakness 552 00:22:36,130 --> 00:22:39,970 that covenants have is they can't be imposed retroactively on 553 00:22:39,970 --> 00:22:41,620 neighbourhoods that didn't have them at first. 554 00:22:41,620 --> 00:22:44,260 And you also can't fix loopholes with covenants. 555 00:22:44,260 --> 00:22:46,480 So if there's something imperfect in the drafting, 556 00:22:46,480 --> 00:22:47,680 which there frequently was, 557 00:22:47,680 --> 00:22:49,360 or if there were kinds of densification 558 00:22:49,360 --> 00:22:52,330 that they hadn't anticipated, which frequently happened, 559 00:22:52,330 --> 00:22:53,920 there's nothing you can do about it. 560 00:22:53,920 --> 00:22:56,230 This became a huge problem in the first world war 561 00:22:56,230 --> 00:22:59,980 because the, in the 19th century, most European countries, 562 00:22:59,980 --> 00:23:02,200 so the one of the totally standard, the most common kinds 563 00:23:02,200 --> 00:23:05,920 of zoning, zoning rule, covenant rule was 564 00:23:05,920 --> 00:23:07,450 a minimum price threshold. 565 00:23:07,450 --> 00:23:10,480 Really simple and would just exclude all the people you 566 00:23:10,480 --> 00:23:12,220 don't want and exclude flats being built 567 00:23:12,220 --> 00:23:13,420 and exclude holes from being built 568 00:23:14,650 --> 00:23:18,310 The price thresholds were always fixed in nominal terms, 569 00:23:18,310 --> 00:23:19,660 which worked fine in the 19th century 570 00:23:19,660 --> 00:23:21,400 because there was no inflation. 571 00:23:21,400 --> 00:23:23,800 1914 inflation takes off 572 00:23:23,800 --> 00:23:26,320 and pretty quickly all these price thresholds become 573 00:23:26,320 --> 00:23:27,153 trivially easy to reach to, to meet. 574 00:23:27,153 --> 00:23:27,986 So this whole part 575 00:23:29,710 --> 00:23:32,590 of the covenanting system just collapses straight away 576 00:23:32,590 --> 00:23:33,880 and there's nothing they can do about it 577 00:23:33,880 --> 00:23:35,230 because they can't go back 578 00:23:35,230 --> 00:23:36,460 and impose a contract on people 579 00:23:36,460 --> 00:23:37,570 that they haven't signed up to. 580 00:23:38,710 --> 00:23:43,030 So it's like theoretically the system, 581 00:23:43,030 --> 00:23:45,950 the covenanting thing is fascinating for what it shows about 582 00:23:45,950 --> 00:23:49,700 how much people wanted some kind of zoning 583 00:23:51,410 --> 00:23:55,100 and it was sometimes effective in some places, 584 00:23:55,100 --> 00:23:58,880 but basically it was like a rickety weak system which 585 00:23:58,880 --> 00:24:00,920 often collapsed under pressure. 586 00:24:00,920 --> 00:24:02,780 And we had some great cases of neighbourhoods 587 00:24:02,780 --> 00:24:04,790 where once pressures 588 00:24:04,790 --> 00:24:06,710 for densification grew really strong, 589 00:24:06,710 --> 00:24:07,820 the covenants just collapsed 590 00:24:07,820 --> 00:24:09,890 and were unable to stop them from 591 00:24:09,890 --> 00:24:11,840 stopping densification from happening. 592 00:24:11,840 --> 00:24:13,700 Friedenau in Berlin is a classic example 593 00:24:13,700 --> 00:24:16,760 of this laid out beautiful street network with lots 594 00:24:16,760 --> 00:24:19,040 of villas then like the main body 595 00:24:19,040 --> 00:24:20,300 of basic electric trams arrive 596 00:24:20,300 --> 00:24:22,130 and the main body of Berlin sweeps 597 00:24:22,130 --> 00:24:23,600 outwards, reaches freedom now. 598 00:24:23,600 --> 00:24:25,250 And the covenants basically do nothing. 599 00:24:25,250 --> 00:24:26,930 The whole neighbourhood is turned into blocks 600 00:24:26,930 --> 00:24:28,910 of dense flats pretty quickly 601 00:24:28,910 --> 00:24:31,220 and there's only today you can just find like, 602 00:24:31,220 --> 00:24:33,200 I dunno maybe like 10 villas left in Friedenau 603 00:24:33,200 --> 00:24:35,450 that didn't get demolished by the time and 604 00:24:35,450 --> 00:24:38,000 survived long enough for listing protection to 605 00:24:38,000 --> 00:24:39,110 come in. 606 00:24:40,640 --> 00:24:43,310 So basically it's a system that doesn't work very well 607 00:24:45,380 --> 00:24:49,370 then you get what, so the key thing 608 00:24:49,370 --> 00:24:52,910 that happens next is the state starts to provide the kind 609 00:24:52,910 --> 00:24:55,100 of protections that the private sector is trying to provide 610 00:24:55,100 --> 00:24:56,960 but is not very good at providing. 611 00:24:56,960 --> 00:25:00,440 And the country that starts in, as I said earlier, Germany 612 00:25:00,440 --> 00:25:03,530 and Austria-Hungary, we don't really have a very good theory 613 00:25:03,530 --> 00:25:05,270 for why it's in those countries. 614 00:25:05,270 --> 00:25:07,670 They're not the countries where suburbia is oldest 615 00:25:07,670 --> 00:25:10,610 but probably, the standard theory that planners have, 616 00:25:10,610 --> 00:25:13,580 the planning historians have is these are countries 617 00:25:13,580 --> 00:25:15,470 with the sort of relatively authoritarian tradition 618 00:25:15,470 --> 00:25:17,990 of government and so they're more happy 619 00:25:17,990 --> 00:25:21,230 to have zoning controls than other places are, so 620 00:25:21,230 --> 00:25:26,230 that first gets introduced 1880s, 1890s spreads across 621 00:25:26,300 --> 00:25:29,060 the rest of German speaking Europe over the next two decades 622 00:25:29,060 --> 00:25:31,310 and then spreads across other countries in the, 623 00:25:31,310 --> 00:25:32,690 in the decades after that. 624 00:25:33,770 --> 00:25:37,940 And it's not at the time very controversial. 625 00:25:37,940 --> 00:25:42,560 There's like, people tend to regard the introduction 626 00:25:42,560 --> 00:25:46,160 of zoning in existing urban areas as like kind 627 00:25:46,160 --> 00:25:48,470 of a straightforwardly a good thing to exist, 628 00:25:48,470 --> 00:25:50,630 The local people like it, 629 00:25:50,630 --> 00:25:52,370 but there's no no sense this is going 630 00:25:52,370 --> 00:25:53,930 to cause a housing crisis in the long run 631 00:25:53,930 --> 00:25:55,220 or going to like seriously constrained 632 00:25:55,220 --> 00:25:56,300 housing supply in the long run. 633 00:25:56,300 --> 00:25:57,650 So there's no sort 634 00:25:57,650 --> 00:26:01,550 of big pressure in the other direction from economists or, 635 00:26:01,550 --> 00:26:02,870 or people worried about housing need. 636 00:26:04,340 --> 00:26:07,910 The, the main determinant of which countries it spreads 637 00:26:07,910 --> 00:26:09,770 to tends to be like 638 00:26:09,770 --> 00:26:12,230 how much densification is going on in those countries, 639 00:26:12,230 --> 00:26:14,090 how threatened people feel by densification 640 00:26:14,090 --> 00:26:15,290 and how much pressure they put on the 641 00:26:15,290 --> 00:26:16,880 government to do something about it. 642 00:26:16,880 --> 00:26:19,430 So there are some places where it takes ages to arrive, 643 00:26:19,430 --> 00:26:21,530 but that tends not to be because there are like 644 00:26:21,530 --> 00:26:22,610 principled opponents. 645 00:26:22,610 --> 00:26:25,490 It tends just to be because densification wasn't a thing 646 00:26:25,490 --> 00:26:28,310 and so the state doesn't, get round to doing this. 647 00:26:28,310 --> 00:26:30,500 So where are those places where it comes in late? 648 00:26:30,500 --> 00:26:34,340 So you've got countries like Ireland, New Zealand 649 00:26:34,340 --> 00:26:35,660 and so on where it doesn't, 650 00:26:35,660 --> 00:26:37,220 they didn't even have planning systems really 651 00:26:37,220 --> 00:26:39,140 until like the 1960s. 652 00:26:40,250 --> 00:26:43,230 The other really interesting case is, 653 00:26:43,230 --> 00:26:44,790 well the weird case is Britain 654 00:26:44,790 --> 00:26:47,610 and France, which do have, 655 00:26:47,610 --> 00:26:50,280 I mean France always builds pretty densely. 656 00:26:50,280 --> 00:26:52,650 Britain has some densification going on in the Victorian 657 00:26:52,650 --> 00:26:54,480 period, the Edwardian period 658 00:26:54,480 --> 00:26:58,080 and the first World War they introduced rent controls which, 659 00:26:58,080 --> 00:26:59,340 and the private, so the market 660 00:26:59,340 --> 00:27:03,900 for flat building is completely dependent upon build-to-let. 661 00:27:03,900 --> 00:27:05,820 Basically they, in France they don't, 662 00:27:05,820 --> 00:27:09,300 I don't think there's even a way in which a building can be 663 00:27:09,300 --> 00:27:11,190 owned by multiple owners at the same time. 664 00:27:11,190 --> 00:27:12,630 They do have one now copropriété, 665 00:27:12,630 --> 00:27:14,220 which is like condominium ownership, 666 00:27:14,220 --> 00:27:17,100 but it doesn't, literally, there is nothing in 1914. 667 00:27:17,100 --> 00:27:19,920 So it becomes, once rent controls kick in, 668 00:27:19,920 --> 00:27:21,870 it becomes financially kind of impossible 669 00:27:21,870 --> 00:27:24,990 to build anything except for single family housing 670 00:27:24,990 --> 00:27:27,180 to be sold into owner occupation. 671 00:27:27,180 --> 00:27:28,830 Britain does have the leasehold system, 672 00:27:28,830 --> 00:27:31,170 but it's unpopular for flats. 673 00:27:31,170 --> 00:27:33,570 So basically flat building is killed off 674 00:27:33,570 --> 00:27:35,160 in the first world war. 675 00:27:35,160 --> 00:27:37,590 It comes back only very fitfully when bits 676 00:27:37,590 --> 00:27:40,440 of the market are decontrolled in the interwar period 677 00:27:40,440 --> 00:27:41,880 and the postwar period. 678 00:27:41,880 --> 00:27:45,780 And it's not until like quite late in the 20th century that 679 00:27:45,780 --> 00:27:48,060 the market, 680 00:27:48,060 --> 00:27:50,370 the rental market is de-controlled in both countries 681 00:27:50,370 --> 00:27:52,560 and flat building becomes a big deal again. 682 00:27:52,560 --> 00:27:55,230 - Is it, is there a reason that building flats 683 00:27:55,230 --> 00:27:57,510 to sell wasn't happening at this point? 684 00:27:57,510 --> 00:27:58,680 - So France, it's just 685 00:27:58,680 --> 00:28:03,480 because they lack a system for people 686 00:28:03,480 --> 00:28:06,180 to own flats in a building 687 00:28:06,180 --> 00:28:07,830 that's also owned by someone else. 688 00:28:07,830 --> 00:28:08,910 - So for example, in the, 689 00:28:08,910 --> 00:28:11,790 in the US when they invent condominiums, 690 00:28:11,790 --> 00:28:13,925 they get a massive explosion in building flats to sell them. 691 00:28:13,925 --> 00:28:15,600 But they don't have them, they don't, no one does it 692 00:28:15,600 --> 00:28:17,970 before then because there's no legal, it's amazing 693 00:28:17,970 --> 00:28:19,380 how individual legal tools can, 694 00:28:19,380 --> 00:28:21,360 - How did the con how did the condominium get invented? 695 00:28:21,360 --> 00:28:23,160 - So they just realised that wait, 696 00:28:23,160 --> 00:28:24,840 we've invented homeowner associations 697 00:28:24,840 --> 00:28:26,250 and you could actually just apply them 698 00:28:26,250 --> 00:28:27,750 to individual buildings as well. 699 00:28:27,750 --> 00:28:29,580 So let's do it. 700 00:28:29,580 --> 00:28:30,991 I could be wrong on the exact details of that. 701 00:28:30,991 --> 00:28:33,420 Yes, but it's essentially the same legal title as home ... 702 00:28:33,420 --> 00:28:34,350 - It was a slightly sort of trial 703 00:28:34,350 --> 00:28:35,400 and error process as well, right? 704 00:28:35,400 --> 00:28:38,250 They started building cooperatives was an as an early, 705 00:28:38,250 --> 00:28:41,550 which is a different legal structure which still exists in 706 00:28:41,550 --> 00:28:43,170 like properties from the 1890s. 707 00:28:43,170 --> 00:28:44,820 - Yeah. But they barely, they barely ever took off. 708 00:28:44,820 --> 00:28:46,890 Cooperatives basically only exist with subsidy 709 00:28:46,890 --> 00:28:48,570 and they, what's the difference between a cooperative 710 00:28:48,570 --> 00:28:50,520 and a, so I I can't give you, 711 00:28:50,520 --> 00:28:51,353 I can't give you a proper answer roughly. 712 00:28:51,353 --> 00:28:52,186 My papier mache understanding 713 00:28:54,510 --> 00:28:55,890 I mean I'm not a American 714 00:28:55,890 --> 00:28:57,270 and I don't really, I'm not really across the detail, 715 00:28:57,270 --> 00:29:01,440 but my, my understanding is condominium is 716 00:29:01,440 --> 00:29:04,290 where the underlying fabric of the building is owned 717 00:29:04,290 --> 00:29:06,990 by everyone and then each flat is owned 718 00:29:06,990 --> 00:29:08,970 by the people who live in that flat. 719 00:29:08,970 --> 00:29:11,820 Whereas cooperative is where like the whole thing is owned 720 00:29:11,820 --> 00:29:14,160 by everyone and then in a complicated way you are given use 721 00:29:14,160 --> 00:29:15,600 rights to different parts of the building. 722 00:29:15,600 --> 00:29:18,420 - I see. - So you get a result which is pretty similar 723 00:29:18,420 --> 00:29:19,740 but through a legal structure, 724 00:29:19,740 --> 00:29:21,180 which is in some ways quite different. 725 00:29:21,180 --> 00:29:23,310 And that is sort of, they're kind 726 00:29:23,310 --> 00:29:25,230 of mythic the cooperatives, right? The kind of, they 727 00:29:25,230 --> 00:29:26,550 - Still exists in New York in certain 728 00:29:26,550 --> 00:29:27,870 places and in other countries as well. 729 00:29:27,870 --> 00:29:31,740 But my understanding is there has never been a mass 730 00:29:31,740 --> 00:29:34,500 cooperative build out except for in periods where - that's 731 00:29:34,500 --> 00:29:35,730 how they did social housing - 732 00:29:35,730 --> 00:29:38,550 So in various periods the main way they've subsidised social 733 00:29:38,550 --> 00:29:39,900 housing is through co-ops and then you've seen 734 00:29:39,900 --> 00:29:41,170 co-op buildings sprout up. 735 00:29:41,170 --> 00:29:42,760 But other than that you just don't 736 00:29:42,760 --> 00:29:44,170 see them get built. 737 00:29:44,170 --> 00:29:48,130 But the amazing thing is that, like Samuel was saying, the 738 00:29:48,130 --> 00:29:49,810 unless you have condominium title, 739 00:29:49,810 --> 00:29:51,640 no one builds flats for sale. 740 00:29:51,640 --> 00:29:54,190 And in the UK we did see some built 741 00:29:54,190 --> 00:29:55,330 through the leasehold system like that. 742 00:29:55,330 --> 00:29:58,630 But my impression is that from the 1890s 743 00:29:58,630 --> 00:29:59,800 freeholders basically believe 744 00:29:59,800 --> 00:30:02,470 that one day they were gonna beated from their leaseholds, 745 00:30:02,470 --> 00:30:03,520 which eventually happened within 746 00:30:03,520 --> 00:30:04,565 enfranchisement in the 1960s. 747 00:30:04,565 --> 00:30:06,130 Yeah, that's right. And so they were right about that. 748 00:30:06,130 --> 00:30:08,380 And so they were were reluctant to build leaseholds 749 00:30:08,380 --> 00:30:10,450 because they knew they were gonna be taken off them at some 750 00:30:10,450 --> 00:30:12,280 point in the next like five decades. 751 00:30:12,280 --> 00:30:13,960 - They were actually amazingly prescient. 752 00:30:13,960 --> 00:30:16,735 They, they standard lease sold leaseholds on an 80 year time 753 00:30:16,735 --> 00:30:21,220 span and in about the 1880s they started thinking, yeah, 754 00:30:21,220 --> 00:30:23,080 I reckon that the state is going 755 00:30:23,080 --> 00:30:25,660 to somehow steal the freehold from me at some point. 756 00:30:25,660 --> 00:30:29,660 And it sure enough it was exactly 80 years later. 757 00:30:32,380 --> 00:30:33,550 Can you just briefly explain the difference between a freehold and a leasehold? 758 00:30:33,550 --> 00:30:34,930 - So freehold is normal ownership 759 00:30:34,930 --> 00:30:36,850 that everyone's very familiar with. 760 00:30:36,850 --> 00:30:40,780 In some countries, like primarily the UK we've retained a 761 00:30:40,780 --> 00:30:43,720 kind of feudal type of sub ownership 762 00:30:43,720 --> 00:30:46,540 and it could go infinite number of times downwards as well. 763 00:30:46,540 --> 00:30:49,120 So in the Victorian area you'd often have one guy own 764 00:30:49,120 --> 00:30:50,980 something and then he rents out the right to 765 00:30:50,980 --> 00:30:53,050 or sells off the right to own it 766 00:30:53,050 --> 00:30:54,250 for a given number of years. 767 00:30:54,250 --> 00:30:55,660 That's the leasehold to someone else. 768 00:30:55,660 --> 00:30:57,730 And then that guy sells the right the sublet 769 00:30:57,730 --> 00:30:59,560 to to another person. 770 00:30:59,560 --> 00:31:01,450 And it can go very, very far through. 771 00:31:02,320 --> 00:31:05,530 And this has been retained in its full form in places like 772 00:31:05,530 --> 00:31:07,360 Hong Kong and Singapore 773 00:31:07,360 --> 00:31:09,880 where they took the British legal leasehold system 774 00:31:09,880 --> 00:31:12,790 and they've retained the fact that after 99 years 775 00:31:12,790 --> 00:31:15,910 or 999 years, you will in fact be kicked out 776 00:31:15,910 --> 00:31:17,680 and they can demolish the building and redevelop it 777 00:31:17,680 --> 00:31:20,080 or do whatever they like with it, sell it to someone else. 778 00:31:20,080 --> 00:31:23,710 In the UK in the 1960s with enfranchisement, 779 00:31:23,710 --> 00:31:26,950 you got the right to stay in your leasehold building 780 00:31:26,950 --> 00:31:28,090 after a certain period of time. 781 00:31:28,090 --> 00:31:29,350 And then if franchisement was, 782 00:31:29,350 --> 00:31:32,020 was strengthened various times, including in the 1990s. 783 00:31:32,020 --> 00:31:35,110 And so now if you're a free holder, you don't, 784 00:31:35,110 --> 00:31:37,210 you're not really a free holder in the sense we would 785 00:31:37,210 --> 00:31:39,220 usually have understood it before 1960s 786 00:31:39,220 --> 00:31:41,650 because you can't kick a lease holder out even when the 787 00:31:41,650 --> 00:31:43,810 lease comes due and they have the right to 788 00:31:44,740 --> 00:31:47,860 extend it at a rate set by a tribunal rather than 789 00:31:47,860 --> 00:31:50,530 you accepting it as a a bid. 790 00:31:50,530 --> 00:31:52,960 But before that point you could have done leasehold. 791 00:31:52,960 --> 00:31:55,730 I reckon that in the 1930s, one if the, 792 00:31:55,730 --> 00:31:57,910 the reason why the flats didn't go that big is 793 00:31:57,910 --> 00:32:01,030 because of leaseholders, so free holders didn't expect 794 00:32:01,030 --> 00:32:02,500 that they'd be able to resell 795 00:32:02,500 --> 00:32:03,880 leaseholds going into the future. 796 00:32:03,880 --> 00:32:06,370 - Yeah, people also, like flats were seen 797 00:32:06,370 --> 00:32:08,020 as a very transient people. 798 00:32:08,020 --> 00:32:09,790 Even today people often prefer 799 00:32:09,790 --> 00:32:11,230 to rent flats rather than buy them 800 00:32:11,230 --> 00:32:13,120 because they don't expect to stay in flats for that long. 801 00:32:14,170 --> 00:32:15,190 - I guess there's also, I mean the thing 802 00:32:15,190 --> 00:32:17,530 that always puts me off buying a flat is the risk 803 00:32:17,530 --> 00:32:19,480 and yeah, exactly the fact, fact that you're much more 804 00:32:19,480 --> 00:32:22,390 exposed to risk if you've got a bad neighbour as in a flat 805 00:32:22,390 --> 00:32:24,010 and owning that is obviously much, much, 806 00:32:24,010 --> 00:32:26,260 much riskier than renting it for however many years. 807 00:32:26,260 --> 00:32:28,630 So maybe that, maybe that kind of thing is a factor. 808 00:32:28,630 --> 00:32:31,240 - So the English and the Americans have these, 809 00:32:31,240 --> 00:32:33,610 the English have this weird feudal leasehold model 810 00:32:33,610 --> 00:32:34,990 and they can kind of start carrying 811 00:32:34,990 --> 00:32:36,280 that over gradually to flats. 812 00:32:36,280 --> 00:32:37,360 But the market's quite reluctant. 813 00:32:37,360 --> 00:32:39,650 The Americans have cooperative model which they've developed 814 00:32:39,650 --> 00:32:40,790 in for homeowner associations. 815 00:32:40,790 --> 00:32:42,260 They can sort of start carrying that over 816 00:32:42,260 --> 00:32:44,030 to flats in France. 817 00:32:44,030 --> 00:32:45,770 They've got like nothing. 818 00:32:45,770 --> 00:32:48,800 They really, the only way you've ever done flats is 819 00:32:48,800 --> 00:32:50,480 through renting and there's just no legal way 820 00:32:50,480 --> 00:32:53,660 to divide a building between a bunch of people. 821 00:32:53,660 --> 00:32:56,600 So they, when French introduced rent controls, there are, 822 00:32:56,600 --> 00:33:00,020 I mean these quite amazing to go out to the, these 823 00:33:00,890 --> 00:33:02,540 communion, the Paris region 824 00:33:02,540 --> 00:33:06,020 and you can see blocks of flats that were finished in 1914 825 00:33:06,020 --> 00:33:08,630 and then just like little houses built next door 826 00:33:08,630 --> 00:33:12,020 because it became impossible to build flats as soon 827 00:33:12,020 --> 00:33:14,150 as the war had had broken out. 828 00:33:14,150 --> 00:33:17,060 And the market just like was completely 829 00:33:17,060 --> 00:33:18,320 vaporised for decades. 830 00:33:18,320 --> 00:33:21,320 And France, I mean the main effect was a massive dead weight 831 00:33:21,320 --> 00:33:24,470 loss because the French housing market wasn't really ready 832 00:33:24,470 --> 00:33:26,300 for loads of single family houses, 833 00:33:26,300 --> 00:33:28,850 but they did also build quite a lot of single family houses. 834 00:33:28,850 --> 00:33:30,230 And the French started to fall in love 835 00:33:30,230 --> 00:33:32,030 with suburbia in a way that they, 836 00:33:32,030 --> 00:33:34,310 like unbeknownst we never talk about French suburbia, 837 00:33:34,310 --> 00:33:37,250 it's kind of unbeknownst to English and American people, 838 00:33:37,250 --> 00:33:38,840 but like it is actually a huge thing. 839 00:33:38,840 --> 00:33:40,850 And it did all start through this weird story 840 00:33:40,850 --> 00:33:43,010 of rent controls in the, in the first world war. 841 00:33:43,010 --> 00:33:47,480 - So the sequence is you have what you are calling kind 842 00:33:47,480 --> 00:33:50,540 of early suburbia, which is much, much, much denser than 843 00:33:50,540 --> 00:33:52,070 what we would imagine today. 844 00:33:52,070 --> 00:33:54,260 That then begins to become even denser 845 00:33:54,260 --> 00:33:55,940 as apartments become possible. 846 00:33:55,940 --> 00:33:59,030 People begin to be, to get quite upset about that. 847 00:34:00,080 --> 00:34:03,200 Then the second, sorry, the first World war hits, 848 00:34:03,200 --> 00:34:04,370 and rent controls hits, 849 00:34:04,370 --> 00:34:06,050 and then that sort of freezes everything. 850 00:34:06,050 --> 00:34:07,610 And then while the, 851 00:34:07,610 --> 00:34:10,250 world is frozen via rent controls 852 00:34:10,250 --> 00:34:12,830 or at least Britain and France are frozen by rent controls, 853 00:34:12,830 --> 00:34:16,190 this state downzoning also kicks in and means that even 854 00:34:16,190 --> 00:34:19,190 after the rent controls are removed, you are stuck or, 855 00:34:19,190 --> 00:34:21,380 basically you can never go back to the, to the sort 856 00:34:21,380 --> 00:34:22,460 of apartments that you had before. 857 00:34:22,460 --> 00:34:23,990 - Yeah, that's right. So what happened in Britain 858 00:34:23,990 --> 00:34:26,930 and France, the state downzoning, 859 00:34:26,930 --> 00:34:30,710 public downzoning comes in very slowly. 860 00:34:30,710 --> 00:34:32,750 They don't really bother with it in the interwar period 861 00:34:32,750 --> 00:34:34,280 because there's no pressure for it. 862 00:34:34,280 --> 00:34:36,230 But it kind of comes in almost maybe 863 00:34:36,230 --> 00:34:37,970 by accident in the post-war period 864 00:34:37,970 --> 00:34:40,130 where local officials say like, 865 00:34:40,130 --> 00:34:41,810 oh we're putting a local plan in place, 866 00:34:41,810 --> 00:34:43,850 I guess we'll ban putting, you know, turning these, 867 00:34:43,850 --> 00:34:46,010 these terraced houses into flats 868 00:34:46,010 --> 00:34:47,210 and like it's not gonna happen anyway. 869 00:34:47,210 --> 00:34:48,830 But we might as well ban it 'cause it's clearly 870 00:34:48,830 --> 00:34:50,480 an anti-social thing to do. 871 00:34:50,480 --> 00:34:52,880 That's, there's no controversy at the time. 872 00:34:52,880 --> 00:34:54,110 Nothing's ever written about it, 873 00:34:55,430 --> 00:34:58,280 but we notice it when the restrictions, 874 00:34:58,280 --> 00:35:00,350 the rent controls are finally removed 875 00:35:00,350 --> 00:35:04,370 because in 1980 In the eighties, yeah, eighties in Britain 876 00:35:04,370 --> 00:35:05,780 and in France a bit more gradually. 877 00:35:05,780 --> 00:35:07,190 - Oh, so the so sorry. So the rent, 878 00:35:07,190 --> 00:35:08,300 the rent controls are present 879 00:35:08,300 --> 00:35:09,530 for most of the 20th century, right? 880 00:35:09,530 --> 00:35:10,850 - Oh yeah. In Britain, right? 881 00:35:10,850 --> 00:35:14,090 There are rent controls from the what, 1914? 882 00:35:14,090 --> 00:35:16,310 I think so sometime in the first World War, right up 883 00:35:16,310 --> 00:35:17,990 until the Thatcher government decon controls it in 884 00:35:17,990 --> 00:35:19,580 the 1980s. 885 00:35:19,580 --> 00:35:21,230 And it totally destroys the rental market. 886 00:35:21,230 --> 00:35:23,900 Like it falls from being a large majority to or minority 887 00:35:23,900 --> 00:35:26,990 of the British stock in France, 888 00:35:26,990 --> 00:35:30,560 extremely tight rent controls coming in the first world war 889 00:35:30,560 --> 00:35:33,050 and then in the, from the late 1940s, 890 00:35:33,050 --> 00:35:35,390 the markets very gradually decontrolled. 891 00:35:35,390 --> 00:35:38,940 They you like, I think maybe you are allowed 892 00:35:38,940 --> 00:35:42,300 existing stock stays under rent control, 893 00:35:42,300 --> 00:35:44,460 but if you heavily refurbish the property, 894 00:35:44,460 --> 00:35:45,960 you can get it out from the rent control 895 00:35:45,960 --> 00:35:47,730 and there's various sort of get out clauses 896 00:35:47,730 --> 00:35:50,310 and slowly they start to take stock out 897 00:35:50,310 --> 00:35:52,200 and there's still some of it's still controlled today, 898 00:35:52,200 --> 00:35:55,110 like 2% of the French housing stock is still rent controlled 899 00:35:55,110 --> 00:35:56,760 and has been since the first world war. 900 00:35:56,760 --> 00:35:58,170 - So what's the situation in places 901 00:35:58,170 --> 00:36:00,060 that don't bring in rent controls? 902 00:36:00,060 --> 00:36:02,730 - Basically there's much more pressure for densification 903 00:36:02,730 --> 00:36:05,730 and government acts fast to block it using public zoning. 904 00:36:05,730 --> 00:36:10,590 That's the state in United States, Canada, 905 00:36:10,590 --> 00:36:13,230 Australia, and then even 906 00:36:13,230 --> 00:36:14,490 before the first World War, that's 907 00:36:14,490 --> 00:36:16,890 what happens in Germany and Austria-Hungary. 908 00:36:18,150 --> 00:36:20,670 - Okay, so I predict 909 00:36:20,670 --> 00:36:25,020 that almost everybody listening is screaming the word car 910 00:36:25,020 --> 00:36:28,650 and you haven't mentioned cars at any point yet so far. 911 00:36:28,650 --> 00:36:32,310 And the traditional story that I hear that I, that I kind of 912 00:36:32,310 --> 00:36:34,560 take, I think is widely taken to be the, 913 00:36:34,560 --> 00:36:39,480 the real story is you get cars are invented, 914 00:36:39,480 --> 00:36:42,600 people suddenly can extend themselves out to much, 915 00:36:42,600 --> 00:36:43,680 much further a field 916 00:36:43,680 --> 00:36:46,080 and they suddenly can afford to live somewhere 917 00:36:46,080 --> 00:36:47,610 that they can have a house and a garden 918 00:36:47,610 --> 00:36:51,930 and the kind of low density suburbia that is maybe nicer, 919 00:36:51,930 --> 00:36:53,850 maybe safer than cities, 920 00:36:53,850 --> 00:36:55,350 but they can still have a job in the city. 921 00:36:55,350 --> 00:36:59,460 And so the car kind of opens up all of all of this land to, 922 00:36:59,460 --> 00:37:02,760 to low density building and those people simultaneously 923 00:37:02,760 --> 00:37:05,850 don't want those places to be exposed to the sort 924 00:37:05,850 --> 00:37:08,130 of inner city building that they've just left. 925 00:37:09,420 --> 00:37:11,250 Is that true? Is that part of the story? 926 00:37:11,250 --> 00:37:15,000 What's, why are you giving the car such a, 927 00:37:15,000 --> 00:37:16,740 a small role in your story? So 928 00:37:16,740 --> 00:37:17,850 - I started out thinking 929 00:37:17,850 --> 00:37:20,040 that something like that would be true. 930 00:37:20,040 --> 00:37:23,275 I now think it's mainly not the story. 931 00:37:23,275 --> 00:37:26,520 The the basic reason to mistrust that is that so much 932 00:37:26,520 --> 00:37:28,770 of this process has already taken place 933 00:37:28,770 --> 00:37:30,630 before cars come into play. 934 00:37:30,630 --> 00:37:34,050 So all these private covenants have spread to 935 00:37:34,050 --> 00:37:35,370 basically all elite suburbs 936 00:37:35,370 --> 00:37:39,180 and many, probably most middle class suburbs before 1900 937 00:37:40,710 --> 00:37:42,360 before there are any cars at all. 938 00:37:42,360 --> 00:37:43,860 So we can see there's lots of demand for it 939 00:37:43,860 --> 00:37:45,810 and there are some mechanisms in place. 940 00:37:45,810 --> 00:37:48,690 Public zoning has arrived in Germany and Austria 941 00:37:48,690 --> 00:37:50,130 before there are any cars 942 00:37:51,060 --> 00:37:53,040 and it's already, you know, it's, 943 00:37:53,040 --> 00:37:54,090 I suppose cars are starting 944 00:37:54,090 --> 00:37:58,260 to come in in the states in the 1910s and twenties, 945 00:37:59,430 --> 00:38:02,370 but like most of the neighbourhoods 946 00:38:02,370 --> 00:38:03,930 where zoning is introduced were built 947 00:38:03,930 --> 00:38:05,790 before cars had arrived. 948 00:38:05,790 --> 00:38:10,230 So cars don't seem to have created the kind 949 00:38:10,230 --> 00:38:14,897 of suburbia which originally pioneers either private downzoning or public downzoning. 950 00:38:16,500 --> 00:38:18,210 People seem to have already wanted it 951 00:38:18,210 --> 00:38:19,043 before then. 952 00:38:19,043 --> 00:38:19,876 I think there's the tech, 953 00:38:21,360 --> 00:38:23,610 the transport method which is closer. 954 00:38:23,610 --> 00:38:25,680 So here's a, here's a story which I think may be 955 00:38:25,680 --> 00:38:26,730 like partly true. 956 00:38:27,720 --> 00:38:31,470 So railways create, they 957 00:38:31,470 --> 00:38:34,860 do have a big role in expanding suburbia in the 19th century 958 00:38:34,860 --> 00:38:36,160 because do make it possible 959 00:38:36,160 --> 00:38:38,770 to live in green leafy neighbourhoods 960 00:38:38,770 --> 00:38:40,300 that are remote from the city centre 961 00:38:40,300 --> 00:38:42,670 but still commuting to the city centre for work. 962 00:38:42,670 --> 00:38:46,330 They also have a kind of natural exclusionary structure, 963 00:38:46,330 --> 00:38:48,130 which is that they're extremely expensive. 964 00:38:48,130 --> 00:38:52,713 I mean even today, if you take a railway from like Seven Oaks into London, I think it's like a 6,000 pound annual 965 00:38:55,390 --> 00:38:56,680 ticket if you want to, 966 00:38:56,680 --> 00:38:58,210 that's the cheapest way you can do it. 967 00:38:58,210 --> 00:39:01,330 So, like commuting by 968 00:39:01,330 --> 00:39:04,270 heavy rail is still extremely expensive now. 969 00:39:04,270 --> 00:39:06,160 It was totally prohibitively expensive then. 970 00:39:06,160 --> 00:39:09,580 So technology creates neighbourhoods which are like 971 00:39:11,140 --> 00:39:12,790 impossible you can't get, you can't live there 972 00:39:12,790 --> 00:39:13,840 unless you are very wealthy 973 00:39:15,070 --> 00:39:19,300 and those, so those are like a natural exclusionary filter. 974 00:39:19,300 --> 00:39:22,720 And then I think probably the, the technology which breaks 975 00:39:22,720 --> 00:39:25,000 that is to some extent the car later on. 976 00:39:25,000 --> 00:39:26,200 But earlier on it is the 977 00:39:26,200 --> 00:39:29,740 electric tram which is far cheaper than railways 978 00:39:29,740 --> 00:39:32,140 and means that the like city 979 00:39:32,140 --> 00:39:34,120 of ordinary people can start spreading out 980 00:39:34,120 --> 00:39:37,720 and reaching these elite villa colonies, 981 00:39:37,720 --> 00:39:39,490 these elite islands of rich houses 982 00:39:39,490 --> 00:39:41,680 that have previously only been accessible by railway. 983 00:39:41,680 --> 00:39:46,680 I think like that story of railways creating 984 00:39:46,750 --> 00:39:50,440 elite suburbia and then the elite suburbia created 985 00:39:50,440 --> 00:39:53,920 by railways being threatened by trams 986 00:39:53,920 --> 00:39:56,380 and later on by cars which are more like 987 00:39:56,380 --> 00:39:58,480 democratic forms of transport. 988 00:39:58,480 --> 00:39:59,740 I think there's some truth in that, 989 00:40:00,880 --> 00:40:03,160 but it's not even, that's not the whole story 990 00:40:03,160 --> 00:40:05,710 because you find in lots of small towns all 991 00:40:05,710 --> 00:40:07,300 around Europe you find 992 00:40:08,500 --> 00:40:11,290 elite suburbs developing in the 19th century 993 00:40:11,290 --> 00:40:14,050 without any railways being involved. 994 00:40:14,050 --> 00:40:16,660 Like the west end wasn't developed through railways. 995 00:40:16,660 --> 00:40:18,010 It developed long before railways. 996 00:40:18,010 --> 00:40:20,260 - Everyone used to commute to work via walking. So 997 00:40:20,260 --> 00:40:22,300 - Yeah, - Everyone walked an hour from, 998 00:40:22,300 --> 00:40:24,340 from their west end house into their city job. 999 00:40:24,340 --> 00:40:27,130 - Yeah, Europeans in the 19th century walked a lot, 1000 00:40:27,130 --> 00:40:29,920 even rich ones every morning from Belgravia, 1001 00:40:29,920 --> 00:40:31,990 like a huge flock of top hatted, 1002 00:40:31,990 --> 00:40:33,670 frock coated men would set out 1003 00:40:33,670 --> 00:40:35,890 and pour through Covent Garden and Soho 1004 00:40:35,890 --> 00:40:38,320 and like going to their jobs in the city 1005 00:40:38,320 --> 00:40:40,450 and then every evening they'd all pour back 1006 00:40:40,450 --> 00:40:42,220 through the streets and that was, 1007 00:40:43,330 --> 00:40:46,780 and you would see like even little towns like Shrewsbury near 1008 00:40:46,780 --> 00:40:48,460 where my parents live like 1009 00:40:48,460 --> 00:40:49,293 that has its own little villa district. 1010 00:40:49,293 --> 00:40:50,376 In Shrewsbury there's certainly no commuter rail around Shrewsbury but, 1011 00:40:53,890 --> 00:40:55,360 and so that the development of that kind 1012 00:40:55,360 --> 00:40:57,190 of suburbia I think has more to do 1013 00:40:57,190 --> 00:41:00,700 with basically availability of capital 1014 00:41:00,700 --> 00:41:03,850 and like the swiftly growing middle class 1015 00:41:03,850 --> 00:41:06,700 and it makes it financially possible for a developer to, 1016 00:41:06,700 --> 00:41:10,600 to a landowner to take a big, a big bunch of land, big plot 1017 00:41:10,600 --> 00:41:14,230 of area of land and say I'm gonna develop this whole thing 1018 00:41:14,230 --> 00:41:16,030 as an exclusive residential area 1019 00:41:16,030 --> 00:41:17,710 and it's gonna be totally different to the kind 1020 00:41:17,710 --> 00:41:20,350 of impoverished mixed use suburbia which 1021 00:41:20,350 --> 00:41:21,760 is existed historically. 1022 00:41:21,760 --> 00:41:24,190 Instead this is gonna be somebody's like it's big enough 1023 00:41:24,190 --> 00:41:27,460 and I can raise enough money to design it in one go 1024 00:41:27,460 --> 00:41:28,540 and it's going to become a kind 1025 00:41:28,540 --> 00:41:30,880 of exclusive place exclusive in terms of use, 1026 00:41:30,880 --> 00:41:33,260 exclusive in terms of social 1027 00:41:33,260 --> 00:41:36,230 and all these kinds of ... 1028 00:41:36,230 --> 00:41:38,990 actually think the core mechanism behind the development 1029 00:41:38,990 --> 00:41:41,870 of suburbia is probably not transport types, 1030 00:41:41,870 --> 00:41:45,170 it's probably just growing wealth, faster urban expansion 1031 00:41:45,170 --> 00:41:48,680 and the availability of like easy capital for developers 1032 00:41:48,680 --> 00:41:51,260 to do unified development of suburban areas. 1033 00:41:51,260 --> 00:41:54,920 Once those exist, people try to protect them. 1034 00:41:54,920 --> 00:41:56,750 - So I have a question for you. 1035 00:41:56,750 --> 00:41:58,790 What about the places that don't 1036 00:41:58,790 --> 00:42:00,020 seem to have a great downzoning? 1037 00:42:00,020 --> 00:42:03,230 So I've looked, I spend a lot of time, I, I spend a lot 1038 00:42:03,230 --> 00:42:06,200 of time on Google Maps satellite view 1039 00:42:06,200 --> 00:42:07,700 and I spend a good fraction of 1040 00:42:07,700 --> 00:42:09,410 that time on Google Maps satellite view 1041 00:42:09,410 --> 00:42:11,030 looking at Spanish cities. 1042 00:42:11,030 --> 00:42:14,660 And my weird impression is that they tend to, 1043 00:42:14,660 --> 00:42:17,270 the city like Valencia just ends with six story, 1044 00:42:17,270 --> 00:42:20,570 maybe even eight story apartment blocks and then open field 1045 00:42:20,570 --> 00:42:22,730 and then like maybe an eight story satellite town. 1046 00:42:22,730 --> 00:42:25,280 And then open field doesn't seem like there's any 1047 00:42:25,280 --> 00:42:26,360 great downzoning there. 1048 00:42:26,360 --> 00:42:28,040 So what's going on there? So 1049 00:42:28,040 --> 00:42:29,300 - That's definitely true. 1050 00:42:29,300 --> 00:42:31,430 I don't, I don't have a complete explanation of this. 1051 00:42:31,430 --> 00:42:34,910 It's definitely true that the cities of Mediterranean Europe 1052 00:42:34,910 --> 00:42:38,480 are still structured more like cities in the middle ages 1053 00:42:38,480 --> 00:42:42,890 were so they have a, the whole city is pretty dense, 1054 00:42:42,890 --> 00:42:45,140 rich people live either right in the middle 1055 00:42:45,140 --> 00:42:47,690 or in kind of inner suburbs 1056 00:42:47,690 --> 00:42:52,190 and then suburban areas are poor mixed use 1057 00:42:52,190 --> 00:42:53,330 and unplanned. 1058 00:42:53,330 --> 00:42:55,400 They're like ragged haphazard development 1059 00:42:55,400 --> 00:42:58,310 of stuff which has been like spat out from the city that 1060 00:42:59,870 --> 00:43:01,610 there are some exceptions to that 1061 00:43:01,610 --> 00:43:02,840 and there's exceptions of gradually 1062 00:43:02,840 --> 00:43:04,010 growing more common over time. 1063 00:43:04,010 --> 00:43:07,520 But that's still the basic profile of a Mediterranean city 1064 00:43:08,510 --> 00:43:10,970 and they don't have, and 1065 00:43:10,970 --> 00:43:12,350 and in many cases you still find 1066 00:43:12,350 --> 00:43:14,720 as you say this phenomenon like you get to the city limits 1067 00:43:14,720 --> 00:43:16,370 and it's six story apartment, six story apartment, 1068 00:43:16,370 --> 00:43:17,780 six story apartment and it just stops 1069 00:43:17,780 --> 00:43:19,790 and you have open countryside afterwards, 1070 00:43:19,790 --> 00:43:22,490 which is the thing which is like almost never happened in 1071 00:43:22,490 --> 00:43:24,110 the whole history of the English speaking world 1072 00:43:24,110 --> 00:43:27,230 where no English country has ever had six story flats built 1073 00:43:27,230 --> 00:43:29,300 in large quantities on the edge of the countryside. 1074 00:43:31,310 --> 00:43:34,250 The short, I can give short explanation 1075 00:43:34,250 --> 00:43:36,350 for why the great downzoning hasn't happened in those 1076 00:43:36,350 --> 00:43:38,270 places and that's just, 1077 00:43:38,270 --> 00:43:41,060 they didn't have elite suburbs in the first place. 1078 00:43:41,060 --> 00:43:44,720 If you don't have elite suburbs then there's nothing to ... 1079 00:43:44,720 --> 00:43:46,640 the basic mechanism for the great downzoning, 1080 00:43:46,640 --> 00:43:49,760 which is suburban people demanding it doesn't happen. 1081 00:43:51,320 --> 00:43:53,660 Why did they not develop elite suburbs 1082 00:43:53,660 --> 00:43:54,740 That's much more puzzling. 1083 00:43:55,700 --> 00:43:59,330 The reason why they didn't in the 19th century is maybe just 1084 00:43:59,330 --> 00:44:00,950 these countries were still too poor 1085 00:44:00,950 --> 00:44:03,200 and the capital accumulation hadn't happened. 1086 00:44:03,200 --> 00:44:04,520 But why haven't they done so since then? 1087 00:44:05,360 --> 00:44:06,440 I think, you know, we might want 1088 00:44:06,440 --> 00:44:08,360 to do a Works in Progress article about this. 1089 00:44:08,360 --> 00:44:10,700 I have a papier mache theory, 1090 00:44:10,700 --> 00:44:13,700 but like this is completely conjectural, 1091 00:44:13,700 --> 00:44:18,350 but my wild theory is maybe if you don't develop suburbia 1092 00:44:18,350 --> 00:44:20,930 during the railway age, cars arrive 1093 00:44:20,930 --> 00:44:22,310 and then like these areas 1094 00:44:22,310 --> 00:44:25,550 around the city are completely democratised and opened up 1095 00:44:25,550 --> 00:44:27,110 and anyone can build a house there. 1096 00:44:27,110 --> 00:44:29,270 And at that point the appeal of suburbia 1097 00:44:29,270 --> 00:44:31,530 as like an elite zone is lost, 1098 00:44:31,530 --> 00:44:33,960 and if you haven't established elite suburbs already at 1099 00:44:33,960 --> 00:44:36,540 that point then you are like path dependently stuck on 1100 00:44:36,540 --> 00:44:39,420 suburbia being ironically 1101 00:44:39,420 --> 00:44:41,130 stuck on it being like it was in the middle ages. 1102 00:44:41,130 --> 00:44:42,630 Like a poor area 1103 00:44:42,630 --> 00:44:45,630 where like people don't want to live unless they have to. 1104 00:44:45,630 --> 00:44:48,270 Whereas if you had the railway age, 1105 00:44:48,270 --> 00:44:51,000 you had the railway towns then those places 1106 00:44:51,000 --> 00:44:52,680 and you've created, you get this window 1107 00:44:52,680 --> 00:44:54,780 where technology created the possibility 1108 00:44:54,780 --> 00:44:57,990 of having these this socially exclusive suburbia, 1109 00:44:57,990 --> 00:45:00,420 then the people in that socially exclusive suburbia strive 1110 00:45:00,420 --> 00:45:01,500 to keep it in being forever. 1111 00:45:02,490 --> 00:45:04,320 And they're generally pretty successful in doing so 1112 00:45:04,320 --> 00:45:06,510 because they enlist the state to help them. 1113 00:45:06,510 --> 00:45:09,540 That's, that's a wild theory but I'm not sure it works 1114 00:45:09,540 --> 00:45:11,280 and I can see some reasons why it might be wrong. 1115 00:45:11,280 --> 00:45:13,920 So I'd quite like us to, to get someone to write about that. 1116 00:45:13,920 --> 00:45:17,220 - I have another question because, so we had, 1117 00:45:17,220 --> 00:45:20,730 we are talking here about why everyone inevitably wants 1118 00:45:20,730 --> 00:45:22,170 to downzone their area if possible 1119 00:45:22,170 --> 00:45:24,810 and it was imposed everywhere is extremely universal 1120 00:45:24,810 --> 00:45:26,730 and people try and do it through like almost any mechanism 1121 00:45:26,730 --> 00:45:28,440 or bear gigantic costs for doing it. 1122 00:45:28,440 --> 00:45:31,590 Which, and so does this mean that our project that you 1123 00:45:31,590 --> 00:45:33,480 and I have been working on for the last five years of trying 1124 00:45:33,480 --> 00:45:36,420 to upzone various parts of suburbia is now over 1125 00:45:36,420 --> 00:45:38,550 because we've proven it's impossible. 1126 00:45:38,550 --> 00:45:39,960 - Yeah, - Historical dozoning is just a 1127 00:45:39,960 --> 00:45:41,490 historical inevitability. 1128 00:45:41,490 --> 00:45:42,570 - Like or or undesirable. 1129 00:45:42,570 --> 00:45:45,150 I mean the like it kind of sounds like maybe, 1130 00:45:45,150 --> 00:45:49,590 maybe we should just take it on the chin maybe maybe downzoning is just a price we have to pay 1131 00:45:49,590 --> 00:45:51,420 for people getting what they want. 1132 00:45:51,420 --> 00:45:54,270 - Yes. It's, so 1133 00:45:56,400 --> 00:45:59,820 one key thing has changed since the downzoning happened, 1134 00:45:59,820 --> 00:46:02,460 which is that the down zoning itself 1135 00:46:02,460 --> 00:46:04,590 has generated massive housing shortages. 1136 00:46:05,640 --> 00:46:06,570 In Britain it's a bit more 1137 00:46:06,570 --> 00:46:08,070 complicated because we have green belts. 1138 00:46:08,070 --> 00:46:09,810 So the downzoning isn't the whole explanation, 1139 00:46:09,810 --> 00:46:12,810 but in most countries the downzoning is basically, 1140 00:46:12,810 --> 00:46:14,370 I mean pretty much the whole explanation 1141 00:46:14,370 --> 00:46:15,780 for why they have housing shortages. 1142 00:46:15,780 --> 00:46:18,690 And this is why you can see in the United States 1143 00:46:18,690 --> 00:46:21,210 housing shortages are very concentrated in big cities. 1144 00:46:21,210 --> 00:46:24,660 The places where their already vast urban expansion 1145 00:46:24,660 --> 00:46:26,160 can't really meet further housing need. 1146 00:46:26,160 --> 00:46:27,510 What they really need is to densify some 1147 00:46:27,510 --> 00:46:28,650 of their existing areas 1148 00:46:28,650 --> 00:46:31,260 - Also they're often geographically ringed in, like San 1149 00:46:31,260 --> 00:46:33,000 Francisco's on a peninsula. 1150 00:46:33,000 --> 00:46:35,130 A lot of New York is on islands. 1151 00:46:35,130 --> 00:46:36,325 - Yeah, yeah, yeah that's, 1152 00:46:36,325 --> 00:46:38,730 and New York's got national parks around some areas 1153 00:46:38,730 --> 00:46:40,410 so like in some cases they've got 1154 00:46:41,250 --> 00:46:43,020 physical constraints on further expansion. 1155 00:46:43,020 --> 00:46:44,250 But I think there's, I think, 1156 00:46:44,250 --> 00:46:45,570 I mean I haven't looked into this properly, 1157 00:46:45,570 --> 00:46:48,060 but I think there's also an effect that like 1158 00:46:48,060 --> 00:46:51,065 when a city reaches a certain size, 1159 00:46:51,065 --> 00:46:54,450 where a further physical expansion becomes 1160 00:46:54,450 --> 00:46:55,830 like quite an unsatisfactory way 1161 00:46:55,830 --> 00:46:56,940 of meeting its housing need. 1162 00:46:56,940 --> 00:47:00,060 Like if you're out deep in new New Jersey on the actual 1163 00:47:00,060 --> 00:47:02,250 periphery of the New York metropolitan area 1164 00:47:02,250 --> 00:47:04,080 and you build a new subdivision, someone in 1165 00:47:04,080 --> 00:47:06,390 that subdivision, even if they get into their car at 5:00 AM 1166 00:47:06,390 --> 00:47:08,820 in the morning and drive like crazy may not be able to get 1167 00:47:08,820 --> 00:47:11,010 to Manhattan in time for the start of the working day. 1168 00:47:11,010 --> 00:47:14,040 So they actually can't meet the housing needs 1169 00:47:14,040 --> 00:47:15,720 of the Manhattan Employment Centre 1170 00:47:15,720 --> 00:47:17,460 by further expansion in Long Island 1171 00:47:17,460 --> 00:47:19,530 or further expansion on the mainland. 1172 00:47:19,530 --> 00:47:20,820 - I mean give an example of that. 1173 00:47:20,820 --> 00:47:22,020 So you have Houston, 1174 00:47:22,020 --> 00:47:24,540 which obviously has a famous sprawl city 1175 00:47:24,540 --> 00:47:26,820 where it's relatively low density in Texas 1176 00:47:26,820 --> 00:47:28,860 and they have an enormous amount of roads. 1177 00:47:28,860 --> 00:47:32,470 The going out west of the city is like 16 lanes at one point 1178 00:47:33,310 --> 00:47:35,290 and generally they flow 1179 00:47:35,290 --> 00:47:36,490 quite well 'cause they're toll roads. 1180 00:47:36,490 --> 00:47:40,240 But even in Houston where they basically allow unlimited 1181 00:47:40,240 --> 00:47:41,710 outward expansion, right? 1182 00:47:41,710 --> 00:47:43,870 So there's no overall gap between 1183 00:47:43,870 --> 00:47:45,730 how we're talking about this before house prices 1184 00:47:45,730 --> 00:47:47,980 and housing sale costs on the edge of town. 1185 00:47:47,980 --> 00:47:49,750 There's still a strong push 1186 00:47:49,750 --> 00:47:52,240 to densify the inner suburban neighbourhoods 1187 00:47:52,240 --> 00:47:54,130 because they're just such, so much more convenient. 1188 00:47:54,130 --> 00:47:56,620 And when you get to the point where like Houston is probably 1189 00:47:56,620 --> 00:47:58,060 bigger than the urban area of London, 1190 00:47:58,060 --> 00:48:00,160 if you put them together on a map 1191 00:48:00,160 --> 00:48:02,290 and it has less than half the population of 1192 00:48:02,290 --> 00:48:04,270 that overall urban area, when you get to that level 1193 00:48:04,270 --> 00:48:06,970 of spread, it's just worth adding some more 1194 00:48:06,970 --> 00:48:08,350 housing in the middle if you can. 1195 00:48:08,350 --> 00:48:09,700 But sorry Samuel, carry on. 1196 00:48:09,700 --> 00:48:13,150 - Yeah, so if you remember when the downzoning was 1197 00:48:13,150 --> 00:48:15,580 introduced, when it was introduced about the private sector, 1198 00:48:15,580 --> 00:48:16,780 we are pretty certain 1199 00:48:16,780 --> 00:48:19,060 that it was increasing the value of these neighbourhoods. 1200 00:48:19,060 --> 00:48:20,470 The reason why we're certain of this is 1201 00:48:20,470 --> 00:48:21,820 that it was done again and again and again 1202 00:48:21,820 --> 00:48:24,130 by profit seeking developers all around the world. 1203 00:48:24,130 --> 00:48:26,410 It was extremely unlikely they were all wrong about this. 1204 00:48:26,410 --> 00:48:29,530 So at that point when you didn't have a housing shortage, 1205 00:48:29,530 --> 00:48:33,580 the immediate value that you preserved through covenanting 1206 00:48:33,580 --> 00:48:36,550 or like, you know, the racist preferences that you satisfied 1207 00:48:36,550 --> 00:48:39,370 through covenanting or whatever it may be, was 1208 00:48:39,370 --> 00:48:41,950 sufficiently great that covenanting 1209 00:48:41,950 --> 00:48:43,810 maximised the value of the neighbourhood. 1210 00:48:43,810 --> 00:48:47,530 It's pretty clear that's no longer true in areas 1211 00:48:47,530 --> 00:48:49,060 with acute housing shortages. 1212 00:48:49,060 --> 00:48:50,620 So in these areas with acute housing shortage, 1213 00:48:50,620 --> 00:48:54,040 like the great downzoning itself has forced up floor space 1214 00:48:54,040 --> 00:48:58,780 values so that they're now like it's floor space sells 1215 00:48:58,780 --> 00:49:02,080 for four times more than it costs to build in these places. 1216 00:49:02,080 --> 00:49:03,640 And when you see, so 1217 00:49:03,640 --> 00:49:08,170 that's like one reason why we might think why we might not 1218 00:49:08,170 --> 00:49:11,680 be so pessimistic about the situation. 1219 00:49:11,680 --> 00:49:14,440 It's true that in all countries 1220 00:49:14,440 --> 00:49:17,350 that don't have tight regulatory constraints on house 1221 00:49:17,350 --> 00:49:20,620 building, when you start introducing zoning restraints, 1222 00:49:20,620 --> 00:49:25,620 zoning controls, they probably do increase property prices. 1223 00:49:25,960 --> 00:49:29,470 But because those zoning envelopes don't increase over time, 1224 00:49:29,470 --> 00:49:30,670 you get a housing shortage 1225 00:49:30,670 --> 00:49:33,520 because you've got a housing shortage, you get high 1226 00:49:33,520 --> 00:49:36,280 floor space values and you reach a point 1227 00:49:36,280 --> 00:49:38,410 where the value maximising thing would actually be 1228 00:49:38,410 --> 00:49:39,460 to upzone the neighbourhood 1229 00:49:39,460 --> 00:49:42,130 and allow more density which is quite unlike the 1230 00:49:42,130 --> 00:49:44,175 situation when it was first developed. 1231 00:49:44,175 --> 00:49:47,590 - And, and you're using total value as a sort of proxy 1232 00:49:47,590 --> 00:49:49,510 for human welfare or human wellbeing. 1233 00:49:49,510 --> 00:49:50,920 - Yeah, it's an imperfect proxy 1234 00:49:50,920 --> 00:49:51,753 obviously. 1235 00:49:51,753 --> 00:49:52,586 I like it. 1236 00:49:52,586 --> 00:49:53,590 - I think it's a good - One. 1237 00:49:53,590 --> 00:49:55,630 Yeah, I don't like, I mean there are problems 1238 00:49:55,630 --> 00:50:00,220 so clearly like the financial 1239 00:50:00,220 --> 00:50:04,870 value ... economic value will weight the 1240 00:50:04,870 --> 00:50:06,550 preferences of rich people more than it would weight 1241 00:50:06,550 --> 00:50:07,570 the preferences of poor people. 1242 00:50:07,570 --> 00:50:10,120 Like a rich, a billionaire's view might count 1243 00:50:10,120 --> 00:50:12,100 for more than the homes of a hundred people 1244 00:50:12,100 --> 00:50:14,470 because of billionaire's preferences are like 1245 00:50:14,470 --> 00:50:17,740 have so much more pricing power than, 1246 00:50:17,740 --> 00:50:20,050 than people who have no money to, to give effect there. 1247 00:50:20,050 --> 00:50:23,620 So like economic value is a very imperfect 1248 00:50:25,270 --> 00:50:28,760 corollary for, for like social bad social welfare, 1249 00:50:29,900 --> 00:50:31,700 but like it is at least it's the best, 1250 00:50:31,700 --> 00:50:34,340 probably the best we've got for aggregating vast numbers 1251 00:50:34,340 --> 00:50:35,930 of preferences, of vast numbers of people. 1252 00:50:35,930 --> 00:50:37,490 - Yeah. It's a way of, it's a, it's a way 1253 00:50:37,490 --> 00:50:40,490 of people demonstrating what they actually want to happen 1254 00:50:40,490 --> 00:50:41,600 and how much are you willing 1255 00:50:41,600 --> 00:50:43,183 to give up for this 1256 00:50:44,526 --> 00:50:45,740 - The other thing is that if there are distortions 1257 00:50:45,740 --> 00:50:48,860 that result from any inequalities of income, like those, 1258 00:50:48,860 --> 00:50:50,120 the distortions will tend 1259 00:50:50,120 --> 00:50:53,660 to be in fa like will bias us in favour 1260 00:50:53,660 --> 00:50:55,160 of more downzoning. 1261 00:50:55,160 --> 00:50:58,490 If it's the case that building all the flats 1262 00:50:58,490 --> 00:51:00,800 for poor people maximises economic value, 1263 00:51:00,800 --> 00:51:04,790 even though it disrupts the billionaires view, then like 1264 00:51:04,790 --> 00:51:06,590 the poor people must really wanted a lot. 1265 00:51:06,590 --> 00:51:08,450 - Yeah. - Because they can beat the billionaire 1266 00:51:08,450 --> 00:51:11,150 with his enormous buying power. 1267 00:51:11,150 --> 00:51:15,260 - And the the other, the other standard flaw in just taking 1268 00:51:15,260 --> 00:51:16,430 kind of overall output 1269 00:51:16,430 --> 00:51:18,470 or overall value as the proxy 1270 00:51:18,470 --> 00:51:20,090 for welfare is externalities, right? 1271 00:51:20,090 --> 00:51:23,930 Like we don't just think that, I don't know, you know, a, 1272 00:51:23,930 --> 00:51:26,480 a country that mines a lot of coal and then burns it all 1273 00:51:26,480 --> 00:51:28,460 and makes a lot of stuff, we know 1274 00:51:28,460 --> 00:51:29,780 there is something missing there, right? 1275 00:51:29,780 --> 00:51:31,190 There's the pollution and the CO2 1276 00:51:32,540 --> 00:51:34,070 and that is part of the story 1277 00:51:34,070 --> 00:51:35,750 because obviously the story 1278 00:51:35,750 --> 00:51:37,940 of the great downzoning is one of externalities. 1279 00:51:37,940 --> 00:51:40,340 You know, you're talking about basically people trying 1280 00:51:40,340 --> 00:51:42,500 to control negative externalities. 1281 00:51:42,500 --> 00:51:44,690 But when you talk about a single area 1282 00:51:44,690 --> 00:51:47,420 or talk about maximising the value of a single area, 1283 00:51:47,420 --> 00:51:50,600 this is why the Great Estates worked so well. 1284 00:51:50,600 --> 00:51:52,790 'cause they internalised all of those externalities much. 1285 00:51:52,790 --> 00:51:54,260 They had this, they have been, 1286 00:51:54,260 --> 00:51:55,850 you've written about this a lot, but you, 1287 00:51:55,850 --> 00:51:59,210 when you have a kind of single owner, the single owner 1288 00:51:59,210 --> 00:52:01,370 has a really strong incentive to weigh up all 1289 00:52:01,370 --> 00:52:04,070 of the externalities kind of within that area. 1290 00:52:04,070 --> 00:52:06,350 And this is obviously one of the reasons that 1291 00:52:06,350 --> 00:52:08,645 streets differ in quality and so on. 1292 00:52:08,645 --> 00:52:10,795 - And also if we go back to the, 1293 00:52:10,795 --> 00:52:12,500 the Great Estates in their private zoning, 1294 00:52:12,500 --> 00:52:14,240 the Great Estates in their private zoning do 1295 00:52:14,240 --> 00:52:15,665 occasionally upzone themselves, right? 1296 00:52:15,665 --> 00:52:17,600 So the, the Great Estates are a perfect example of 1297 00:52:17,600 --> 00:52:19,820 what Samuel's saying, because most of the time they're like, 1298 00:52:19,820 --> 00:52:20,960 keep it low, keep it low. 1299 00:52:20,960 --> 00:52:23,330 And then occasionally floor space values rise so high 1300 00:52:23,330 --> 00:52:25,220 that they think, well, this will be busier, 1301 00:52:25,220 --> 00:52:27,440 this will be slightly less exclusive. 1302 00:52:27,440 --> 00:52:29,090 - Mm. - But we can fit double as many people in here 1303 00:52:29,090 --> 00:52:30,680 and they really want to live here in the centre 1304 00:52:30,680 --> 00:52:33,080 of this city, which is a really economically valuable city. 1305 00:52:33,080 --> 00:52:35,270 And so you can go, you could go right now, 1306 00:52:35,270 --> 00:52:37,430 you could be like me and go and Google's satellite view of 1307 00:52:37,430 --> 00:52:39,620 around Chelsea or Marburn 1308 00:52:39,620 --> 00:52:40,880 and look at the edges of places 1309 00:52:40,880 --> 00:52:44,150 where there are Edwardian blocks of flats next to Georgian 1310 00:52:44,150 --> 00:52:45,560 or Victorian houses. 1311 00:52:45,560 --> 00:52:47,240 And they have, they'll be in greater state land 1312 00:52:47,240 --> 00:52:49,580 and they literally have upzoned their own Great Estate land. 1313 00:52:49,580 --> 00:52:54,080 So that private version of zoning is able to balance it 1314 00:52:54,920 --> 00:52:56,120 when it actually is necessary. 1315 00:52:56,120 --> 00:52:57,770 - Yeah. Han's place, probably one 1316 00:52:57,770 --> 00:53:00,140 of the most expensive streets in the world that was 1317 00:53:00,140 --> 00:53:02,300 that owned by the Cadogan estate I think. 1318 00:53:02,300 --> 00:53:03,950 So they, in the 1880s, 1319 00:53:03,950 --> 00:53:06,620 it was all developed originally in the late 18th century 1320 00:53:06,620 --> 00:53:08,720 as terraced houses, four stories 1321 00:53:08,720 --> 00:53:11,210 or something reached at the end of the 19th century. 1322 00:53:11,210 --> 00:53:13,970 And the estate owners, when the leases were all coming 1323 00:53:13,970 --> 00:53:15,590 to their end. 1324 00:53:15,590 --> 00:53:17,870 They say to us, think actually there's loads of demand 1325 00:53:17,870 --> 00:53:20,390 to live in Knightsbridge 1326 00:53:20,390 --> 00:53:21,920 Why don't we just demolish the whole thing 1327 00:53:21,920 --> 00:53:24,140 and rebuild it at like twice or two 1328 00:53:24,140 --> 00:53:25,160 and a half times the density. 1329 00:53:26,040 --> 00:53:27,630 Sure we'll lose a bit of ammenity value 1330 00:53:27,630 --> 00:53:30,900 because the density will be higher, but we've got two 1331 00:53:30,900 --> 00:53:32,400 and a half times as much floor space 1332 00:53:32,400 --> 00:53:34,935 and like people really, really want to live here. 1333 00:53:34,935 --> 00:53:37,590 And they did it and it worked. They made it/ 1334 00:53:37,590 --> 00:53:40,140 They can't do that anymore 1335 00:53:40,140 --> 00:53:43,080 because the planning system now overlays the private zoning 1336 00:53:43,080 --> 00:53:45,060 controls by the greater states. 1337 00:53:45,060 --> 00:53:46,860 But if you remove the planning system, 1338 00:53:46,860 --> 00:53:49,620 I'm sure the greater states would start demolishing bits 1339 00:53:49,620 --> 00:53:50,850 of their 19th century stock 1340 00:53:50,850 --> 00:53:52,350 and replacing it with denser development. 1341 00:53:53,700 --> 00:53:58,110 And we knew like, this isn't just like us speculating. 1342 00:53:58,110 --> 00:54:00,300 We've, there are plenty of international examples 1343 00:54:00,300 --> 00:54:04,980 where if you give blocks or neighbourhoods 1344 00:54:04,980 --> 00:54:09,150 the right to upzone, they do it 1345 00:54:09,150 --> 00:54:13,290 because it like increases the total value of the 1346 00:54:13,290 --> 00:54:14,340 of the block when they do. 1347 00:54:14,340 --> 00:54:17,850 So Ben's done some work on the case of Houston here? 1348 00:54:18,690 --> 00:54:19,770 - Yeah, well yeah. We didn't, we 1349 00:54:19,770 --> 00:54:20,820 did an article on Works in Progress 1350 00:54:20,820 --> 00:54:22,620 That was very good. I'll credit Anya Martin 1351 00:54:22,620 --> 00:54:23,880 for doing most of the work on that. 1352 00:54:23,880 --> 00:54:26,580 But, but yes, there are many examples. 1353 00:54:26,580 --> 00:54:27,720 I've seen lots of examples. 1354 00:54:27,720 --> 00:54:29,220 My favourite example at the moment who, 1355 00:54:29,220 --> 00:54:30,300 we've got an article coming in. 1356 00:54:30,300 --> 00:54:32,310 So I've been reading all these drafts of all these details 1357 00:54:32,310 --> 00:54:33,960 and I'm one of the few people who knows about all 1358 00:54:33,960 --> 00:54:35,850 of this stuff because no one seems 1359 00:54:35,850 --> 00:54:37,800 to go into Korean archives in Korean 1360 00:54:37,800 --> 00:54:39,630 and look through all the details. 1361 00:54:39,630 --> 00:54:41,580 There was this policy called the Korean Dream in the 1362 00:54:41,580 --> 00:54:44,940 eighties where you could take your neighbourhood 1363 00:54:44,940 --> 00:54:48,570 that was potentially like a, a shanty town slum on the edge 1364 00:54:48,570 --> 00:54:51,420 of town because Korea had, 1365 00:54:51,420 --> 00:54:54,420 had a very high birth rate at the time, funnily enough, 1366 00:54:54,420 --> 00:54:56,250 and also a very high urbanisation rate. 1367 00:54:56,250 --> 00:54:59,430 So their cities were growing at like 15% per year 1368 00:54:59,430 --> 00:55:00,720 or something off or faster than that. 1369 00:55:01,920 --> 00:55:06,000 And they allowed whole neighbourhoods to opt into up zoning 1370 00:55:06,000 --> 00:55:08,580 to be allowed to build whatever they wanted, if they wanted. 1371 00:55:08,580 --> 00:55:12,570 And at that time, the value for them was no, okay, 1372 00:55:12,570 --> 00:55:15,690 we is actually better despite the there being more people 1373 00:55:15,690 --> 00:55:17,820 around, it's still gonna be net more valuable 1374 00:55:17,820 --> 00:55:20,520 because there's the demand for floor space is so high. 1375 00:55:20,520 --> 00:55:22,440 And so they all opted in to upzoning. 1376 00:55:22,440 --> 00:55:25,170 So we clearly can see examples of it, 1377 00:55:25,170 --> 00:55:28,410 - The question, so like how optimistic should we be? 1378 00:55:28,410 --> 00:55:32,070 So the case of pessimism as you lay out is 1379 00:55:32,940 --> 00:55:34,770 everywhere which has elite suburbia 1380 00:55:34,770 --> 00:55:37,620 or even like middle class suburbia has downzoning, 1381 00:55:37,620 --> 00:55:40,230 Like it's pretty much without exception 1382 00:55:41,490 --> 00:55:46,200 and there aren't many cases of that changing yet. 1383 00:55:46,200 --> 00:55:49,140 So that looks like quite a powerful argument of pessimism. 1384 00:55:49,140 --> 00:55:50,400 But the case for optimism to summarise 1385 00:55:50,400 --> 00:55:53,790 what we've been saying is all that's true, 1386 00:55:53,790 --> 00:55:54,810 but the very success 1387 00:55:54,810 --> 00:55:57,300 of the downzoning maybe has created the conditions 1388 00:55:57,300 --> 00:55:59,100 for the ends of the downzoning in some places 1389 00:55:59,100 --> 00:56:01,650 by removing this totally key feature 1390 00:56:01,650 --> 00:56:03,120 that was there was in the beginning, which is 1391 00:56:03,120 --> 00:56:05,670 that originally downzoning was value maximising. 1392 00:56:05,670 --> 00:56:09,360 And now downzoning is massively value destroying in in the 1393 00:56:09,360 --> 00:56:11,160 places with the bad housing shortage, of course there's still lots 1394 00:56:11,160 --> 00:56:13,260 of places woithout bad housing shortages. 1395 00:56:13,260 --> 00:56:16,950 So I, I'd say like I will be very pessimistic about 1396 00:56:18,180 --> 00:56:21,420 upzoning parts of, well parts 1397 00:56:21,420 --> 00:56:22,860 of the United States in the United States 1398 00:56:22,860 --> 00:56:25,210 or in in Europe, which don't have housing shortages. 1399 00:56:25,210 --> 00:56:28,000 I think there zoning is probably good, 1400 00:56:28,000 --> 00:56:29,410 it's certainly economically good 1401 00:56:29,410 --> 00:56:30,970 for people in suburban areas who, 1402 00:56:30,970 --> 00:56:32,260 and they, they almost certainly 1403 00:56:32,260 --> 00:56:33,340 improves their property value. 1404 00:56:35,170 --> 00:56:36,400 But in the places 1405 00:56:36,400 --> 00:56:39,340 where we've got terrible housing shortages, 1406 00:56:39,340 --> 00:56:42,160 which includes nearly all the great capitals of the world, 1407 00:56:43,390 --> 00:56:45,190 there we are in uncharted territory 1408 00:56:45,190 --> 00:56:47,260 and the whole thing, the whole reason 1409 00:56:47,260 --> 00:56:50,170 that brought the downzoning into being 1410 00:56:50,170 --> 00:56:51,610 is no longer in place. 1411 00:56:51,610 --> 00:56:53,590 So maybe we can be more optimistic about 1412 00:56:53,590 --> 00:56:54,880 what might happen in those places. 1413 00:56:56,290 --> 00:56:57,970 - What's the relationship 1414 00:56:57,970 --> 00:57:02,890 or what's the connection between what you often write about 1415 00:57:02,890 --> 00:57:06,820 and think about, which is beauty and design and architecture 1416 00:57:06,820 --> 00:57:09,070 and this, other than the fact 1417 00:57:09,070 --> 00:57:10,510 that they're, they're all about housing. 1418 00:57:10,510 --> 00:57:14,830 Like does the, does your interest in the built environment 1419 00:57:14,830 --> 00:57:16,030 Yeah, I hate that expression, 1420 00:57:16,030 --> 00:57:19,630 but does your interest in beautiful buildings relate 1421 00:57:19,630 --> 00:57:21,730 to this at all or are 1422 00:57:21,730 --> 00:57:23,320 You just interested in cities generally? 1423 00:57:24,400 --> 00:57:26,230 - They're definitely related, 1424 00:57:26,230 --> 00:57:28,030 but they're, sometimes they have a, 1425 00:57:28,030 --> 00:57:30,280 I mean it's a complicated, intense relationship. 1426 00:57:30,280 --> 00:57:32,860 So like some, when I first started working on this, 1427 00:57:32,860 --> 00:57:37,210 I thought great, improving the density of suburbia will tend 1428 00:57:37,210 --> 00:57:40,030 to create more flourishing, more beautiful places 1429 00:57:41,350 --> 00:57:44,020 because the classic examples that we have 1430 00:57:44,020 --> 00:57:48,460 of flourishing beautiful places typically are at like medium 1431 00:57:48,460 --> 00:57:50,080 or high density or often. 1432 00:57:50,080 --> 00:57:54,220 So, you know, I've always loved terraced streets 1433 00:57:54,220 --> 00:57:55,630 and the kind of old corridor streets 1434 00:57:55,630 --> 00:57:57,220 and the sense enclosure that you get from that. 1435 00:57:57,220 --> 00:58:00,130 So I thought, well densification is probably likely 1436 00:58:00,130 --> 00:58:02,890 to generally make urban spaces more beautiful 1437 00:58:03,880 --> 00:58:07,300 and that's another reason to be in favour of it. 1438 00:58:07,300 --> 00:58:08,230 And maybe a reason that's 1439 00:58:08,230 --> 00:58:09,670 particularly close to my own heart. 1440 00:58:09,670 --> 00:58:12,910 Like we've all got this right when we, when we work on policy 1441 00:58:12,910 --> 00:58:16,150 and we've got our own like publicly our own assessment 1442 00:58:16,150 --> 00:58:18,400 of the, the stuff that's actually important. 1443 00:58:18,400 --> 00:58:19,960 And then we have the thing that like kind 1444 00:58:19,960 --> 00:58:21,040 of really motivates us 1445 00:58:21,040 --> 00:58:25,420 and that we clearly, if you look at the history 1446 00:58:25,420 --> 00:58:30,040 of zoning, it's more complicated than that. 1447 00:58:30,040 --> 00:58:33,310 And part of the reason why down zoning was introduced in the 1448 00:58:33,310 --> 00:58:36,460 first place was to protect aesthetic values 1449 00:58:36,460 --> 00:58:38,290 of neighbourhoods, at least perceived 1450 00:58:38,290 --> 00:58:39,640 aesthetic values of neighbourhoods. 1451 00:58:39,640 --> 00:58:43,690 So like people in these 19th century villa districts, 1452 00:58:44,680 --> 00:58:48,040 one of the classic problem with beauty right, is 1453 00:58:48,040 --> 00:58:49,810 that you bear all the costs 1454 00:58:49,810 --> 00:58:51,880 of making your property beautiful, 1455 00:58:51,880 --> 00:58:54,130 but the beauty of your property is a benefit 1456 00:58:54,130 --> 00:58:55,990 to all the other plots nearby. 1457 00:58:55,990 --> 00:58:59,260 And to everyone who goes past it's classic, like totally 1458 00:58:59,260 --> 00:59:01,195 like pure, like one of the best examples of a, 1459 00:59:01,195 --> 00:59:02,680 of a positive externality. 1460 00:59:02,680 --> 00:59:04,660 So the free market with fragmented ownership will 1461 00:59:04,660 --> 00:59:06,670 normally under-deliver beauty. 1462 00:59:06,670 --> 00:59:08,620 And there are, there are fun classic studies about this 1463 00:59:08,620 --> 00:59:10,240 looking at front gardens, like 1464 00:59:10,240 --> 00:59:12,280 to take out a driveway and put in a front garden. 1465 00:59:12,280 --> 00:59:14,980 Your, your net property value goes up a little bit under 1466 00:59:14,980 --> 00:59:17,890 certain circumstances, but, but not very much. 1467 00:59:17,890 --> 00:59:20,530 But your neighbor's property also takes a big jump, 1468 00:59:20,530 --> 00:59:22,010 like maybe larger than your jump 1469 00:59:22,010 --> 00:59:23,270 because they didn't lose their driveway, 1470 00:59:23,270 --> 00:59:24,740 they just get some nice flowers to look at. 1471 00:59:25,610 --> 00:59:26,990 So you've got, you know, classic, 1472 00:59:26,990 --> 00:59:31,100 classic collective action problem and private zoning. 1473 00:59:31,100 --> 00:59:33,110 One of its like totally clear, one 1474 00:59:33,110 --> 00:59:35,180 of its purposes at the start was to overcome 1475 00:59:35,180 --> 00:59:36,890 that collective action problem. 1476 00:59:36,890 --> 00:59:40,490 And public zoning has tended 1477 00:59:40,490 --> 00:59:43,010 to be less like fine grained on aesthetic questions. 1478 00:59:43,010 --> 00:59:45,530 Like the private zoners would really fuss over what kind 1479 00:59:45,530 --> 00:59:46,880 of fence you can have and what colour you 1480 00:59:46,880 --> 00:59:47,930 can paint your house and so forth. 1481 00:59:47,930 --> 00:59:51,620 But like public zoning in course terms probably motivated by 1482 00:59:51,620 --> 00:59:53,930 these aesthetic considerations to an extent. 1483 00:59:53,930 --> 00:59:56,480 So there I have like emotional dissonance 1484 00:59:56,480 --> 00:59:59,600 that urban density, which is good for the economy 1485 00:59:59,600 --> 01:00:04,100 and good for society as a solution to housing shortages is 1486 01:00:05,870 --> 01:00:08,630 seemingly bad for aesthetic purposes. 1487 01:00:10,550 --> 01:00:14,360 The case that really interests me here would be actually the 1488 01:00:14,360 --> 01:00:17,060 one we've been discussing the case with like greater states. 1489 01:00:17,060 --> 01:00:18,410 So what they did, 1490 01:00:18,410 --> 01:00:21,620 because there was still this one unified owner 1491 01:00:21,620 --> 01:00:24,620 who was coordinating the densification process, 1492 01:00:24,620 --> 01:00:27,260 they thought, okay, we're going 1493 01:00:27,260 --> 01:00:29,360 to redevelop this at higher densities, 1494 01:00:29,360 --> 01:00:32,720 but we are still going to think about aesthetic values. 1495 01:00:32,720 --> 01:00:35,660 We don't want to densify one property 1496 01:00:35,660 --> 01:00:37,940 in our estate in a way which is parasitical on the other 1497 01:00:37,940 --> 01:00:40,520 properties because we also own all the other properties. 1498 01:00:40,520 --> 01:00:41,990 So whenever we identify a property, 1499 01:00:41,990 --> 01:00:44,780 we'll think really carefully about the fa the massing 1500 01:00:44,780 --> 01:00:46,610 and the facade and all these kinds of features. 1501 01:00:46,610 --> 01:00:47,810 And it created these neighbourhoods. 1502 01:00:47,810 --> 01:00:50,420 Like Hanover Place is an extremely beautiful street. 1503 01:00:50,420 --> 01:00:51,950 You can see why all these incredibly 1504 01:00:51,950 --> 01:00:53,030 rich people want to live there. 1505 01:00:54,770 --> 01:00:57,530 So I like what thinking about this 1506 01:00:57,530 --> 01:01:00,140 for several years has led me to is the conclusion that 1507 01:01:01,010 --> 01:01:04,220 there are some prima facie tensions 1508 01:01:04,220 --> 01:01:07,910 between densification and urban beauty. 1509 01:01:09,050 --> 01:01:11,960 And those tensions are obvious 1510 01:01:11,960 --> 01:01:13,610 and like clearly were one 1511 01:01:13,610 --> 01:01:15,020 of the things which drove the development 1512 01:01:15,020 --> 01:01:16,850 of zoning in the first place. 1513 01:01:16,850 --> 01:01:20,120 But there may be ways if we can get the upzoning right 1514 01:01:20,120 --> 01:01:23,360 and make it not just like an uncoordinated free for all 1515 01:01:23,360 --> 01:01:26,150 where parasitical building is allowed 1516 01:01:26,150 --> 01:01:28,850 and where you get like the free rider problem, 1517 01:01:28,850 --> 01:01:31,250 aesthetic free rider problem goes like totally rampant. 1518 01:01:32,240 --> 01:01:34,160 If there are ways we can, we can counter 1519 01:01:34,160 --> 01:01:36,350 that then we could get much denser neighbourhoods 1520 01:01:36,350 --> 01:01:38,480 that were nonetheless beautiful. 1521 01:01:38,480 --> 01:01:40,550 So what are those ways? Well, 1522 01:01:40,550 --> 01:01:43,130 where you've got a unified owner, 1523 01:01:43,130 --> 01:01:45,890 like in the greater states in London it's much easier 1524 01:01:45,890 --> 01:01:49,040 because there you've got an underlying economic agent 1525 01:01:49,040 --> 01:01:51,770 who can control what the new development looks like 1526 01:01:51,770 --> 01:01:53,810 and who's also internalised externalities. 1527 01:01:53,810 --> 01:01:57,260 So they care about beauty. The problem we have is like in 1528 01:01:57,260 --> 01:02:00,380 nearly all places you don't have that 1529 01:02:00,380 --> 01:02:03,710 because the original landowners have sold the plots 1530 01:02:03,710 --> 01:02:05,090 into fragmented ownership. 1531 01:02:05,090 --> 01:02:07,250 And so the freeholder the the free rider problem 1532 01:02:07,250 --> 01:02:08,600 becomes quite serious. 1533 01:02:10,760 --> 01:02:14,120 Clearly like part of the solution. 1534 01:02:14,120 --> 01:02:16,010 Like sometimes you can create the solution just 1535 01:02:16,010 --> 01:02:18,410 through having a good planning system like that is 1536 01:02:18,410 --> 01:02:21,300 where you've got fragmented ownership. 1537 01:02:21,300 --> 01:02:24,480 The state will step in to provide some of the services 1538 01:02:24,480 --> 01:02:27,990 that a unified owner would've provided if they existed. 1539 01:02:27,990 --> 01:02:31,200 - Like what, - Like controlling the design 1540 01:02:31,200 --> 01:02:35,370 of buildings controlling saying that no, you can't build a 1541 01:02:35,370 --> 01:02:37,320 multi-story car park there out of concrete 1542 01:02:37,320 --> 01:02:39,360 or whatever, even if it's the most valuable thing to do 1543 01:02:39,360 --> 01:02:40,590 for your individual plot 1544 01:02:40,590 --> 01:02:43,350 because it will still destroy the, 1545 01:02:43,350 --> 01:02:45,390 the ammenity of all the plots around it. 1546 01:02:45,390 --> 01:02:47,850 And the planning system does do that to some extent in, 1547 01:02:47,850 --> 01:02:49,980 in this country as in all countries. 1548 01:02:49,980 --> 01:02:52,020 So that is definitely part of the answer. 1549 01:02:52,020 --> 01:02:53,160 We do have problems there. 1550 01:02:53,160 --> 01:02:55,920 So like famously planning systems can end up suffering from 1551 01:02:55,920 --> 01:02:58,200 design disconnect where the professionals 1552 01:02:58,200 --> 01:03:00,570 who run the planning system have like different aesthetic 1553 01:03:00,570 --> 01:03:02,220 preferences to the wider public. 1554 01:03:02,220 --> 01:03:04,650 So it's a standard like planners 1555 01:03:04,650 --> 01:03:06,570 and architects are much more likely to be in favour 1556 01:03:06,570 --> 01:03:09,330 of radical modernist designs, 1557 01:03:09,330 --> 01:03:11,070 which are quite reparative to normal people. 1558 01:03:11,070 --> 01:03:14,550 - One thing I often see is buildings where they, 1559 01:03:14,550 --> 01:03:16,740 they have an old building, there's an extension onto it 1560 01:03:16,740 --> 01:03:18,660 and the the extension seems to be designed 1561 01:03:18,660 --> 01:03:21,090 to be like maximally different from the original building 1562 01:03:21,090 --> 01:03:23,280 as though it's like, I really want to show you that this, 1563 01:03:23,280 --> 01:03:25,410 this is an extension rather than part of this. 1564 01:03:25,410 --> 01:03:26,610 - Yeah. Doctrine of legibility. 1565 01:03:26,610 --> 01:03:27,870 It's widely, so lots 1566 01:03:27,870 --> 01:03:29,280 of English planning authorities have this 1567 01:03:29,280 --> 01:03:30,660 as official or semi official 1568 01:03:30,660 --> 01:03:31,660 - Policy. 1569 01:03:31,660 --> 01:03:32,850 They, they require it to look different, 1570 01:03:32,850 --> 01:03:34,080 - They require it to look different. 1571 01:03:34,080 --> 01:03:35,580 'cause they don't want the, if the, 1572 01:03:35,580 --> 01:03:37,410 if it blends into the original building, it could be seen 1573 01:03:37,410 --> 01:03:39,870 as a fake extension that was trying to pretend to be part 1574 01:03:39,870 --> 01:03:40,703 of the heritage 1575 01:03:40,703 --> 01:03:42,120 Jesus, that would be terrible. 1576 01:03:43,050 --> 01:03:47,580 - Yeah. So it's now probably if you had a unified owner, 1577 01:03:47,580 --> 01:03:49,260 they would be, they would have the discipline 1578 01:03:49,260 --> 01:03:51,510 of the basically the discipline of the profit motive. 1579 01:03:51,510 --> 01:03:53,310 Yeah. They'd know this doesn't maximise the value 1580 01:03:53,310 --> 01:03:54,180 of the neighbourhood and I care 1581 01:03:54,180 --> 01:03:55,230 about value of the neighbourhood. 1582 01:03:55,230 --> 01:03:56,280 So I care about the preferences 1583 01:03:56,280 --> 01:03:58,440 of ordinary people 1584 01:03:58,440 --> 01:04:00,720 because those preferences drive that value. 1585 01:04:00,720 --> 01:04:04,020 Whereas if you are a public authority to some extent you get 1586 01:04:04,020 --> 01:04:05,940 that through democratic feedback mechanisms, 1587 01:04:05,940 --> 01:04:07,290 but those are often weaker 1588 01:04:07,290 --> 01:04:10,560 and like people don't really vote on the basis of the, 1589 01:04:10,560 --> 01:04:12,750 of the conservation area policy of their neighbourhood. 1590 01:04:12,750 --> 01:04:14,070 Like they don't know the technical 1591 01:04:14,070 --> 01:04:16,140 detail, they don't follow that. 1592 01:04:16,140 --> 01:04:17,910 So the democratic feedback 1593 01:04:17,910 --> 01:04:19,320 mechanisms are probably quite weak. 1594 01:04:19,320 --> 01:04:22,470 And so you do get this drift, the design disconnect effect. 1595 01:04:22,470 --> 01:04:24,990 And I think that I, that doesn't mean I want to get rid 1596 01:04:24,990 --> 01:04:26,316 of planning controls and densification. 1597 01:04:26,316 --> 01:04:28,440 I think they're definitely better than nothing. 1598 01:04:28,440 --> 01:04:29,670 But that is a problem that you'd have. 1599 01:04:30,660 --> 01:04:32,825 Ben and I have worked a lot, well you've worked a lot 1600 01:04:32,825 --> 01:04:35,520 as well on the policy street votes 1601 01:04:35,520 --> 01:04:38,130 where we look at a way in which like low density streets 1602 01:04:38,130 --> 01:04:42,090 could vote by qualified majority to go up 1603 01:04:42,090 --> 01:04:45,480 to like medium densities, marvan density or Paris density. 1604 01:04:46,410 --> 01:04:50,400 And there we've always said the street would introduce like 1605 01:04:50,400 --> 01:04:54,720 strict rules on the external appearance of these buildings. 1606 01:04:54,720 --> 01:04:58,440 And the idea there is that the street is operating like a, 1607 01:04:58,440 --> 01:05:01,140 like a democratic version of a greater state. 1608 01:05:01,140 --> 01:05:04,320 So they, their incentive is to maximise the value 1609 01:05:04,320 --> 01:05:05,550 of the street as a whole. 1610 01:05:05,550 --> 01:05:08,070 They want to block free riders 1611 01:05:08,070 --> 01:05:11,580 because they will suffer if there are free riders. 1612 01:05:11,580 --> 01:05:13,320 The free riders will destroy the value of, they want 1613 01:05:13,320 --> 01:05:14,520 to be in the good bit of the, 1614 01:05:14,520 --> 01:05:16,680 I mean ideally each person would like to be the one 1615 01:05:16,680 --> 01:05:18,430 who can be a free rider while everyone else is forced 1616 01:05:18,430 --> 01:05:20,890 to follow the rules, but they can't do that. 1617 01:05:20,890 --> 01:05:24,130 So failing that they want to be in the, 1618 01:05:24,130 --> 01:05:26,680 the positive equilibrium where everyone's controlled 1619 01:05:26,680 --> 01:05:28,870 by rules of value maximised for the street as a whole 1620 01:05:28,870 --> 01:05:30,190 - Because that means they individually 1621 01:05:30,190 --> 01:05:31,810 'cause the the same rules apply to everybody. 1622 01:05:31,810 --> 01:05:33,730 Exactly. So they individually, yeah, that's the best way 1623 01:05:33,730 --> 01:05:35,680 for them to individually maximise their income. I see. 1624 01:05:35,680 --> 01:05:39,160 - So that is an attempt to, among other things, 1625 01:05:39,160 --> 01:05:41,770 that's an attempt to like reconcile the tension 1626 01:05:41,770 --> 01:05:43,810 between densification 1627 01:05:43,810 --> 01:05:48,130 and beauty, which is important for me emotionally 1628 01:05:49,150 --> 01:05:51,760 also is value maximising 1629 01:05:51,760 --> 01:05:53,980 and also I suspect is very important 1630 01:05:53,980 --> 01:05:56,260 for like the politics of densification. 1631 01:05:56,260 --> 01:06:00,100 - Mm. - I don't know, like we don't, there's one question 1632 01:06:00,100 --> 01:06:03,370 of like how much is the effect on prices on the streets? 1633 01:06:03,370 --> 01:06:04,510 But there's a second question, 1634 01:06:04,510 --> 01:06:07,210 which is what's the effect on the public response 1635 01:06:07,210 --> 01:06:08,950 to a radical policy like this? 1636 01:06:08,950 --> 01:06:11,680 And if the first photographs start coming out from the first 1637 01:06:11,680 --> 01:06:15,220 street votes and the post-street vote developments are like 1638 01:06:15,220 --> 01:06:18,010 hideously ugly and they get plastered all over the tabloids 1639 01:06:18,010 --> 01:06:20,260 and over social media, that's like potentially 1640 01:06:20,260 --> 01:06:21,850 a killer for the policy. 1641 01:06:21,850 --> 01:06:24,700 Whereas if they come out and they look okay, 1642 01:06:24,700 --> 01:06:26,080 then that's better. 1643 01:06:26,080 --> 01:06:29,500 And if they look great, if people say, wow, hang on, that's, 1644 01:06:29,500 --> 01:06:30,940 you've made that street a lot denser, 1645 01:06:30,940 --> 01:06:34,180 but you've actually made it nicer, then you are, 1646 01:06:34,180 --> 01:06:35,950 you are really looking at like, 1647 01:06:35,950 --> 01:06:37,600 the emotional response is very different. 1648 01:06:37,600 --> 01:06:39,310 People will think like, well they're actually making this 1649 01:06:39,310 --> 01:06:40,630 city into a better place. 1650 01:06:40,630 --> 01:06:43,120 Let's let's, you know, we should keep trying 1651 01:06:43,120 --> 01:06:44,650 with this policy and see what happens 1652 01:06:44,650 --> 01:06:46,090 and maybe we should expand it. 1653 01:06:46,090 --> 01:06:49,630 So I think it's pretty important to get this right, 1654 01:06:49,630 --> 01:06:54,580 especially in places like where places where there's a 1655 01:06:54,580 --> 01:06:57,760 long tradition of of like caring for neighbourhoods 1656 01:06:57,760 --> 01:06:59,230 and control over places and people are very 1657 01:06:59,230 --> 01:07:00,580 sensitive to these kinds of features. 1658 01:07:01,480 --> 01:07:05,680 - Is there anywhere that does, let's say, kind of beauty 1659 01:07:05,680 --> 01:07:08,200 and density right at the moment in your mind? 1660 01:07:08,200 --> 01:07:10,810 The only, the only place that I know of that I've been to 1661 01:07:10,810 --> 01:07:14,620 that seems to have a really good land use policy is Japan, 1662 01:07:14,620 --> 01:07:16,090 but it's not a very, 1663 01:07:16,090 --> 01:07:18,460 it's it's actually quite nice in its own way, 1664 01:07:18,460 --> 01:07:20,800 but the buildings are individually in, in a lot of Tokyo 1665 01:07:20,800 --> 01:07:24,850 for example, not particularly pretty, they're, they're made 1666 01:07:24,850 --> 01:07:27,640 to be torn down as, as most people know, 1667 01:07:27,640 --> 01:07:30,400 there is something kind of quite wonderful about being there 1668 01:07:30,400 --> 01:07:32,495 and the the actual urban form Yeah, makes fantastic, 1669 01:07:32,495 --> 01:07:33,670 makes it feel really, really good. 1670 01:07:33,670 --> 01:07:35,530 But the individual buildings are not, I don't think, 1671 01:07:35,530 --> 01:07:36,760 are often not beautiful. 1672 01:07:36,760 --> 01:07:39,580 And there are beautiful parts of Japan of course, 1673 01:07:39,580 --> 01:07:40,930 but do you think there's anywhere that gets these 1674 01:07:40,930 --> 01:07:42,010 things, these two things, 1675 01:07:42,010 --> 01:07:43,010 - Right. 1676 01:07:43,010 --> 01:07:44,530 I don't think there's any like whole 1677 01:07:44,530 --> 01:07:46,450 country that is the example. 1678 01:07:46,450 --> 01:07:49,240 I mean there are, there are a bunch of countries 1679 01:07:49,240 --> 01:07:50,560 where the urbanism 1680 01:07:50,560 --> 01:07:53,530 of new developments is typically pretty good. 1681 01:07:53,530 --> 01:07:54,580 Mm. So Spain 1682 01:07:54,580 --> 01:07:55,690 and the Netherlands are the two 1683 01:07:55,690 --> 01:07:56,860 most obvious examples of that. 1684 01:07:56,860 --> 01:07:58,930 Quite different, but both quite impressive. 1685 01:08:00,880 --> 01:08:04,210 But neither of them does that much justification 1686 01:08:04,210 --> 01:08:06,040 of existing neighbourhoods 1687 01:08:06,040 --> 01:08:09,520 and even in the good new neighbourhoods, again, 1688 01:08:09,520 --> 01:08:11,110 it's kinda like in Japan, they're not 1689 01:08:11,110 --> 01:08:12,580 individually beautiful buildings. 1690 01:08:12,580 --> 01:08:14,660 They're like fairly ugly buildings that 1691 01:08:14,660 --> 01:08:16,460 nonetheless create good neighbourhoods 1692 01:08:16,460 --> 01:08:17,900 because the planning is 1693 01:08:17,900 --> 01:08:19,010 so good and the infrastructure and so on. 1694 01:08:20,870 --> 01:08:22,070 There are interesting, there are lots 1695 01:08:22,070 --> 01:08:24,440 of interesting individual examples. 1696 01:08:24,440 --> 01:08:28,370 There's like, which is a, a 1697 01:08:29,450 --> 01:08:30,530 World War was a kind 1698 01:08:30,530 --> 01:08:35,420 of a decay post-war social housing estate outside Paris 1699 01:08:35,420 --> 01:08:37,550 built up fairly low densities. 1700 01:08:38,390 --> 01:08:41,000 And that's gradually being regenerated at much higher 1701 01:08:41,000 --> 01:08:44,480 densities like very beautifully 1702 01:08:44,480 --> 01:08:47,660 and has been extremely popular with local people 1703 01:08:47,660 --> 01:08:49,370 and is starting to create more 1704 01:08:49,370 --> 01:08:51,080 and more of a splash internationally. 1705 01:08:51,080 --> 01:08:54,050 So that like clearly shows how it's done. 1706 01:08:54,050 --> 01:08:56,600 And we've got, there are similar like densifying estate 1707 01:08:56,600 --> 01:08:59,690 regeneration schemes in, in Britain 1708 01:08:59,690 --> 01:09:02,120 where they've clearly improved the neighbourhood. 1709 01:09:02,120 --> 01:09:05,000 Like post regeneration estate 1710 01:09:05,000 --> 01:09:08,840 is like obviously better on the eye than the pre 1711 01:09:08,840 --> 01:09:10,910 regeneration estate, even though it's two 1712 01:09:10,910 --> 01:09:12,500 or three times denser. 1713 01:09:12,500 --> 01:09:16,340 So, so there are success stories, 1714 01:09:16,340 --> 01:09:18,680 but I wouldn't say there's any country 1715 01:09:18,680 --> 01:09:20,930 where like the success story has become the norm. 1716 01:09:22,130 --> 01:09:24,200 - Thank you very much Samuel Hughes. 1717 01:09:24,200 --> 01:09:26,690 You've been listening to the Works in Progress podcast. 1718 01:09:26,690 --> 01:09:29,990 For more go to www.worksinprogress.co.