Should we ban ugly buildings?
Episode Transcript
(00:00:00):
I was walking through South London the other day,
(00:00:02):
and I saw a new but very,
(00:00:04):
very ugly building next to an older Victorian,
(00:00:08):
admittedly not beautiful,
(00:00:09):
but much better looking building.
(00:00:11):
So I took a photograph,
(00:00:12):
put it on Twitter,
(00:00:13):
and said,
(00:00:13):
I think the neighbours should have been able to insist that the ugly building was
(00:00:17):
designed more like the better looking building.
(00:00:20):
Some people agreed, some people didn't.
(00:00:23):
And of the people who disagreed,
(00:00:24):
a lot of them were YIMBYs,
(00:00:26):
like me,
(00:00:26):
people who think that it's really,
(00:00:28):
really important to build more.
(00:00:29):
I thought this was a pretty interesting debate,
(00:00:31):
so I thought Samuel,
(00:00:33):
Ben,
(00:00:33):
and I would sit down and chat about design codes,
(00:00:36):
beauty,
(00:00:37):
architecture,
(00:00:38):
and whether there is a trade-off between building more homes and building them
(00:00:42):
beautifully.
(00:00:43):
So I have some sympathy with the people who were arguing against you.
(00:00:47):
By the way, by the way, as will come obvious, I agree with you.
(00:00:50):
But I have some sympathy with the alternative view because I...
(00:00:56):
To give an analogy, I've been thinking a lot about bats.
(00:01:00):
And over the last 10,
(00:01:02):
20 years in the UK,
(00:01:03):
a lot of projects,
(00:01:04):
a lot of building projects have been stopped or made much more expensive because of
(00:01:07):
what people had to do to deal with bats,
(00:01:11):
right?
(00:01:11):
So the most famous example,
(00:01:12):
obviously,
(00:01:13):
is HS2,
(00:01:13):
the high-speed train line being built between London and Birmingham.
(00:01:16):
had to build this £120 million bat tunnel because of a nearby community of 300
(00:01:22):
Beckstein's bats,
(00:01:24):
which the bat tunnel was not proven to help.
(00:01:26):
But if it had saved every single one of the lives,
(00:01:29):
assuming that every single one of these bats would have died because of HS2,
(00:01:32):
which is not what anyone is assuming,
(00:01:33):
and assuming it will save all of them,
(00:01:35):
which is also not what people are assuming,
(00:01:37):
then each bat is worth like £300,000,
(00:01:40):
which I suspect is not what the public values bats are.
(00:01:42):
And I suspect that what is actually going on here is there's a lot of pretextual
(00:01:46):
support for,
(00:01:47):
like,
(00:01:48):
they're using the support,
(00:01:49):
they're supporting them as a pretext for environmental restrictions because they
(00:01:54):
stop or delay or make more expensive a project they don't want to happen,
(00:01:58):
right?
(00:01:58):
And so there's this big apparent groundswell of bat support,
(00:02:01):
but people don't donate to bat charities.
(00:02:03):
They don't go and see bats.
(00:02:04):
They don't Google bats.
(00:02:05):
They don't do anything to do with bats.
(00:02:06):
They don't care about bats.
(00:02:08):
But they do care about bats stopping development they don't like.
(00:02:11):
And when you offer a supposed solution,
(00:02:14):
like Sam Dimitriou,
(00:02:15):
who's our friend,
(00:02:16):
has done a lot of work saying you could do offsetting.
(00:02:19):
Like, OK, fine, we're going to kill 300 bats here.
(00:02:21):
But what if we created a bat colony for like 30,000 bats over here if every time we did that?
(00:02:26):
I'll give you an example.
(00:02:27):
Nobody cares.
(00:02:28):
Trust gets,
(00:02:30):
I think,
(00:02:30):
£180,000 a year for all of its activities in the country for horseshoe bats,
(00:02:34):
which I believe are quite similar to Beckstein's bats.
(00:02:36):
And one of the projects within that it does,
(00:02:39):
one of them safeguarded 1,100 bats for significantly less than £180,000.
(00:02:43):
That's one of the projects they were doing.
(00:02:46):
Safeguarded almost four times as many bats.
(00:02:48):
So they're at least 1,000 times more efficient if you care about bats.
(00:02:52):
You should not...
(00:02:54):
try and block HS2 or make the build a bat tunnel,
(00:02:56):
you should give money to the Bat Conservation Trust.
(00:02:57):
And like, by the way, I actually believe that.
(00:02:59):
If you cared about bats, that's what you should do.
(00:03:00):
But people don't.
(00:03:01):
They use it as a pretext.
(00:03:02):
So I have a lot of sympathy for the pretext story.
(00:03:05):
Right.
(00:03:05):
So the argument being made by the kind of...
(00:03:09):
I want to come up with like a non-pejorative word for the people who disagree with
(00:03:14):
me.
(00:03:15):
But the argument made by the kind of... Let's call them beauty-skeptical-yimbies.
(00:03:19):
The beauty-skeptical-yimbies.
(00:03:21):
I mean, they would say that they like beauty.
(00:03:22):
They just think that beauty is not arrived at via regulation and things like that.
(00:03:26):
But yeah, so the anti-regulation, the anti-aesthetic regulation people...
(00:03:31):
basically say this is some combination of people don't care that much.
(00:03:37):
People who've never read a book about architecture or architectural heritage and
(00:03:42):
have never had a conversation about it and who have never expressed any interest in
(00:03:45):
any of these subjects.
(00:03:47):
suddenly discover this burning interest in getting the detailing exactly right and
(00:03:52):
the sensitive massing and sightlines and immunity and all these things and form a
(00:03:56):
whole society to campaign on these things and profess extraordinary distress that
(00:04:00):
is caused to them and their family if these things aren't respected.
(00:04:03):
And you're like, well, that is a pretext of some kind.
(00:04:08):
I think Ben's invented the adjective pretextual.
(00:04:10):
But I do think we should... I'm prepared to support it.
(00:04:13):
I'm prepared to back you on this.
(00:04:14):
I didn't invent it.
(00:04:15):
Matt Iglesias replied it to Sam.
(00:04:17):
He said it's pretextual.
(00:04:19):
And I quote tweeted him.
(00:04:20):
Well, for the purposes of this podcast, pretextual means used as a pretext.
(00:04:24):
Yeah.
(00:04:25):
Pretextual.
(00:04:26):
I assumed if such a... So that's one argument.
(00:04:28):
Yeah.
(00:04:29):
Another argument is this isn't pretextual,
(00:04:32):
but these rules won't actually get you the kind of things that people want.
(00:04:36):
There's no way to regulate, which is what I would say on loads of regulations.
(00:04:40):
I would say the thing that you want to achieve is noble, but this isn't the way to achieve it.
(00:04:44):
People have some obviously strong data points here.
(00:04:47):
In the world before 1900, there was very, very little design control.
(00:04:51):
And on the whole, they built almost nothing that seems ugly to us.
(00:04:54):
And today we build masses of stuff that seems ugly to us, even though most
(00:04:58):
development control systems have at least some degree of design control.
(00:05:00):
Is that right, though?
(00:05:01):
So I agree that it's not like there was a government building code design control system.
(00:05:06):
And most local governments didn't have design control.
(00:05:08):
I like some did.
(00:05:10):
You've shown me examples before of Friedenau in Berlin.
(00:05:14):
They had to have a certain amount of ornament on them.
(00:05:16):
And they had to... You've shown me kinds of roofs that you're allowed and stuff like that.
(00:05:21):
But putting that aside,
(00:05:23):
often it didn't matter because there were large landowners planning all the things
(00:05:26):
and they would...
(00:05:27):
they had design codes, right?
(00:05:28):
Like,
(00:05:29):
so in the Edinburgh Newtown,
(00:05:32):
when they were leasing that out,
(00:05:34):
they said,
(00:05:34):
okay,
(00:05:35):
we'll sell this to you,
(00:05:35):
but you have to build this,
(00:05:37):
roughly this on the plot.
(00:05:38):
Yes.
(00:05:39):
So that has been done, right?
(00:05:40):
That is true.
(00:05:40):
So private landowners,
(00:05:42):
when they were selling off large sites or selling leases on large sites to small
(00:05:47):
developers,
(00:05:47):
they completely routinely did design control it.
(00:05:52):
And I think, you know, that probably did lead to a better, I mean,
(00:05:55):
People at the time must have thought it led to a better centre of development or
(00:05:58):
they wouldn't have done it.
(00:05:59):
However,
(00:05:59):
most cities also have areas which were not in unified ownership and where there
(00:06:05):
weren't any such codes operating.
(00:06:08):
So Hampstead didn't have a unified landowner.
(00:06:12):
I mean, that was an affluent area.
(00:06:14):
But even so, without any such mechanism, ended up very nice.
(00:06:17):
Or like Clockenwell,
(00:06:18):
which was a poor neighbourhood and didn't have any unified ownership or any design
(00:06:22):
control.
(00:06:22):
Or just like most American cities.
(00:06:23):
Right.
(00:06:25):
Like Chicago.
(00:06:26):
All of Chicago built in the Victorian era is basically all good.
(00:06:28):
Like basically every building you go past is really nice.
(00:06:31):
Like actually Paris.
(00:06:32):
Yeah,
(00:06:32):
highly fragmented land ownership in France,
(00:06:35):
very limited design control,
(00:06:36):
contrary to popular myth,
(00:06:38):
and yet superb,
(00:06:40):
uniform,
(00:06:40):
Parisian classicism.
(00:06:41):
So the aesthetic, regulation, sceptical... The people who are angry on Twitter.
(00:06:49):
Sam's antagonist.
(00:06:51):
Yeah, yeah.
(00:06:52):
They've got some strong points.
(00:06:54):
And a related argument is this really overcomplicates things.
(00:06:58):
Like you are trying to... You're going from saying...
(00:07:01):
you should just get stuff built,
(00:07:03):
and building houses is really valuable,
(00:07:05):
and that's great,
(00:07:06):
you're kind of conceding not just the design point,
(00:07:09):
but every other point.
(00:07:11):
Because if you are accepting design controls,
(00:07:13):
then why wouldn't you accept that only union workers can build these things?
(00:07:17):
And why wouldn't you accept that they have to be built in these particular environmental ways?
(00:07:22):
All of these are part of the chipping away at the
(00:07:25):
a project being economically viable, they would say.
(00:07:28):
So I just thought it would be interesting for us to sit down and chat about that,
(00:07:32):
especially because I have,
(00:07:33):
I think,
(00:07:33):
shifted quite a lot in my views towards my top-down pro-regulatory,
(00:07:39):
yeah,
(00:07:39):
communitarian.
(00:07:41):
I used to be much more libertarian on this than I am,
(00:07:45):
largely under the kind of,
(00:07:48):
because you have shifted my mind quite a bit,
(00:07:50):
Samuel,
(00:07:50):
and you as well,
(00:07:51):
Ben.
(00:07:53):
So let me give the case for why you should,
(00:07:55):
even though I think pretextual things are very important,
(00:07:58):
why I think it's still quite a good case and different from imposing labour
(00:08:03):
standards,
(00:08:03):
the environmental stuff.
(00:08:04):
I think that as YIMBYs or pro-building people,
(00:08:08):
we actually can't make coalitions with those guys and get lots of homes built,
(00:08:12):
whereas we actually can on design things.
(00:08:14):
So the case in favour...
(00:08:16):
from my perspective, is this.
(00:08:18):
In 1930,
(00:08:19):
or like pick a different date,
(00:08:20):
but in basically every country in the world,
(00:08:22):
everyone thought,
(00:08:23):
well,
(00:08:24):
it's sad sometimes when a building gets destroyed.
(00:08:26):
This particular piece of heritage is valuable in some way.
(00:08:30):
But ultimately, new buildings are better than older buildings.
(00:08:33):
They're like newer phones or newer cars.
(00:08:35):
They're just better.
(00:08:35):
They've got like better amenities.
(00:08:37):
They have all the new technological things.
(00:08:40):
There might be a,
(00:08:41):
you know,
(00:08:41):
a dumbwaiter or a lazy Susan,
(00:08:43):
or they might have proper insulation or like they might have,
(00:08:47):
wow,
(00:08:47):
they've got heating in the walls.
(00:08:49):
And now we do have some features like that.
(00:08:51):
But in one respect, respect of aesthetics, basically everyone thinks
(00:08:57):
with pretty good reason that if you demolish a nice old building,
(00:09:00):
it will become a worse new building in respect of aesthetics.
(00:09:04):
And that's just the normal view.
(00:09:05):
And I...
(00:09:07):
That's firstly the view I've experienced all normal people who are not hardcore
(00:09:13):
aesthetes in the area,
(00:09:14):
because there's a slight difference for people who have studied it very heavily.
(00:09:16):
They often have different views.
(00:09:18):
But it's firstly my anecdotal experience,
(00:09:20):
but also Samuel and I have worked on loads of different pieces of evidence,
(00:09:24):
actually asking people,
(00:09:25):
doing surveys.
(00:09:26):
About 80% of the public has roughly this view.
(00:09:29):
If you ask them, here are 10 hospitals, we don't tell them anything else about them.
(00:09:33):
Can you rank them how much you like them?
(00:09:34):
They basically rank oldest to newest hospitals.
(00:09:37):
Not exactly, but they basically rank oldest and newest in how much they like them.
(00:09:41):
Certainly the post-1945 ones do strictly worse than the pre-1914 ones.
(00:09:45):
Yeah, and it's true for American city halls.
(00:09:49):
You see it in everything.
(00:09:50):
It's very famous.
(00:09:50):
Everyone knows about it.
(00:09:51):
But I think this is somewhat important that everyone's baseline background feeling
(00:09:58):
is that new buildings are worse in this important respect that they can see.
(00:10:03):
And I don't think,
(00:10:05):
so the way I'd make this consistent with my,
(00:10:06):
it's still mostly pretextual in any individual case.
(00:10:09):
I think that in any individual case,
(00:10:11):
the reasons why you will be pro or anti-development,
(00:10:14):
we usually have like a much wider range of things going into them.
(00:10:17):
Like you're worried about who might move in or there's light,
(00:10:19):
there are light issues or congestion or parking,
(00:10:22):
all the other kinds of externalities that are real,
(00:10:24):
but we think are less important than actually building the homes.
(00:10:27):
Yeah.
(00:10:30):
So that's true.
(00:10:31):
But then across the country,
(00:10:32):
when you're considering development in general,
(00:10:34):
what do I feel about it?
(00:10:35):
I think the aesthetic question comes in much more there.
(00:10:38):
How positively do I feel about development as a general phenomenon?
(00:10:42):
We've often thought with a policy like street boats,
(00:10:46):
people on lots of neighbouring streets will be annoyed that a street boat's
(00:10:48):
happened and there's a load of development happening near them.
(00:10:52):
If the development's attractive, they're still going to be annoyed about it.
(00:10:54):
But when the first pictures hit the national papers of the development being done,
(00:10:59):
if it looks really ugly and people all around the country think,
(00:11:02):
like,
(00:11:03):
that's a bad thing that's happening.
(00:11:05):
That's not a nice thing.
(00:11:07):
That will do a lot of harm to the policy and raise the risks of it being revoked
(00:11:11):
through mechanisms of national politics.
(00:11:14):
Whereas people look at it like, well, can't argue.
(00:11:16):
It's a beautiful development they've done.
(00:11:18):
then it was in a slightly stronger position.
(00:11:21):
Is there any evidence for that, though?
(00:11:22):
Because the anti... I don't know what I'm going to call these people.
(00:11:26):
The people who were angry at me, they basically just don't think people care that much.
(00:11:29):
Well,
(00:11:30):
I mean,
(00:11:31):
this is an anecdote,
(00:11:32):
but certainly,
(00:11:34):
if ever we do any kind of...
(00:11:38):
present any images of suburban densification on Twitter,
(00:11:42):
or funnel them through the legacy media...
(00:11:47):
you have to choose extremely carefully.
(00:11:51):
And I'm totally sure that the effect that the images have is hugely variable
(00:11:57):
depending on how good the renderings are and how attractive the development looks.
(00:12:00):
Let me give you an example.
(00:12:01):
If it looks like...
(00:12:03):
You can find these occasional examples of a beautiful city like Buenos Aires,
(00:12:08):
where beautiful Belle Epoque city,
(00:12:11):
and then these ugly modern buildings that are tearing through the old fabric.
(00:12:15):
But they are densification, totally legitimate densification.
(00:12:18):
If you started presenting those as like,
(00:12:20):
wow,
(00:12:20):
look at my inspiring example of densification,
(00:12:23):
you would get...
(00:12:23):
A lot of your natural supporters would go quiet because they'd be like,
(00:12:28):
well,
(00:12:29):
I am technically in favour of that,
(00:12:31):
but I'm not going to be enthusiastic.
(00:12:32):
And then lots of other people get really riled up about it.
(00:12:35):
Whereas if you show the new building that's actually visually better than the old
(00:12:37):
building,
(00:12:38):
people respond...
(00:12:39):
This is a very specific context.
(00:12:41):
This is where people have no stake.
(00:12:43):
It may not even be a real street or it's a street in another country or whatever it might be.
(00:12:47):
And it's just like,
(00:12:47):
do they get some heed-ons out of commenting favourably or criticising this on
(00:12:51):
Twitter?
(00:12:51):
But in that context,
(00:12:53):
which is important for national politics in the ways that our democracies work...
(00:12:58):
like, whether it's a pleasing image or an ugly image, is very significant.
(00:13:01):
So I think that's one of the... I don't think that's the only argument.
(00:13:03):
I do think that is a key argument in favour.
(00:13:06):
Not to over-index on,
(00:13:08):
like,
(00:13:08):
who follows me on Twitter,
(00:13:10):
but you remember when the Cambridge expansion was announced?
(00:13:14):
Yeah.
(00:13:14):
And...
(00:13:15):
A small group of people, including me, went on Mid Journey, which was pretty new at the time.
(00:13:19):
And at that point, people weren't really used to AI-generated imagery.
(00:13:23):
And we told Mid Journey,
(00:13:26):
give me six-story Victorian-style mansion flats with a modern tram outside,
(00:13:31):
and just tweeted these.
(00:13:32):
And this was totally unauthorized, had nothing to do with the announcement.
(00:13:35):
But there was suddenly this kind of groundswell of like,
(00:13:38):
wow,
(00:13:38):
this is actually quite a cool project.
(00:13:41):
And the main argument against was, it won't look like that.
(00:13:44):
It's not going to look like that.
(00:13:45):
That's what we said.
(00:13:47):
Yeah,
(00:13:48):
we were told by government people and NHLG people they were like,
(00:13:51):
oh yeah,
(00:13:51):
that totally transformed the way it landed.
(00:13:53):
So by the way, I've got an example on the flip side.
(00:13:56):
So obviously we've talked about in the past,
(00:13:59):
New Zealand has done some impressive upzoning,
(00:14:02):
some of which have gone through,
(00:14:03):
some of which haven't gone through completely.
(00:14:05):
And
(00:14:06):
During that time,
(00:14:07):
I was trying to find some images of what has actually been done because they did it
(00:14:10):
in stages.
(00:14:11):
So the original Auckland city plan redo was in 2016, the unitary plan.
(00:14:16):
And we were writing this in 2021 or 22 or something, maybe 23, whatever.
(00:14:21):
And I wanted to see what happened from the early stages and which they were
(00:14:24):
standing around the country.
(00:14:25):
And I have to say that basically everything was at best,
(00:14:29):
like your two out of 10,
(00:14:29):
three out of 10,
(00:14:30):
plasticky,
(00:14:32):
you know,
(00:14:32):
five,
(00:14:33):
what Americans would call,
(00:14:34):
like the standard five over one type.
(00:14:35):
Yeah.
(00:14:35):
Yeah.
(00:14:36):
I'm probably in favour of many of them, but reluctantly so.
(00:14:41):
But interestingly...
(00:14:42):
Having exactly the experience of like,
(00:14:43):
yes,
(00:14:44):
I am committed to this because of my background convictions,
(00:14:46):
although I really am not feeling happy and excited about supporting them.
(00:14:49):
But interestingly,
(00:14:50):
the main residence group that was campaigning against the extensions of the
(00:14:54):
upzonings,
(00:14:55):
they didn't use these generic ones.
(00:14:57):
They found some extremely ugly,
(00:14:59):
like pure flat,
(00:15:02):
raw concrete wall with no window front ones that used up every inch of the space
(00:15:07):
they were allowed to move into.
(00:15:08):
Award winning, award winning.
(00:15:09):
Surely this is going to win like New Zealand architecture, award of the year.
(00:15:13):
And it was done to like,
(00:15:14):
right next to it on both sides,
(00:15:15):
implying what has been destroyed before,
(00:15:17):
were extremely beautiful,
(00:15:19):
like ornate wood carving Victorian bungalows.
(00:15:22):
And in my head, I'm like, well, you know, this density is good, but at what cost?
(00:15:26):
Think of the GDP.
(00:15:28):
And I thought, there's a reason why their propaganda image is not...
(00:15:31):
oh, we're building a more beautiful house, but it's much bigger and we hate bigger things.
(00:15:36):
And like, yes, there's pretext mixed in there.
(00:15:38):
But the reason why that's important is that unlike...
(00:15:43):
Well, we can debate this, but this is my opinion.
(00:15:45):
Unlike the questions about affordability,
(00:15:49):
where ultimately it makes housing less housing pencil,
(00:15:53):
like less viable to build housing under that.
(00:15:55):
Or obviously,
(00:15:56):
union labor in San Francisco,
(00:15:57):
the average contractor is paid something like $170,000 a year.
(00:15:59):
So they have to pay the minimum cost to build a house. $170,000.
(00:16:05):
Yeah,
(00:16:06):
so the minimum cost to build a house is like,
(00:16:08):
literally,
(00:16:09):
if you build the smallest legal house,
(00:16:10):
which is about as big as a parking space,
(00:16:12):
it would still cost you $70,000 to build it.
(00:16:15):
And that's as big as a parking space.
(00:16:18):
It's impressive that they have such low limits.
(00:16:20):
But if you build the average American family house, it would cost like $2 million.
(00:16:25):
And that's just the baseline, the cheapest possible house of the average American.
(00:16:29):
Anyway...
(00:16:30):
Those ones, we can't compromise with them.
(00:16:32):
They inherently reduce the amount of buildable volume and the affordability of that
(00:16:35):
buildable volume.
(00:16:37):
I believe that firstly,
(00:16:39):
as we can see from the UK,
(00:16:41):
older areas are often much denser than what we do now.
(00:16:45):
It is just completely possible to build...
(00:16:47):
buildings that people find popular,
(00:16:49):
that are also five or seven story buildings that fill out the entire plot and fit
(00:16:54):
on enormous amounts of floor space.
(00:16:56):
So we don't actually have to lose volume at all, which is a very important consideration to me.
(00:17:00):
We're not necessarily losing any of the prize in terms of buildable volume.
(00:17:04):
That wouldn't be good enough on its own if it was much more expensive,
(00:17:07):
but it's just not much more expensive.
(00:17:09):
In fact, the cheapest housing type in the UK is like quasi-traditional rubbish,
(00:17:13):
traditional,
(00:17:14):
like relatively badly done,
(00:17:15):
although getting better every year and constrained mostly by like building codes.
(00:17:19):
We should get onto building codes.
(00:17:20):
But like ultimately building quite popular houses,
(00:17:23):
like the best red row houses,
(00:17:24):
one of the mass house builders in the UK,
(00:17:26):
basically popular.
(00:17:27):
The best mass house builder houses in the US are basically popular.
(00:17:31):
They're basically designed that most people like
(00:17:33):
Not the best design that we would think we would share pictures of or whatever,
(00:17:38):
but they're completely fine.
(00:17:40):
So I think that it's just not the case that it's more expensive.
(00:17:45):
And it's also not the case- Well, it's a little bit more expensive.
(00:17:47):
The figure that people bandy...
(00:17:50):
I mean,
(00:17:51):
we've got...
(00:17:52):
Kobe Lefkowitz has just agreed to write for us in the issue up to next on how
(00:17:57):
much...
(00:17:57):
What's the price of beauty?
(00:17:58):
How much does it cost to build?
(00:18:00):
So I await his answer on the exact...
(00:18:04):
But the figure that I get in the British building industry is like 10% more,
(00:18:07):
maybe 15% more to do something which is...
(00:18:12):
a really nice piece of work where everyone was like,
(00:18:15):
wow,
(00:18:15):
that's a very handsome building,
(00:18:17):
rather than the cut price per SIM version or something.
(00:18:20):
Of course,
(00:18:21):
you're going to lease some of that back in higher property value,
(00:18:24):
and you may even get more than 15% back in property.
(00:18:30):
Which raises the obvious question is, do you actually need rules?
(00:18:35):
Why doesn't this happen already,
(00:18:36):
given that people do actually prefer to live in houses,
(00:18:38):
or seem to prefer to live in houses that look nice?
(00:18:42):
In a way, there's a knockdown argument in favour of some kind of design control.
(00:18:49):
which is completely standard practice among large private landowners when they are
(00:18:55):
different to the developer.
(00:18:57):
They lease out plots to developers and development is done by people who are different to them.
(00:19:02):
Completely standard for them to impose some kind of private sector design coding
(00:19:05):
and always has been going back through the centuries.
(00:19:08):
So that is because they internalise the externalities of ugly buildings.
(00:19:13):
If they
(00:19:14):
small builders that they're giving out plots to build these really like ugly shoddy
(00:19:18):
buildings that might in some cases be profit maximizing for those builders but they
(00:19:22):
blight all the properties around them and the underlying landlord cares about the
(00:19:25):
properties around them because they also own the properties around them and so they
(00:19:28):
require people to respect a certain standard.
(00:19:30):
Ben mentioned places like Edinburgh Newtown earlier and there's countless examples
(00:19:34):
going back through history.
(00:19:36):
So that seems to me like if our interest is in maximizing social value
(00:19:42):
Basically, it's a knock-down argument.
(00:19:43):
The market does choose coding to some extent.
(00:19:47):
When there's unified land ownership.
(00:19:49):
When there's unified land ownership,
(00:19:50):
which is the test case for unified land ownership,
(00:19:56):
but the building is being done by someone different to the unified landowner,
(00:19:59):
and therefore the unified landowner has to use a mechanism like a code in order to
(00:20:02):
control their behaviour.
(00:20:03):
Which is a slightly niche set of circumstances,
(00:20:05):
but historically that arose quite often because in some countries you had lots of
(00:20:08):
large landowners
(00:20:10):
But development tended to be done by very small builders for various reasons.
(00:20:14):
And so this sort of code structure occurs quite often.
(00:20:18):
So that's a very strong argument for doing some kind of coding in cases of
(00:20:22):
fragmented ownership in order to replicate the conditions of unified ownership.
(00:20:28):
The obvious issue is there are principal agent problems with public bodies when
(00:20:33):
they impose codes,
(00:20:34):
and we notice that when public bodies do impose,
(00:20:39):
all public bodies do have the power to impose codes whenever they like.
(00:20:43):
All across the West, something like this, I guess, is true.
(00:20:46):
But they do so either sparingly or they often do it badly.
(00:20:54):
And sometimes the codes even seem to make the developments more unpopular after
(00:20:57):
they've been introduced and maybe even a value destroying...
(00:21:01):
Over and above the bill cost effect,
(00:21:03):
value destroying in terms of making a more unpopular product.
(00:21:05):
So I think that's,
(00:21:07):
to my view,
(00:21:08):
the steel man argument against public design codes nowadays,
(00:21:12):
which is the public officials put in control of them,
(00:21:16):
do not code for popular design very effectively.
(00:21:18):
This is what I wanted to get onto, which is actual existing design controls are...
(00:21:26):
normally pretty bad.
(00:21:27):
They're normally very discretionary,
(00:21:29):
for one thing,
(00:21:30):
and I'd like to get into what those actually are,
(00:21:33):
and also then talk about what might work.
(00:21:36):
We were just in Berkeley, or I was in Berkeley anyway, and it's a very ugly place.
(00:21:43):
No offence to the people who live there,
(00:21:44):
I'm sure it's lovely in lots of ways,
(00:21:46):
but it doesn't feel like the richest place in the world.
(00:21:48):
It feels like a poorer part of a second-tier American city.
(00:21:54):
And yet,
(00:21:55):
it was the first place to introduce the kind of modern controls of what you can
(00:21:59):
build,
(00:22:00):
as we know them in the second half of the 20th century.
(00:22:05):
it feels like it's falling apart.
(00:22:07):
One of the reasons is that there's lots of preservationism.
(00:22:10):
There's lots of control over,
(00:22:11):
you can't demolish this,
(00:22:12):
or if you want to build something,
(00:22:14):
it has to be approved by a design committee.
(00:22:17):
The building I tweeted was approved by a design committee.
(00:22:22):
It was in a conservation area in Kennington, in London.
(00:22:26):
A conservation area is meant to say,
(00:22:29):
It's meant to be a design code,
(00:22:30):
but the organization that exists through...
(00:22:33):
I mean,
(00:22:34):
very strictly,
(00:22:34):
it's not a...
(00:22:35):
So,
(00:22:35):
like,
(00:22:36):
design code is a particular kind of design control system where you have precise,
(00:22:41):
like,
(00:22:42):
visual or numerical controls.
(00:22:43):
Yeah.
(00:22:44):
Lots of countries,
(00:22:45):
well,
(00:22:45):
those are used sometimes,
(00:22:46):
but often we will have,
(00:22:48):
a conservation area will have a special document which sets out a bunch of policies
(00:22:52):
which will be very hazily worded and will say,
(00:22:55):
oh,
(00:22:55):
you must respect the scale or must use appropriate detailing in such and such
(00:22:58):
cases.
(00:22:59):
And then it will be left to the...
(00:23:01):
But a conservation area is kind of meant to give some sort of design coherence.
(00:23:06):
You're obviously basically correct.
(00:23:07):
I'm being pedantic.
(00:23:07):
Yeah.
(00:23:08):
And I went through the planning process, so the approvals process for this.
(00:23:14):
And there's something like 35 documents submitted over the course of more than a
(00:23:18):
year to get this thing approved.
(00:23:21):
And I mean, I don't actually know why they wanted to do this, because it's so ugly.
(00:23:25):
So it looks just terrible.
(00:23:27):
We'll flash it up on the screen, but it looks...
(00:23:31):
It looks unbelievably bad.
(00:23:32):
Nobody could possibly think this looks good.
(00:23:35):
But there was a process for that.
(00:23:37):
There were rules,
(00:23:38):
and this is the result of those rules,
(00:23:41):
which seems like a really strong argument against having those rules,
(00:23:43):
right?
(00:23:44):
Yeah.
(00:23:44):
I mean,
(00:23:45):
I was told in Islington,
(00:23:46):
maybe,
(00:23:47):
that the conservation policy is generally...
(00:23:51):
They generally don't allow anything to people,
(00:23:53):
but if they do allow little extensions to old buildings,
(00:23:56):
the extensions have to be in a clearly legible,
(00:23:59):
modernist...
(00:24:01):
You need to be able to see that it's a modern building by putting it in a modernist
(00:24:03):
style.
(00:24:04):
So you would not be allowed to add a classical extension to a classical building
(00:24:08):
from the 19th century.
(00:24:09):
You'd have to add something which was, you know, provocatively, et cetera, et cetera.
(00:24:12):
And
(00:24:13):
It's a very strange thing for the British state to be imposing on the people.
(00:24:17):
What an odd regulation.
(00:24:20):
So there's clearly quite a deep problem there.
(00:24:26):
My own view is,
(00:24:27):
at least in respect of aesthetics,
(00:24:28):
conservation areas probably are a net benefit.
(00:24:31):
Just because although the rules are often quite weird and sometimes bizarre and despotic...
(00:24:38):
They do stop so much clearly ugly stuff that probably if you go around a
(00:24:46):
conservation area in Britain,
(00:24:48):
you'll generally think,
(00:24:49):
yeah,
(00:24:49):
this is a more attractive place than a non-conservation area.
(00:24:54):
But they're performing much less well than they could.
(00:24:57):
And they're performing best when it comes to banning ugly stuff rather than when it
(00:25:01):
comes to specifically enabling beautiful stuff,
(00:25:04):
which is really something public authorities,
(00:25:07):
I think,
(00:25:07):
are very weak at.
(00:25:08):
Yeah.
(00:25:10):
So what I'm interested in and what I personally have in mind is some...
(00:25:17):
So I think one thing that we haven't mentioned is building codes.
(00:25:20):
So a lot of the reason that...
(00:25:22):
Samuel,
(00:25:22):
you're always tweeting these pictures of crazy,
(00:25:25):
horrible new houses that have tiny windows that are weirdly high up above the
(00:25:30):
ground.
(00:25:31):
And all of this is...
(00:25:32):
This isn't just because the developer wants to build a disgusting building.
(00:25:35):
It's because there are rules about energy efficiency,
(00:25:38):
and there are rules about safety,
(00:25:39):
which say you can't have air conditioning,
(00:25:41):
but also the windows can't open this much.
(00:25:44):
And you have to be careful about the window.
(00:25:45):
I think it's like to stop children falling out or something.
(00:25:48):
I guess.
(00:25:49):
The window has to be raised this much above the ground and things like that.
(00:25:52):
99% of the building stock doesn't comply with this, but the idea is new buildings should.
(00:25:58):
That's one reason.
(00:26:00):
So there might be a really pure libertarian – and by the way,
(00:26:02):
I'm not a libertarian on this – there might be a pure libertarian argument,
(00:26:06):
which is if you take all those rules away,
(00:26:07):
then the market will provide the good stuff.
(00:26:11):
There might be another argument,
(00:26:12):
which I am sympathetic to,
(00:26:13):
which is the problem is that we have a discretionary system rather than a kind of
(00:26:17):
rules-based system where there's basically a very clear kind of set of things
(00:26:24):
about,
(00:26:24):
like,
(00:26:24):
if you want to build this,
(00:26:25):
then you can't go ahead and you're not going to have to get approval from anybody
(00:26:29):
except to kind of tick the box that you have built it in this particular way.
(00:26:35):
And then there's a question of who decides what that is.
(00:26:37):
And where I come out,
(00:26:38):
and I think where you guys come out,
(00:26:40):
but tell me what you think,
(00:26:42):
is this is an area where ultra-local,
(00:26:46):
hyper-local democracy works quite well,
(00:26:48):
because it kind of acts as a proxy for the unified landowner that you used to have.
(00:26:53):
Duncan Stott,
(00:26:53):
who's a,
(00:26:54):
I don't think I've ever met him,
(00:26:55):
but he's like a guy on Twitter who I like a lot and is a kind of very big kind of
(00:27:00):
pro-building guy.
(00:27:01):
He argued that there should be a kind of,
(00:27:03):
essentially like a kind of collective land,
(00:27:05):
there should be unified land ownership,
(00:27:07):
but it should be done on kind of
(00:27:09):
collective local locals own the land rather than having what we have right now,
(00:27:14):
which is like you own your little plot.
(00:27:16):
That would be like a common hold.
(00:27:18):
They're bringing common hold for buildings,
(00:27:20):
which is so we previously you have leasehold where you there's like a freeholder of
(00:27:24):
the whole of the tall building and your flat is a leasehold.
(00:27:27):
So you've got it for a certain period of time and then
(00:27:29):
various things have happened over time so that you can renew that and so on.
(00:27:32):
But another thing that you can have is a share of ownership of the overall building
(00:27:36):
or common hold where you have a specific structure,
(00:27:39):
a bit like condominiums in the US that you're in.
(00:27:41):
Yeah.
(00:27:41):
Right.
(00:27:41):
So the old system,
(00:27:43):
the old unified ownership design codes were when the freeholders of these great
(00:27:47):
estates were imposing design restrictions on the leaseholders who quasi-owned the
(00:27:52):
individual properties.
(00:27:53):
and the Ben or Sam system would be a commonhold great estate.
(00:27:59):
I'm not advocating that, but Duncan Stott's argument was that.
(00:28:04):
The underlying neighbourhood is owned by a collective where all the residents have
(00:28:10):
some shares in this company,
(00:28:12):
and then the individual properties have some sort of leasehold style arrangement
(00:28:16):
for the
(00:28:17):
By the way, that does work.
(00:28:19):
Like in microeconomic theory, that seems like the correct system.
(00:28:21):
I don't think it's just theory.
(00:28:22):
So there are systems like this that exist, especially for commercial property.
(00:28:27):
So business improvement districts are basically this.
(00:28:30):
So you set it up.
(00:28:31):
You have to get usually, I mean, really, it varies between countries.
(00:28:33):
But by and large, they have a rule that you have to get...
(00:28:37):
two-thirds by property value and two-thirds of the overall businesses,
(00:28:41):
so double threshold,
(00:28:42):
to approve the creation of a bid,
(00:28:44):
business improvement district bid,
(00:28:46):
and the bid will be given the power to raise funds from the people as a taxation
(00:28:53):
kind of thing,
(00:28:54):
where they owe them money,
(00:28:55):
and then use that to make improvements,
(00:28:57):
and also enforce various things like your litter can't be out in certain times,
(00:29:01):
etc.,
(00:29:01):
etc.,
(00:29:02):
And we have something like this in lots of different countries around the world.
(00:29:06):
And also we have institutions a bit like that running many of our best new public spaces.
(00:29:11):
So like Coal Drops Yard or what's the new square in London Bridge next to Borough
(00:29:17):
Market with Barifina and stuff,
(00:29:20):
that new area there.
(00:29:21):
These are all run by these kinds of systems.
(00:29:24):
And they all have pretty strict,
(00:29:25):
like you don't see any peeling paint on the outsides of their facades.
(00:29:28):
They always look pretty gleaming.
(00:29:30):
And they usually resurface the areas.
(00:29:32):
Like in Chelsea,
(00:29:33):
if you've been to the meatpacking district near Chelsea Market in New York,
(00:29:36):
sorry,
(00:29:36):
in Chelsea,
(00:29:37):
New York,
(00:29:37):
they've resurfaced them all back into stone sets,
(00:29:40):
like what some people call cobbles.
(00:29:42):
And then they've got like nice stone flagstones.
(00:29:45):
I like your commitment to not calling them cobble stones.
(00:29:48):
Cobble stones are specifically the round bulbous stones that are really hard to walk on.
(00:29:51):
Sets being the nice square stones.
(00:29:53):
Yeah.
(00:29:53):
The cobblestones come from the river, whereas sets are just like stones.
(00:29:58):
Cobblestones are very rarely actually used because they're extremely impractical
(00:30:01):
for any purpose,
(00:30:02):
whereas sets are a perfectly good way of facing the street.
(00:30:04):
Yeah.
(00:30:06):
But this bit of Chelsea has a really nice bid.
(00:30:08):
It looks amazing.
(00:30:09):
It's so much... New York is very, very squalid.
(00:30:12):
Even London is a squalid city by East Asian standards, but...
(00:30:17):
New York is an extremely squalid city by London standards.
(00:30:19):
It's very smelly.
(00:30:20):
It's very dirty.
(00:30:22):
And Chelsea markets,
(00:30:24):
not just because it's wealthy,
(00:30:25):
because the other bits of Chelsea are not like this,
(00:30:26):
even though they're clearly more upmarket than other places.
(00:30:29):
The bit run by the bid is amazing.
(00:30:32):
Even their street lamps are attached to buildings instead of coming up in a pole.
(00:30:35):
All stuff like that.
(00:30:36):
There aren't road markings unless they're absolutely necessary.
(00:30:39):
It's amazing.
(00:30:40):
And so this kind of system does work.
(00:30:42):
There's something like this in Bermondsey.
(00:30:44):
There's a... I'm sure... I mean...
(00:30:47):
listeners will not have heard about my banh mi,
(00:30:50):
but there's a guy on TikTok who reviews banh mi sandwiches,
(00:30:54):
which is a Vietnamese sandwich in London,
(00:30:56):
and he's basically gone to every good banh mi place.
(00:30:58):
And the second best one,
(00:31:00):
the best one is in Borough,
(00:31:02):
the second best one is in Bermondsey,
(00:31:04):
and it's about an hour away from where I live,
(00:31:06):
so every so often I go there with my son.
(00:31:08):
And it's in a business improvement district,
(00:31:10):
and it's really noticeably better than,
(00:31:12):
it's got a games,
(00:31:14):
I'm sure this is in
(00:31:15):
I'm sure the bid didn't set up the shop, but it's got a kind of fantasy Warhammer type shop.
(00:31:22):
And the whole place just feels really different to the rest of South London.
(00:31:27):
A lot of South London is fairly squalid feeling compared to the rest of London.
(00:31:30):
I live there, so I can say that.
(00:31:32):
Peckham also tried to do,
(00:31:33):
I think,
(00:31:33):
a business improvement district where they changed the signs.
(00:31:36):
And they,
(00:31:36):
like,
(00:31:37):
you know,
(00:31:37):
the kind of plasticky,
(00:31:38):
really plasticky,
(00:31:39):
horrible signs that you get in a lot of places.
(00:31:42):
For whatever reason,
(00:31:42):
on some street in Peckham,
(00:31:43):
they replaced them with like wooden signs with painted frontage.
(00:31:47):
And it looks much better.
(00:31:49):
So there are very few places that have the power to do this in a residential neighbourhood.
(00:31:53):
Like,
(00:31:54):
I don't actually know of anywhere that properly has this power for residential
(00:31:59):
areas,
(00:32:00):
that has the power for...
(00:32:02):
An interesting feature of the world is that it's easy to set up local governments
(00:32:06):
in places where no one currently lives.
(00:32:08):
Right.
(00:32:08):
And they can be extremely demanding if everyone moves into them voluntarily.
(00:32:11):
So now about between two thirds and three quarters of Americans opt into homeowners
(00:32:16):
associations.
(00:32:17):
Right.
(00:32:17):
So they used to not exist.
(00:32:19):
And then they steadily increase as more of the market is more and more and more and
(00:32:21):
more and more people want to opt into them.
(00:32:23):
They impose incredibly strict design standards.
(00:32:25):
They'll sue you if you have like the wrong kind of vegetables in your back garden.
(00:32:27):
Yeah, they can be incredibly demanding and they charge you a lot of money just to exist.
(00:32:33):
And people nevertheless opt into them and they are value maximising.
(00:32:36):
You save money by opting in total because your house is more valuable.
(00:32:40):
Unimpeachable market data that Americans actually want an extremely invasive,
(00:32:44):
demanding local government.
(00:32:46):
Yeah, it's like complete busybodyism.
(00:32:48):
But like, it's actually what people want.
(00:32:50):
And it makes a neighbourhood that is immaculate.
(00:32:53):
And everything is like, everything is clean, paint is all being done, etc, etc.
(00:32:58):
Anyway, point I make by that, it's easy to create them a new space.
(00:33:00):
Every country finds it easy to set up new government institutions if you're moving
(00:33:04):
into new territory.
(00:33:05):
And institutions a bit like this exist in England and so on, right?
(00:33:07):
Estate management companies are totally
(00:33:08):
They do them on all new building now and they're much better kept up than the ones
(00:33:11):
built 30 years ago because they started doing it.
(00:33:13):
But what's really difficult and has basically never been done in any country as far
(00:33:18):
as I know is creating new local government institutions within existing cities.
(00:33:23):
So the economist Donald Shoup,
(00:33:25):
who recently died,
(00:33:26):
had loads of ideas for doing stuff like this,
(00:33:28):
like parking benefit districts are a famous one.
(00:33:30):
Yeah.
(00:33:30):
Where a local area decides to take control of its parking and they can decide to
(00:33:34):
sell some of it off.
(00:33:35):
They can raise the parking fees or impose fees if it's all free and then use the
(00:33:40):
money for community projects or a security guard or to clean the streets or
(00:33:43):
whatever they like.
(00:33:45):
And they have been implemented, but rarely.
(00:33:48):
So creating new local government institutions in existing places is really difficult.
(00:33:51):
I don't know of anywhere that has a resident improvement district.
(00:33:54):
But I think they should be invented because there are lots of places where the
(00:33:58):
traditional local government forms are just not providing local government in this
(00:34:01):
sense.
(00:34:02):
And they, you know, street like my street.
(00:34:05):
I live in Blackheath, which is a nice bit of London in many respects.
(00:34:09):
We're giving away so much, so much like sensitive detail about where we live.
(00:34:13):
I think it says Blackheath on my Twitter account.
(00:34:14):
So it's OK.
(00:34:17):
Yes.
(00:34:17):
And, you know, there are thousands of houses there.
(00:34:19):
No one's going to find me.
(00:34:22):
They can follow me around, I suppose, if they're a real crazy person.
(00:34:27):
You go down my street and it's broken concrete composite from like three different eras.
(00:34:31):
There were those horrible... So there were flagstones on all pavements in London, right?
(00:34:35):
Someone at some point has stolen them and sold them off for people's private drives
(00:34:39):
and stuff like that.
(00:34:40):
There used to be nice York flagstones everywhere on all the old streets.
(00:34:44):
They're gone like on my street.
(00:34:45):
How do you steal a flagstone?
(00:34:47):
The builders,
(00:34:48):
they get contractors come in and take them all out and then put in the concrete
(00:34:51):
ones.
(00:34:52):
It happens to people's streets quite often.
(00:34:54):
It's like a kind of small-scale council corruption that happened over the last 50 years.
(00:34:59):
So the council permits them to do it?
(00:35:01):
I think someone on the council permits them to do it and says like, oh, it's not safe.
(00:35:04):
We need to get rid of these old stones or something like that.
(00:35:07):
Well, I live in a conservation area in Islington, which is very nice to maintain.
(00:35:10):
Yeah.
(00:35:11):
I actually wonder if conservation areas are partly some kind of they've evolved
(00:35:17):
sort of to provide a premium version of design control for people who are willing
(00:35:21):
to pay for it.
(00:35:22):
It's sort of kind of expensive to live in a conservation area.
(00:35:24):
It means you have to put in loads of planning applications,
(00:35:26):
which you otherwise wouldn't have to do.
(00:35:27):
And there's some stuff you can't do.
(00:35:28):
And you have to have like more expensive types of windows and badly insulated
(00:35:33):
houses,
(00:35:33):
et cetera,
(00:35:33):
et cetera,
(00:35:33):
et cetera.
(00:35:34):
But they're basically popular with their residents.
(00:35:37):
I wonder if that's the socialist local government system in England kind of
(00:35:43):
emulating the exclusionary homeowner associations in the United States and
(00:35:46):
providing a premium local government service to people.
(00:35:50):
suspect there's something a bit like that going on implicitly?
(00:35:53):
So I do think a lot of the beauty things can be done,
(00:35:56):
but I'm not super...
(00:35:57):
I definitely don't think that there's anything we could come up with that would
(00:36:01):
make sure all the buildings were really high standard all the time.
(00:36:04):
One thing that I'm a bit wistful for...
(00:36:08):
I'll start by saying I did a tweet and I felt bad because I really like Mark Carney.
(00:36:11):
I've always liked him as an international figure.
(00:36:14):
And when he was in charge of the Bank of England, I thought, this is our moment.
(00:36:17):
We're going to bring in nominal GDP targeting.
(00:36:18):
It's going to be the greatest thing ever.
(00:36:20):
It didn't happen, but I don't think it was his fault.
(00:36:21):
I think it was thanks to him that nominal GDP targeting was even on the internet.
(00:36:26):
It was so close to bringing in.
(00:36:29):
Insiders I've talked to since then have suggested to me that he almost got it over the line.
(00:36:33):
It was like, it was near run thing.
(00:36:34):
So I've always loved him for that reason.
(00:36:36):
And I thought like quite impressive how he just came in and became PM of Canada in
(00:36:40):
such a short period of time.
(00:36:42):
So I felt,
(00:36:42):
I was like,
(00:36:43):
shall I send this tweet quote tweeting him and like,
(00:36:45):
you know,
(00:36:45):
shitting on him really.
(00:36:47):
Because he did, they announced that they'd done a pattern book basically.
(00:36:51):
So a pattern book of,
(00:36:53):
50 designs of houses that work in every Canadian building code.
(00:36:57):
And they had a GIF where they flashed through them all, right?
(00:37:01):
And every single one was not just ugly, but like a 3, 2, 1 out of 10 style building.
(00:37:06):
It was so bad.
(00:37:08):
They were like, you were trying hard.
(00:37:09):
If you'd just done a box with holes, they would have been better than these buildings.
(00:37:12):
They were all worse than a box with holes.
(00:37:14):
And sorry, I interrupted you.
(00:37:15):
You were going to explain the relevance of this.
(00:37:17):
Oh, yeah.
(00:37:17):
So they've come up with 50 designs that work in every Canadian area.
(00:37:20):
So if you're a small developer, you don't have to go to an architect.
(00:37:23):
You don't have to get any design done.
(00:37:25):
You can just take these designs off the shelf, download them, and then go and build this house.
(00:37:28):
So reducing costs, reducing approvals times.
(00:37:32):
They're compliant with building codes by design.
(00:37:35):
Yeah, exactly.
(00:37:35):
So it's not that you have to build these designs.
(00:37:39):
These designs are just 50 designs.
(00:37:41):
There are probably like a million designs that would fit or 100 million designs.
(00:37:44):
in principle, with slight variations between them.
(00:37:46):
But these are 50 that were... And I was really sad.
(00:37:49):
So I did a tweet about how... And I was like, I hope he doesn't see this.
(00:37:52):
But I want people to know that I'm upset about this.
(00:37:55):
But I do kind of think that a pattern book-based system could work.
(00:38:00):
So there's a myth that... And this already happened on our podcast.
(00:38:04):
So if you're listening carefully, you'll have heard this before.
(00:38:05):
But there's a myth that pattern books were like,
(00:38:08):
these are the only things you're allowed to build.
(00:38:10):
In fact, they were just the same as the pattern books done by Mark Carney.
(00:38:13):
government in Canada.
(00:38:14):
These are ways of being compliant with the rules.
(00:38:17):
Yeah.
(00:38:17):
And produced by, most produced privately.
(00:38:20):
Yeah.
(00:38:20):
It was like, oh, here are, I mean, it wasn't produced by the British state.
(00:38:23):
Exactly.
(00:38:24):
It was just like, oh, builders, you knew the building acts that you'll have to follow.
(00:38:28):
Here's a bunch of designs which are building out compliant.
(00:38:30):
And would they pay the architects to use the pattern?
(00:38:33):
No.
(00:38:35):
Yeah, you license them.
(00:38:37):
And the thing about those pattern books which appeals to people is that firstly,
(00:38:41):
pencil drafting is really nice.
(00:38:43):
Even if you draw a very ugly building in pencil drafting,
(00:38:46):
you're like,
(00:38:46):
damn,
(00:38:47):
that looks really good.
(00:38:48):
And people are particularly good draftsmen in the world where there weren't tools
(00:38:51):
to do it better.
(00:38:51):
And so the drafting is just really good.
(00:38:53):
It looks great.
(00:38:54):
And then also what's so appealing is that they're all good designs.
(00:38:58):
Like in the pattern books, you will not find a building that a normal person would say was ugly.
(00:39:02):
80% of people would say that every building in there was a good looking building.
(00:39:05):
And so your thinking is like,
(00:39:07):
was it only possible to make good looking buildings comply with the building acts?
(00:39:10):
Not at all.
(00:39:10):
It'd be really easy.
(00:39:11):
In fact,
(00:39:12):
someone could do it,
(00:39:13):
like someone now,
(00:39:14):
even if they didn't try,
(00:39:15):
would make the first building they tried would be ugly that complied with the
(00:39:17):
building acts then.
(00:39:18):
Like the building acts didn't generate this.
(00:39:20):
But I've always wondered,
(00:39:21):
could we do a system where,
(00:39:23):
okay,
(00:39:24):
here are 50 things that comply with,
(00:39:26):
or 100 or 200 things that comply with the building codes.
(00:39:28):
Yeah.
(00:39:29):
Also, they're the only things you're allowed to build.
(00:39:32):
Or like 300, 500.
(00:39:33):
Or like, you know, for the neighbourhood, it might be four, right?
(00:39:36):
Because if it's a small enough neighbourhood...
(00:39:37):
Couldn't you just try and say,
(00:39:39):
we're not going to change the existing system,
(00:39:41):
but you are allowed to build...
(00:39:42):
Like these,
(00:39:43):
you know,
(00:39:43):
without going for the constraints on you're not allowed to build anything else.
(00:39:47):
Sure, an extra safe harbour.
(00:39:48):
That would be nice, yeah.
(00:39:48):
If they're good enough, I'd love to do that.
(00:39:50):
So I've often wondered... Because when we were working on street votes...
(00:39:54):
Our idea was literally that.
(00:39:55):
We said the neighbourhood has to come up with a set of pictures which would
(00:40:01):
generate the facades for any conceivable house on the street.
(00:40:04):
And you can only have one if you want.
(00:40:05):
So there's only one facade that you can build on the street.
(00:40:07):
Or you can have a choice of five or ten or whatever.
(00:40:10):
But you have to prepare what will the front look like.
(00:40:13):
Well, there is a kind of example of this.
(00:40:15):
So the South Tottenham case, which you did a podcast on once, right?
(00:40:18):
The...
(00:40:20):
So this was the neighbourhood in North London where the Haredi Jewish community is
(00:40:25):
concentrated.
(00:40:27):
Very large families stuck in these small homes with two or three bedrooms.
(00:40:31):
They launched a campaign to persuade First Haringey and later on Hackney Council to
(00:40:35):
give them a special planning policy
(00:40:37):
allowing them to add,
(00:40:39):
I mean,
(00:40:39):
anyone in the areas,
(00:40:40):
obviously,
(00:40:41):
to add one and a half stories to their homes,
(00:40:44):
subject to a strict design code that basically just says you have to replicate the
(00:40:48):
lower part of the house.
(00:40:50):
It's slightly more complicated than that,
(00:40:53):
but not in any way that basically compromised the logic.
(00:40:56):
So essentially for each homeowner,
(00:40:57):
there was only one extension that they were allowed to do,
(00:41:00):
an exact detailing that they would have to do to correspond to the supplementary
(00:41:05):
planning document.
(00:41:07):
And eventually they managed it.
(00:41:09):
And now,
(00:41:10):
I don't know,
(00:41:10):
like a third of the houses in the neighbourhood now look as though they were built
(00:41:14):
as three and a half storey Victorian houses rather than as two storey Victorian
(00:41:17):
houses.
(00:41:18):
And they look totally fine.
(00:41:20):
I've never seen someone object to it in any way.
(00:41:23):
And I actually think it's a decent piece of evidence.
(00:41:24):
When we put that on Twitter, I mean, that's a good example.
(00:41:26):
When we put that on Twitter...
(00:41:28):
we got almost no negative pushback.
(00:41:30):
We had support from everyone from Michael Gove to the then leader of the Green
(00:41:35):
Party or whatever,
(00:41:35):
who were all going like,
(00:41:36):
yeah,
(00:41:36):
of course,
(00:41:37):
this should be standard practice for loads of neighbourhoods.
(00:41:39):
And I am pretty sure that if we'd done the concrete blocks emerging from the little
(00:41:45):
Victorian cottages,
(00:41:47):
image it.
(00:41:48):
We would not have got that response under those circumstances.
(00:41:51):
As a kind of coding, it's completely possible to write codes like that.
(00:41:55):
Local authorities could write codes like that all the time if they wanted to.
(00:41:58):
It's the really interesting,
(00:42:00):
weird question,
(00:42:01):
which I don't have a good answer to,
(00:42:03):
so I don't propose that we necessarily want,
(00:42:05):
but why they don't do that all the time
(00:42:08):
which is a great puzzle.
(00:42:09):
Default is you can build,
(00:42:11):
like in your case,
(00:42:12):
your Kennington house,
(00:42:13):
you can build that house again.
(00:42:14):
Presumably that house probably sat there originally, like at some point.
(00:42:18):
Maybe it was bomb damage.
(00:42:20):
But in London,
(00:42:22):
generally,
(00:42:23):
except for extremely high-end or weird streets,
(00:42:25):
every house on the street,
(00:42:26):
at least on one side,
(00:42:27):
is basically a copy of every other.
(00:42:29):
Every street is like that, right?
(00:42:30):
Pretty much every street.
(00:42:32):
So it probably already was that original building.
(00:42:34):
So I would like your system of
(00:42:36):
Actually, you did an extreme version of that once, as a keen follower of your tweets.
(00:42:40):
You said you had a picture of a particular Florentine palazzo,
(00:42:45):
like six storeys central Florence.
(00:42:47):
It should be legal to build this anywhere in the country if you build an exact replica.
(00:42:51):
I think what they should do is,
(00:42:53):
and I used to think they should do this for Heathrow and use the money basically
(00:42:58):
replace Heathrow with a city and then use the money from that to build a new airport.
(00:43:02):
Now I've been convinced by Ben that actually Heathrow is quite important where it
(00:43:06):
is,
(00:43:06):
and we don't need to get into that.
(00:43:07):
But my proposal was the design code was Old Town Florence.
(00:43:12):
You just have to prove that the building you're building exists.
(00:43:15):
Any building.
(00:43:15):
It can be a one-story building,
(00:43:17):
it can be a 10-story building,
(00:43:18):
if there are 10-story buildings there.
(00:43:19):
You can build the silica.
(00:43:21):
You can build the dome if you want.
(00:43:24):
I think that would be great.
(00:43:25):
A lot of people would hate that because it's like ultra pastiche.
(00:43:27):
But I think it'd be really fun to have Florence.
(00:43:29):
1932 New York City.
(00:43:30):
Manhattan.
(00:43:31):
I'll be happy with that.
(00:43:34):
Any building in 1932 Manhattan.
(00:43:36):
You could object to that.
(00:43:37):
There are no bad buildings in 1932 Manhattan.
(00:43:38):
Suddenly the developers become furiously interested in historical photography.
(00:43:43):
Yeah,
(00:43:43):
and it's like a cottage industry of building 3D images of all the buildings so that
(00:43:47):
you can get it exactly right.
(00:43:48):
I do actually think,
(00:43:49):
by the way,
(00:43:49):
that it would be within the,
(00:43:52):
I don't know what the word is,
(00:43:53):
but it'd be possible for local governments to impose a,
(00:43:57):
okay,
(00:43:57):
you can apply for something,
(00:43:58):
but you can just automatically build any house that already exists in the
(00:44:01):
neighbourhood again.
(00:44:02):
That seems like something they could just do.
(00:44:05):
And I don't think it would be that complicated to apply.
(00:44:07):
Yeah.
(00:44:08):
I don't know that much about it.
(00:44:10):
It's interesting to look at the regulations imposed by neighbourhood plans,
(00:44:14):
which are kind of hyper-local.
(00:44:17):
I mean,
(00:44:18):
they're direct democratic in the sense that they...
(00:44:20):
So what happens is either these tiny local areas,
(00:44:23):
parishes in the countryside,
(00:44:25):
or these bespoke ad hoc areas of local government called neighbourhood forums in
(00:44:30):
cities...
(00:44:32):
They get together,
(00:44:33):
a bunch of local people will thrash out an additional set of planning policies for
(00:44:37):
their area,
(00:44:37):
and then it goes to a referendum of all the local residents.
(00:44:42):
And if they win a majority,
(00:44:44):
then it becomes local policy and new development has to obey those rules.
(00:44:48):
This has been around for, what, 15 years now?
(00:44:51):
And I think it's seen as...
(00:44:53):
Modestly successful.
(00:44:55):
They probably like neighbourhood plan policies.
(00:45:01):
They probably do lead to more popular design.
(00:45:05):
And supposedly the figure that gets bandied around is they also need to somewhat
(00:45:08):
more design happening because once people are given the ability to control the form
(00:45:13):
of what happens,
(00:45:13):
they're a bit more confident about.
(00:45:15):
I don't know if that's actually accurate, but that's widely claimed.
(00:45:20):
But they're not very effective, right?
(00:45:22):
They missed out the key thing.
(00:45:23):
There was one key thing.
(00:45:25):
I suspect they wanted to do this, but they lost at the final hurdle.
(00:45:29):
They needed to give neighbourhood forums and parishes the power to directly approve
(00:45:35):
stuff without any other authority being able to say yes or no.
(00:45:39):
And also to capture value from permissions they give out in some way.
(00:45:43):
It doesn't have to be like extreme amounts,
(00:45:45):
but just some level of...
(00:45:47):
Then I think they could have been an incredibly powerful tool to getting stuff
(00:45:50):
permitted.
(00:45:51):
But as it happens, they ended up being like, what's the point?
(00:45:55):
They haven't got any way to generate revenues.
(00:45:57):
They don't have any actual powers.
(00:45:59):
They can't do anything without getting...
(00:46:00):
They have to be in line with council policy and council planning documents and all
(00:46:03):
that sort of stuff.
(00:46:04):
They could put... I mean, they could put more effective design controls in place than they do.
(00:46:08):
So they like... Totally possible for...
(00:46:11):
You know,
(00:46:12):
for example,
(00:46:13):
have you followed the site in South Kensington where they,
(00:46:16):
on top of South,
(00:46:17):
around South Kensington station,
(00:46:19):
there's been like a 10 year brouhaha about this sort of one story or like
(00:46:23):
semi-derelict site.
(00:46:24):
It's obviously totally insane and it's extremely valuable area of London.
(00:46:29):
And the owners want to add a load of flats or whatever on the site.
(00:46:33):
And their designs are indeed fairly ugly.
(00:46:36):
And South Kensington obviously hyper-resourced local people who have been
(00:46:40):
conducting lawfare against this development for year after year after year.
(00:46:43):
And it grinds on and on.
(00:46:44):
Now,
(00:46:45):
it would not have been very difficult to,
(00:46:48):
I mean,
(00:46:49):
in theory at least,
(00:46:50):
you could have a neighbourhood forum set up there,
(00:46:52):
impose a set of rules saying you must replicate the design of classic South
(00:46:56):
Kensington townhouses.
(00:46:57):
Yeah.
(00:46:58):
So I want to set out what I believe.
(00:47:00):
And I want to set the record straight.
(00:47:03):
Because I obviously do like to provoke people.
(00:47:06):
I like to start debate.
(00:47:07):
So I am, for one thing, very, very anti-historical preservation.
(00:47:14):
I don't think that it's that important.
(00:47:16):
Except in a case like where...
(00:47:18):
You have a building where something really,
(00:47:20):
really,
(00:47:20):
really is significant specifically about that building.
(00:47:23):
Maybe the Houses of Parliament are a building where there's so much specific
(00:47:27):
history that it's worth preserving it.
(00:47:28):
Well, you are Stonehenge or something.
(00:47:30):
Stonehenge, yes.
(00:47:32):
But most historical preservationism,
(00:47:34):
at least in England,
(00:47:35):
and I think in the US and most of the English-speaking world,
(00:47:40):
takes properties and says that they are significant just because of the way they
(00:47:44):
look or the way they're built.
(00:47:45):
There's nothing specific to that place.
(00:47:48):
It's not like a thing has happened, but you have to keep that building there.
(00:47:52):
I think that's terrible.
(00:47:53):
I think that's like,
(00:47:54):
crazy.
(00:47:54):
I think it imposes mad costs on the people who live there.
(00:47:58):
And I think it ends up with,
(00:48:00):
as in London,
(00:48:00):
you end up with loads of properties that are kind of semi-decrepit because they're
(00:48:05):
much older than they should be.
(00:48:06):
Really,
(00:48:07):
you should just gut the entire thing,
(00:48:08):
or even demolish it and replace it with something new that's built in a more modern
(00:48:12):
way.
(00:48:13):
But I do like the way they look, and I do think it's legitimate.
(00:48:16):
And I suspect a lot of people value historical preservation,
(00:48:20):
not because they think that the actual wood or the actual floor plan inside the
(00:48:24):
building should be preserved,
(00:48:25):
but because they value the way it looks.
(00:48:27):
Strong feeling that we have a finite stock of beautiful things,
(00:48:31):
and that every time we lose one,
(00:48:32):
we're just...
(00:48:33):
losing something which is completely irreplaceable.
(00:48:35):
Totally.
(00:48:36):
And so we should be extremely careful about losing any of them.
(00:48:40):
Every street that's gone is gone forever and we're never getting it back.
(00:48:42):
Right, exactly.
(00:48:43):
And are they wrong?
(00:48:44):
Like, are they wrong?
(00:48:45):
So historical preservationism,
(00:48:47):
I think,
(00:48:47):
might be a kind of coding error where people are trying to get one thing and the
(00:48:52):
only way they have of getting it is doing this other thing.
(00:48:54):
It's actually pretty destructive, I think.
(00:48:56):
Partly because caring about beauty has been delegitimised or it's not felt to be an
(00:49:01):
appropriate planning consideration or it doesn't work well in public discourse or
(00:49:04):
something.
(00:49:04):
Whereas somehow historical heritage value... And it's funny.
(00:49:09):
I was thinking about this the other day, rubbish collection stuff.
(00:49:14):
BBC decided that I was an expert on rubbish collection.
(00:49:17):
So I had a very nice conversation with journalists about it.
(00:49:19):
But isn't it curious that in conservation areas in Britain...
(00:49:24):
You can't have masses of weenie bins outside buildings and there are all sorts of
(00:49:28):
elaborate systems in order to preserve these attractive facades without the visual
(00:49:32):
clutter in front of them.
(00:49:32):
And everywhere else we have all these extremely ugly bins that are massed outside.
(00:49:38):
That's not really a heritage issue at all.
(00:49:40):
That's very clearly an amenity issue.
(00:49:42):
There has no effect upon the historic fabric of the building or the building's
(00:49:45):
historic interest or anything like that.
(00:49:47):
But it's clearly like somehow it can only get into planning policy under the feeble
(00:49:53):
guides of being a heritage consideration.
(00:49:56):
In fact, they're just beauty areas.
(00:49:59):
So I also think that having a lot of discretion about aesthetics is a bad idea,
(00:50:04):
and especially having an expert or a department
(00:50:07):
that is thinking about aesthetics,
(00:50:08):
because they usually get captured by people with bad taste,
(00:50:12):
or sophisticated taste,
(00:50:13):
as you,
(00:50:14):
in your very good article for Works in Progress,
(00:50:18):
have talked about,
(00:50:19):
or challenging taste.
(00:50:22):
And I think that there is a lot of
(00:50:25):
But I think it is very reasonable for people to care about the area that they live in.
(00:50:31):
And so where I fall out,
(00:50:32):
and I think this is the same position that you all have,
(00:50:35):
is that there is some role for local control,
(00:50:39):
or basically local people saying,
(00:50:42):
this is what we want our area to look like.
(00:50:44):
We're not having any experts.
(00:50:45):
We're not having any expert review or anything like that.
(00:50:48):
And we're not saying that the interiors of the buildings have to look any way at all.
(00:50:51):
We're just talking about the facades of the exteriors.
(00:50:54):
To me, that's the... And also, crucially, this doesn't relate to how tall the buildings are.
(00:51:00):
It doesn't relate to density.
(00:51:01):
It doesn't relate to anything like that.
(00:51:02):
It just relates to simply the aesthetics.
(00:51:05):
That's, to me, the kind of minimum viable or the sort of maybe maximum viable program here.
(00:51:11):
Just on your previous historic preservation point,
(00:51:13):
because I really strongly agree with you,
(00:51:17):
there are more extreme cases,
(00:51:18):
which is where we've lost...
(00:51:20):
So when we've lost a really good old thing,
(00:51:23):
right,
(00:51:23):
that would be nice for us to have,
(00:51:25):
the historic preservation view is that we have to leave it as a ruin.
(00:51:28):
It might have been good to conserve it while it was still going.
(00:51:30):
But now that it's gone, it's like extremely inauthentic to bring back a building, right?
(00:51:35):
We just have to have the ruin.
(00:51:36):
And to be clear, like ruins have some value.
(00:51:39):
There's like some romantic feeling you get with ruins.
(00:51:41):
And obviously, you know, rich...
(00:51:44):
Georgians and Victorians might have built ruins in their garden because the ruins
(00:51:48):
themselves were valuable.
(00:51:48):
So I'm not saying we should never have any ruins.
(00:51:50):
But there are some things like the complex of the Acropolis and stuff where it
(00:51:54):
would just obviously be better if we rebuilt it to what it was like.
(00:51:57):
And lots of people,
(00:51:58):
before the complete overtake of preservationism during the 1800s,
(00:52:03):
the 19th century,
(00:52:05):
by the end of the 19th century,
(00:52:06):
every elite person believed...
(00:52:07):
Well,
(00:52:08):
they originally...
(00:52:08):
Yeah, that's basically right.
(00:52:10):
But in like 1830 or something,
(00:52:12):
or in like 1790,
(00:52:13):
they'd been like,
(00:52:14):
yeah,
(00:52:15):
let's build back the old...
(00:52:16):
Even in the 19th century,
(00:52:18):
there was a more nuanced kind of preservationism that was prevalent,
(00:52:22):
which lasts,
(00:52:22):
and to some extent,
(00:52:23):
that survives today in continental Europe.
(00:52:25):
We're like a particularly... So the two broad views are like...
(00:52:30):
preserving these buildings, very, very broad views.
(00:52:34):
We're preserving these buildings because they're good buildings, beautiful, interesting, etc.
(00:52:38):
Or preserving these buildings for the sheer heritage value, the fact that they're old buildings.
(00:52:43):
Then you have a question like,
(00:52:45):
if you could repair,
(00:52:49):
restore an old building which has got authentic decay that's set in over time,
(00:52:55):
If you hold the first view,
(00:52:56):
then that's a way of making the building better,
(00:52:58):
and that's a good conservation practice.
(00:53:01):
Whereas if you hold the second view,
(00:53:02):
then you're falsifying the building,
(00:53:05):
or probably you have to take away some of the historic fabric that's accrued in
(00:53:10):
order to do the restoration.
(00:53:12):
So all the cathedrals of England were in extremely decayed condition by the 19th
(00:53:15):
century,
(00:53:16):
and then they were all quite vigorously restored,
(00:53:18):
mostly by this one architect,
(00:53:19):
Gilbert Scott.
(00:53:21):
That would be very difficult.
(00:53:22):
But in those days, they were like, yeah, these are great buildings.
(00:53:25):
They're worth investing in.
(00:53:27):
The restoration will involve some loss of historic fabric,
(00:53:29):
which you have to do in order to straighten everything up and reform the buildings.
(00:53:36):
But they will make them overall better buildings.
(00:53:37):
Whereas the kind of conservation practice that gradually becomes prevalent in the
(00:53:40):
20th century would be like,
(00:53:42):
No, the historically constituted condition is the thing which now needs to be preserved.
(00:53:46):
The damage is part of its history and needs to be preserved as well.
(00:53:50):
And that's become very ascendant in English conservation practice.
(00:53:53):
It's less so in France.
(00:53:54):
Well,
(00:53:54):
I was about to mention Notre Dame,
(00:53:56):
which is the perfect example of the opposite of what you're describing.
(00:53:59):
People always slipped a bit from this in moments of crisis.
(00:54:02):
Because in moments of crisis,
(00:54:03):
ordinary people,
(00:54:04):
where loads of really good stuff gets destroyed,
(00:54:06):
then you get the rebuilding of Warsaw after the Second World War or something.
(00:54:10):
This is like...
(00:54:11):
Right.
(00:54:13):
So the Venice Charter is a famous document in which this preserve historic fabric,
(00:54:20):
don't restore,
(00:54:21):
don't...
(00:54:22):
The Venice Charter is totally ascendant by this time,
(00:54:25):
but in moments of extreme cultural loss,
(00:54:28):
ordinary people become really interested and the conservation elites often go quiet
(00:54:32):
a bit and like,
(00:54:32):
all right,
(00:54:32):
fine,
(00:54:33):
you could have a bit of restoration there.
(00:54:34):
And that's something
(00:54:34):
Something like that is partly what happened with Notre Dame.
(00:54:36):
But it's also just partly France is more pro-restoration.
(00:54:39):
So Saint-Denis,
(00:54:40):
they're rebuilding one of the old towers and spires which fell down in the 19th
(00:54:45):
century.
(00:54:46):
And I guess the municipality decided, yeah, we kind of like that.
(00:54:49):
It's a very fine table to look better with that.
(00:54:52):
Very hard to imagine that happening in Britain.
(00:54:54):
We've got to rebuild Lincoln's gigantic.
(00:54:57):
Right.
(00:54:57):
Yes.
(00:54:57):
We'd go back to having like the tallest church building in Europe or something.
(00:55:00):
The tallest building in the world for like 100 years.
(00:55:02):
Right.
(00:55:03):
Maybe it might be a little longer.
(00:55:04):
Yeah.
(00:55:05):
Yeah.
(00:55:05):
So I think there's one thing I'm...
(00:55:09):
sympathetic to this older conservation school, which is like, yes, these are great buildings.
(00:55:15):
Their greatness partly comes from age.
(00:55:17):
I do believe Stonehenge,
(00:55:19):
I wouldn't say we should get rid of actual Stonehenge and do a reconstruction of
(00:55:25):
what it would have looked like in the Bronze Age.
(00:55:28):
But a lot of their goodness comes from their character as works of architecture and
(00:55:32):
art and also as just highly functional buildings.
(00:55:34):
So that's
(00:55:36):
Yeah, anyway, that's a long answer to what you were saying.
(00:55:39):
Sorry, I know I diverted you on.
(00:55:41):
That was the first point.
(00:55:42):
Then you had a second point.
(00:55:44):
So the second point was that we're taking it for granted that codes are the way you
(00:55:49):
would do this.
(00:55:50):
But most design review is done...
(00:55:52):
I mean,
(00:55:53):
in London,
(00:55:53):
for example,
(00:55:54):
if you want to build a tower,
(00:55:56):
you have to get a committee to approve the tower.
(00:55:59):
And if it's in the city of London, it has to be architecturally significant, I think.
(00:56:02):
Is that...
(00:56:03):
Is that correct?
(00:56:04):
It's more likely to succeed.
(00:56:05):
It's more likely to be, yeah.
(00:56:06):
So, like, personally, I think you need a lot of background for a skyline.
(00:56:12):
Like,
(00:56:12):
I think the New York City skyline works so well because a lot of the buildings are
(00:56:15):
completely unremarkable and the ones that are remarkable stand out from it.
(00:56:19):
You need that kind of background.
(00:56:21):
The London skyline,
(00:56:22):
which,
(00:56:22):
yeah,
(00:56:22):
I mean,
(00:56:22):
London's great,
(00:56:23):
but,
(00:56:23):
like,
(00:56:24):
the London skyline is very higgledy-piggledy because every tower is trying to be
(00:56:28):
interesting and weird in its own way.
(00:56:30):
And so there's no...
(00:56:32):
There's no background quality to it.
(00:56:33):
There's no scenery.
(00:56:35):
Every tower could be given a special name of the gherkin or shard or walkie-talkie
(00:56:41):
variety or something.
(00:56:42):
It's a slightly ridiculous skyline that you get as a result of that.
(00:56:46):
So the...
(00:56:48):
The appeal of a code rather than a...
(00:56:51):
And this goes into the third point,
(00:56:52):
the third element,
(00:56:53):
which I think is really important.
(00:56:54):
And this is very personal,
(00:56:55):
but the appeal of a code is that,
(00:56:57):
A,
(00:56:58):
it takes out the discretion of people whose interests might be quite weird,
(00:57:02):
or they might have quite bad taste,
(00:57:04):
but sophisticated taste.
(00:57:06):
Obviously, it's quicker and it removes veto points.
(00:57:09):
It depends on what the rules are, obviously, but it can remove veto points.
(00:57:14):
But it feeds into the third point, which is that it should be popularly decided on.
(00:57:18):
It should be decided on by ordinary people who live in that area.
(00:57:22):
And that, to me, is really, really valuable.
(00:57:25):
One of the strong general beliefs I have is that, like,
(00:57:29):
mass media and mass culture and low culture, commercial culture, are really good.
(00:57:34):
Fast food is good.
(00:57:35):
Pop music is good.
(00:57:37):
Hollywood blockbuster films are good.
(00:57:38):
All that is very, very... And that's a personal thing, right?
(00:57:41):
A reasonable person can disagree with that.
(00:57:44):
But I find it personally really appealing that ordinary people also seem to really like this.
(00:57:50):
They don't like the new hot thing in architecture.
(00:57:53):
They like the old thing.
(00:57:54):
I don't know.
(00:57:55):
I find it...
(00:57:59):
very very elegant um with all the things that i i also think are valuable like
(00:58:03):
commercial culture that people just think that georgian buildings look better than
(00:58:08):
new london vernacular buildings um that but you know i'm not making that as a
(00:58:12):
strong policy argument uh i do think i do think there are can in principle you can
(00:58:17):
code for something that's just as ugly as you can i mean as a committee you can
(00:58:21):
yeah discretionary committee you can so it's the yeah
(00:58:23):
And the building regulations are rules, right?
(00:58:26):
The net zero things, we have our rules.
(00:58:28):
So it's just with a crude hand,
(00:58:32):
like,
(00:58:32):
bam,
(00:58:32):
I'm now going to make it really hard to make an ugly building in this extremely
(00:58:35):
straightforward,
(00:58:36):
predictable,
(00:58:38):
highly legible way.
(00:58:39):
So it's, they're not totally, I mean, the advantage of codes is it's
(00:58:47):
probably it's probably a bit easier for lay people to like hold them to account
(00:58:52):
because the rules are there up front and they can say no i don't like that and i do
(00:58:56):
like that whereas if it's
(00:58:59):
a committee of the like high and mighty people using very abstruse language it's
(00:59:03):
very hard for people to put pressure on that or engage with that but it's to some
(00:59:08):
extent they're orthogonal right if you go and it might be true if you have like if
(00:59:14):
you were running the committee who's if you were running the the
(00:59:18):
planning authority dealing with a hypersensitive location,
(00:59:22):
like the old city of Jerusalem,
(00:59:24):
or the Minnesota quarter of Rome or something.
(00:59:28):
There you could think the decisions that have to be made here are so complicated
(00:59:35):
and so bespoke,
(00:59:37):
and each street is layered with 3,000 years of human history and complicated
(00:59:44):
stories.
(00:59:45):
There you think...
(00:59:46):
Maybe a discretionary approach is correct.
(00:59:49):
Ideally, the best system there would be a good discretionary body doing it.
(00:59:54):
The discretionary body of people who have the right objectives and the right
(00:59:56):
competencies,
(00:59:57):
and they'd be able to produce something which was a more premium kind of design
(01:00:01):
control than...
(01:00:03):
a meticulous set of rules.
(01:00:07):
Possibly,
(01:00:07):
but the way you're having to construct that to come up with the circumstance where
(01:00:11):
that is better,
(01:00:12):
by itself,
(01:00:13):
it's the exception that proves the existence of a general rule.
(01:00:18):
I do think that the point that this
(01:00:22):
applies to the people who decide on it relates to the final thing that I think we
(01:00:27):
should talk about,
(01:00:27):
which is incentives.
(01:00:29):
And I don't think we should just go to street votes.
(01:00:33):
Too many of our podcasts end up with us just talking about street votes.
(01:00:37):
But I do think that there is something underappreciated about the power of people
(01:00:42):
deciding on the rules that affect them in a relatively tight way.
(01:00:49):
a few things to say on that that I just I think feed in so one is going back to
(01:00:53):
homeowners associations right you're opting into a homeowners association they're
(01:00:56):
building the whole neighborhood and all the rules at the time at the same time um
(01:01:01):
there there are usually some systems to change it once everyone has moved in
(01:01:05):
they're like kind of quasi-democratic people really hate their like HOAs people
(01:01:09):
people whinge about HOAs they continually opt into them yeah and so I think it's
(01:01:14):
like
(01:01:15):
It's just cheap talk.
(01:01:16):
People whinge about anything where they have to pay money,
(01:01:18):
even if they've decided to pay the money.
(01:01:20):
And after all,
(01:01:20):
of course,
(01:01:21):
what everyone would like most of all would be to be the one property who's exempted
(01:01:25):
from the concerns of the HOAs.
(01:01:26):
They love that their neighbours are forced to do it.
(01:01:27):
That's right.
(01:01:27):
Yeah, exactly.
(01:01:28):
But so with HOAs, what do they do?
(01:01:30):
And that'd be a useful
(01:01:31):
case of like what are the design rules that people opt in opt into when they have
(01:01:34):
the choice I mean they probably really are quite popular design stuff right yeah
(01:01:37):
exactly new American suburbs are built in HOA ones especially HOA ones don't
(01:01:43):
usually have the garage being obviously visible and like there are all sorts of
(01:01:46):
features the urban form may be terrible or whatever but that's to do with
(01:01:48):
completely other economic forces it's low density but like fine and car car
(01:01:53):
dependent,
(01:01:53):
but the things they decide on will be the things that in the marketplace of HOAs,
(01:01:58):
they're the one that offers the thing people want and they opt into.
(01:02:02):
And what we find is something a bit like what you are suggesting,
(01:02:06):
but with a bit of Samuel in it,
(01:02:07):
which is that by and large,
(01:02:09):
it's rules-based.
(01:02:10):
But there is a committee of people deciding whether on the edge cases of all the
(01:02:14):
rules and extreme bits to get out of them.
(01:02:17):
And maybe that's the answer, mostly a rules-based system, but with a bit of edge casing.
(01:02:22):
The tricky thing is,
(01:02:24):
as I said before,
(01:02:26):
it's all well and good having HOAs,
(01:02:28):
and it's all well and good that now half of Americans live in them.
(01:02:30):
But ultimately, these are all the exurbs and suburbs and stuff.
(01:02:34):
And personally, I care a lot more about the...
(01:02:38):
walkable neighbourhoods near the city centre.
(01:02:41):
Or at least I have more personal taste for those places to live in and I go to them more often.
(01:02:45):
So what can we do to try and achieve that there?
(01:02:48):
But then I suspect still they would end up with a vote on a rules-based system and
(01:02:55):
disapproving and adding different rules of what we should do.
(01:02:58):
But I don't know.
(01:02:59):
It's an interesting question.
(01:03:01):
There's such legitimacy for these extremely demanding busybody rules
(01:03:05):
when people are opting into them and everyone thinks like,
(01:03:07):
oh,
(01:03:07):
you know,
(01:03:08):
people we know might be against them because they're restrictive and they see it
(01:03:11):
from the perspective of someone who's already living in the house,
(01:03:14):
having all these nasty,
(01:03:15):
their actions are being constrained from perfect liberty.
(01:03:18):
But like,
(01:03:20):
When you consider that decision on a longer basis, they can move into it.
(01:03:24):
They can sell their house, all those sorts of stuff.
(01:03:26):
They keep opting into them.
(01:03:28):
They whinge, but they generally tolerate them.
(01:03:29):
But if we actually started saying this neighbourhood,
(01:03:32):
if it can get 75% approval,
(01:03:34):
can decide what happens.
(01:03:36):
And lots of people have not opted into that situation.
(01:03:38):
They're having it forced upon them from a democratic majority.
(01:03:43):
maybe even a democratic supermajority, but definitely like a question as to whether it's legit.
(01:03:49):
And ultimately, the local government already has the power to do these things.
(01:03:53):
So if there was legitimacy for doing it, why aren't they already doing it?
(01:03:56):
And so I agree, that's like a very complicated thing.
(01:03:59):
And by the way, although I think in principle,
(01:04:03):
there should be some ways that we can control infill development.
(01:04:06):
I think the problem is kind of solved for large additional developments,
(01:04:10):
large redevelopments of,
(01:04:13):
you know,
(01:04:15):
docs that have gone out of business.
(01:04:17):
Because the externalities are internalised.
(01:04:19):
The externalities are internalised.
(01:04:21):
They roughly get it.
(01:04:21):
Because they have a single developer.
(01:04:23):
Single owner, single design.
(01:04:25):
I'm not saying they make things that I think are perfect, but I don't think there are...
(01:04:29):
regulatory ways we're going to win easily on that.
(01:04:31):
I think that we'd have to actually change our views of how important design is,
(01:04:35):
all these sorts of things,
(01:04:36):
to get better on that.
(01:04:36):
They do well enough.
(01:04:38):
I generally think that large New London developments add to the city rather than
(01:04:41):
detract from it.
(01:04:42):
And contrary to the popular elite view that like Persimmon estates,
(01:04:48):
I mean,
(01:04:48):
Persimmon estates are pretty bad,
(01:04:49):
but they're extremely low value estates where almost no money is done to
(01:04:53):
development.
(01:04:54):
In expensive areas, mass market house builder houses are fine.
(01:04:57):
They're okay.
(01:05:00):
So, yeah, for infill, maybe we can't come up with an answer.
(01:05:02):
Maybe there isn't actually a really good answer of what you do for infill in
(01:05:07):
existing neighborhoods.
(01:05:08):
We can make it going forward have good rules.
(01:05:11):
We can make it for a big place.
(01:05:12):
You can plan for infill.
(01:05:14):
Like if you set up rules now that you can build,
(01:05:16):
you can do these things that I think they'd easily have public support.
(01:05:19):
But it might not be, at least in America, where people are very fiercely independent.
(01:05:23):
Maybe in like Germany,
(01:05:25):
people are like,
(01:05:26):
of course we have rules on infill development because like,
(01:05:29):
Yeah.
(01:05:29):
It's a funny thing.
(01:05:29):
I get asked about this.
(01:05:30):
I'm associated with working on these architectural aesthetics questions.
(01:05:35):
And I always think like,
(01:05:38):
We're talking about how to solve the housing shortage or really thorny questions of
(01:05:42):
infrastructure planning or whatever.
(01:05:44):
I've got a lot to say about the solutions.
(01:05:45):
I think we probably are going to win on these, and we certainly could win on these.
(01:05:50):
Whereas the questions of architectural aesthetics and how to achieve those given
(01:05:54):
the massive principal agent problems and legitimacy problems that you face,
(01:05:59):
it's an extremely thorny issue.
(01:06:01):
And I also think like,
(01:06:02):
well,
(01:06:03):
I'm going to give like a disappointing answer on the area that's supposed to be my
(01:06:06):
like USP policy area.
(01:06:08):
No, I'm actually not sure quite how we're going to solve this question.
(01:06:11):
I think it's very difficult.
(01:06:12):
To push to incentives, because I think that it's like it's been in my back.
(01:06:16):
I'm glad you raised it the whole time.
(01:06:18):
So the key thing is the pretextual thing.
(01:06:21):
People use pretexts when they have an underlying reason to stop development, right?
(01:06:25):
And I think...
(01:06:26):
So many of the Yimby's who are disagreeing with us on this question or disagreeing
(01:06:31):
with you on this question,
(01:06:32):
their view,
(01:06:33):
I think,
(01:06:33):
is that...
(01:06:35):
you basically just have to crush NIMBYs.
(01:06:38):
And the way to do that is to like have ideological wins where you're like
(01:06:41):
constantly keep trumpeting your stuff,
(01:06:43):
get your guys really energized.
(01:06:45):
You convert more people, like you're constantly trying to convert people and so on.
(01:06:49):
And then you win and like you just need to crush like everything in front of you.
(01:06:53):
Like a normal, a standard political campaign type approach.
(01:06:57):
I'm not sure that is the standard political campaign type approach.
(01:07:00):
I think that campaigns often have you trying to buy in groups on the edge to
(01:07:04):
broaden your coalition.
(01:07:06):
But one kind of approach, the energize your base approach, is the Yimby approach.
(01:07:11):
The general Yimby approach.
(01:07:12):
And delegitimize your enemies.
(01:07:13):
Yeah.
(01:07:13):
They think you can't ever change the incentives.
(01:07:16):
So instead,
(01:07:17):
you just have to expropriate their amenity value and turn it into housing value for
(01:07:22):
your allies.
(01:07:22):
And I do think that's a net benefit.
(01:07:25):
That would be a net benefit if they did.
(01:07:26):
At least in some cases.
(01:07:27):
In many cases, yeah.
(01:07:29):
But often hard.
(01:07:30):
My view is that 80% of people in neighbourhood,
(01:07:33):
like the homeowners and NIMBYs,
(01:07:35):
just don't really care that much about development either way.
(01:07:37):
They're like softly anti it.
(01:07:39):
But there are people who are extremely anti it and they're very motivated and they
(01:07:44):
do lots of stuff that makes it seem like the pro-social thing to do is be against
(01:07:48):
development.
(01:07:49):
I saw this in development near me.
(01:07:50):
All the normal people who didn't really care about it at all were like,
(01:07:53):
oh,
(01:07:53):
it's so bad for the local car park to be turned into a three-story block of...
(01:07:58):
a nasty three-story block of flats destroying the neighbourhood.
(01:08:02):
This is the one that Jude Law... Yes, it's unbelievable.
(01:08:06):
But I don't think Jude Law would have come to that view.
(01:08:09):
I don't think he has a strong view about it.
(01:08:10):
I don't think he would have come to that view... Yeah, he's trying to be a good citizen.
(01:08:13):
He's trying to be a good neighbour.
(01:08:16):
He's noticed and he's reasoning from the fact that these guys are really against it.
(01:08:19):
Like they're the hardcore of 10 to 20 campaigning really hard.
(01:08:23):
Now, my view is that we can change the incentives.
(01:08:25):
Like if we can make the 80% just enough benefit from the scheme that they're
(01:08:31):
willing to override,
(01:08:32):
then we can win in like...
(01:08:34):
They'll need to have a mechanism to override them, though.
(01:08:37):
Yeah, of course.
(01:08:37):
That's the other thing.
(01:08:38):
And a thing that people put pressure on us about this sometimes,
(01:08:42):
it's not enough to make it in their interests.
(01:08:43):
It's got to be in their interest,
(01:08:44):
and they've got to then be able to turn their support that they have in that into a
(01:08:48):
mandate.
(01:08:49):
Yeah.
(01:08:50):
Otherwise...
(01:08:50):
Right,
(01:08:51):
Brian,
(01:08:51):
you were just...
(01:08:52):
I heard you talking on the phone earlier about land readjustment in various
(01:08:57):
different countries,
(01:08:58):
and...
(01:08:59):
In that case, it's like there can be a third of trucking landowners.
(01:09:02):
Basically, you can vote by supermajority.
(01:09:05):
Again,
(01:09:05):
like a business improvement district,
(01:09:06):
it's usually two thirds or more,
(01:09:08):
sometimes 80% of landowners by number and then also by value,
(01:09:14):
right?
(01:09:14):
Just so you can't have like loads of small guys screwing over one big landowner.
(01:09:19):
But then you force the last 20% to go along.
(01:09:21):
And then there are loads of countries where that's accepted and you completely bulldoze.
(01:09:24):
Yeah.
(01:09:25):
the NIMBYs,
(01:09:26):
the really hardcore NIMBYs,
(01:09:27):
the 15,000 complaints to Heathrow each year kind of people.
(01:09:32):
Estate regeneration is our classic case in Britain, right?
(01:09:35):
Social housing estates where the housing association wants to demolish the estate,
(01:09:38):
rebuild it at higher densities,
(01:09:40):
make a load of market housing and use the market housing to pay for replacement
(01:09:43):
social housing at a higher quality.
(01:09:46):
20% of residents, or whatever, 10%, really are vociferously opposed to this.
(01:09:51):
And before the 2010s,
(01:09:53):
they would get all the airtime and people had the strong sense that it's a really
(01:09:57):
nasty thing,
(01:09:57):
state regeneration.
(01:09:58):
Maybe it's necessary in some cases, but it's a brutal business.
(01:10:02):
And if you're a compassionate person,
(01:10:03):
then you should probably do the Jude Law thing and express your compassionateness
(01:10:08):
by opposing this process.
(01:10:09):
Yeah.
(01:10:10):
Then they started doing these votes to find out what the majority of people
(01:10:15):
actually think in these cases.
(01:10:16):
Imposed effectively.
(01:10:18):
They were trying to block them, right?
(01:10:20):
They thought, well, we've imposed these.
(01:10:21):
We're never going to get an estate regeneration ever again now because everyone is
(01:10:24):
an imby about their own estates.
(01:10:26):
And it turned out there was exactly your kind of soft support from 80% of people
(01:10:31):
who do,
(01:10:31):
in fact,
(01:10:31):
benefit from this.
(01:10:33):
But they needed this process to turn that soft support into a mandate.
(01:10:35):
And they needed to get something from it.
(01:10:37):
So the analogy that I like... You need the two elements.
(01:10:40):
They need to actually get something from it, and then they need to have power.
(01:10:43):
And that's a good model for lots of problems.
(01:10:45):
And some version of this will be the correct answer in the case of beauty.
(01:10:48):
Yeah.
(01:10:49):
There are a lot of really hardcore libertarian type people who think,
(01:10:55):
especially the Australians,
(01:10:56):
there are so many.
(01:10:57):
I keep waking up to Australians because obviously the time zone thing means I wake
(01:11:01):
up at 6am and I have all these Australian hardcore libertarians telling me,
(01:11:05):
this is my land,
(01:11:06):
nobody should ever be able to stop me from doing anything.
(01:11:10):
I get why people feel that way.
(01:11:14):
The analogy is, to me, like a joint stock corporation, right?
(01:11:18):
We've gone from a world where we had essentially private companies or like family
(01:11:22):
businesses to a world where at the moment there is like extremely fractured
(01:11:25):
ownership of,
(01:11:27):
let's say,
(01:11:27):
companies,
(01:11:27):
but we're talking about land here.
(01:11:29):
Yeah.
(01:11:30):
In most joint stock corporations, you have quite a highly paid CEO.
(01:11:35):
Any normal member of the public will say, that person is paid too much.
(01:11:40):
CEO pay is way too high.
(01:11:42):
That's the standard view, and it's a very unpopular thing.
(01:11:45):
Although I think CEOs are underpaid for interesting reasons,
(01:11:48):
but we might go into it in another episode.
(01:11:51):
But the general view and the prosocial view is,
(01:11:56):
CEOs are way overpaid.
(01:11:57):
They get paid a thousand times more than a normal worker.
(01:12:00):
But as soon as a person becomes a shareholder in a company,
(01:12:03):
and they have a tiny fraction,
(01:12:04):
they have some vote,
(01:12:06):
you do have activists who come in,
(01:12:07):
and you do have some people who say the CEO is overpaid.
(01:12:11):
And sometimes they are, so it's not impossible.
(01:12:14):
But generally,
(01:12:15):
the rank and file ordinary person who bothers to vote,
(01:12:19):
or who delegates their voting to a Vanguard-type fund,
(01:12:23):
or whatever it might be,
(01:12:24):
They will just say, no, I actually don't care that this person is paid this much.
(01:12:28):
Elon Musk can be paid billions of dollars, and that's great because I get money from it.
(01:12:33):
I benefit from it.
(01:12:34):
And I think an analogy, that's how I think about what we're talking about.
(01:12:37):
It's kind of trying to create joint stock corporations in terms of local areas.
(01:12:42):
And I'll give you another example that fits perfectly with that.
(01:12:46):
taking it back to the pretextual point,
(01:12:48):
I don't think people will use beauty as a pretext when they have a very strong
(01:12:50):
incentive to want development to happen.
(01:12:52):
They'll only use as much beauty as is necessary to maximize value.
(01:12:55):
My example for why I believe that's true,
(01:12:57):
which fits perfectly,
(01:12:58):
the Squamish people of Vancouver,
(01:12:59):
when they were building Sunaqua,
(01:13:00):
which is this new big...
(01:13:02):
I drove past it two weeks ago,
(01:13:04):
yeah.
(01:13:04):
Yeah, this big new development.
(01:13:06):
Not beautiful, but that's actually relevant for the point I'm going to make.
(01:13:10):
Strikingly unbeautiful, I would say.
(01:13:12):
Extremely ugly, one of the worst, yeah.
(01:13:14):
But...
(01:13:15):
So they did a vote to see whether they should develop their land when they
(01:13:20):
discovered that they could disintermediate all of their regional,
(01:13:24):
state and local authorities and just go straight to federal building rules.
(01:13:29):
And the guy who was running it for them,
(01:13:32):
I think maybe it was a tribal elder,
(01:13:34):
but the person who was CEO of the project after the vote had gone through...
(01:13:38):
was asked,
(01:13:39):
so there are all these bylaws that you're like,
(01:13:40):
you technically don't have to apply,
(01:13:42):
you know,
(01:13:43):
like the number of aspects that windows have and the minimum space requirements.
(01:13:48):
Are you going to impose any of these?
(01:13:49):
And he said, I'm going to maximise economic value for the community.
(01:13:52):
And so you build the like legally largest buildings with like maxed out in every dimension.
(01:13:57):
And I think that what you see there is that when people have a direct financial
(01:14:01):
interest in development,
(01:14:01):
even when it's 6,000 of them sharing this like big plot of land,
(01:14:05):
yeah,
(01:14:07):
People make something like profit-maximizing decisions.
(01:14:11):
It might not literally be profit-maximizing,
(01:14:13):
but they make something like profit-maximizing decisions.
(01:14:15):
Now,
(01:14:16):
it turns out in this case that the profit-maximizing decision either wasn't beauty
(01:14:20):
or they're wrong and they made a mistake about it.
(01:14:22):
But I think the point there is that people just drop pretexts when they have a stake in it.
(01:14:28):
And we actually can.
(01:14:29):
It may well have been profit-maximizing for the small side.
(01:14:32):
Yeah.
(01:14:32):
And so far the towers are all in a line,
(01:14:34):
so most people will not be looking at the other towers,
(01:14:36):
they'll be looking at the rest of Vancouver.
(01:14:38):
It's only the people driving past on the roadway.
(01:14:40):
Yeah, it's everybody else who sees that.
(01:14:42):
And by the way, the non-architectural aesthetic features are all very good.
(01:14:48):
So it's got good landscaping in terms of greenery that people really like and stuff like that.
(01:14:54):
But the key point here is that people actually can be given a strong interest in development.
(01:14:58):
And when they do, they stop using pretext.
(01:15:00):
They think about what's best and worst.
(01:15:03):
And so I think that's achievable.
(01:15:05):
And then we don't have to worry about whether it's a pretext or not because they're
(01:15:08):
not stopping the development.
(01:15:09):
The development's happening.
(01:15:10):
And then we just get... That's what I'd like to get to.
(01:15:13):
And so final... I think small but not...
(01:15:17):
trivial point is, doesn't this just lock cities into a particular style?
(01:15:24):
It prevents further progress.
(01:15:26):
If you have a design code in an area,
(01:15:28):
almost by definition,
(01:15:31):
you are not allowing innovation in design,
(01:15:35):
in that area at least.
(01:15:37):
Is that not a problem?
(01:15:38):
A lot of people have said,
(01:15:40):
I actually really like the way London's kind of higgledy-piggledy,
(01:15:42):
and I like the differences in styles.
(01:15:44):
And I definitely prefer certain areas, but it would be boring if London all looked the same.
(01:15:50):
So I think the answer to that is pretty straightforward, which is A,
(01:15:54):
The point is to have very local and very bespoke design codes to different areas.
(01:15:59):
I don't want a city-wide design code.
(01:16:00):
I think that would be a disaster.
(01:16:01):
But I want a block, or a few blocks, to have a design code.
(01:16:05):
The other is, just practically, I think it's very unlikely that everywhere would opt into this.
(01:16:12):
If you look at Houston,
(01:16:13):
where we did a piece that talked about people or blocks being able to opt out of
(01:16:17):
the city-wide upzoning,
(01:16:19):
a pretty small share of the city,
(01:16:21):
less than a quarter of the city actually,
(01:16:23):
bothered to do this.
(01:16:24):
Coordinating your neighbours and getting,
(01:16:26):
let's say,
(01:16:27):
a supermajority or even a majority of your neighbours to agree on anything.
(01:16:31):
Transaction costs are pretty high.
(01:16:32):
Yeah, they're pretty high.
(01:16:33):
to agree on anything,
(01:16:34):
let alone a design code where,
(01:16:36):
like,
(01:16:37):
yes,
(01:16:37):
makes sense in a place that is relatively coherent.
(01:16:40):
But if it's not coherent at the moment,
(01:16:42):
it might be really difficult to get even 50% of people to agree on a single
(01:16:45):
approach.
(01:16:45):
I mean, neighborhood planning has something vaguely like, something like that level of uptake.
(01:16:50):
It's not yet 20% of London is neighborhood planned,
(01:16:52):
but it might be that eventually once the various plans have gone through to that.
(01:16:55):
Because I do think that even though probably the last century or so of architecture
(01:17:02):
hasn't been stellar for various reasons,
(01:17:06):
that doesn't mean the next century can't be.
(01:17:07):
We want to have new styles.
(01:17:08):
Definitely want to have new styles.
(01:17:10):
If you looked in the past...
(01:17:11):
there were lots of new styles, right?
(01:17:12):
Like they were all styles that read as traditional to us,
(01:17:15):
except for maybe some edge styles like Art Deco and Art Nouveau.
(01:17:18):
They read as being like, well, like Gaudi style buildings.
(01:17:20):
They read as being a kind of other thing.
(01:17:22):
But all the other ones,
(01:17:23):
like an Italian building,
(01:17:25):
which is like the white stucco ones you see around like where I used to live in
(01:17:28):
Maida Vale or a Georgian building,
(01:17:30):
your normal person could definitely
(01:17:32):
distinguished that they are different kinds of buildings but like ultimately
(01:17:35):
they're roughly the same shape they've got a they've got like a parapet and a
(01:17:39):
straight roof at the top the windows are the same like orientations and stuff and
(01:17:42):
so it's kind of like fashion-y changes rather than like an over underlying so we
(01:17:47):
definitely want new styles we definitely want some changes um
(01:17:51):
I think it becomes a question when we're building enough for that to matter a lot.
(01:17:53):
Like right now, we're just not building that much.
(01:17:56):
If we were building loads of stuff,
(01:17:58):
like whole neighborhoods,
(01:17:59):
then I think we could answer this question.
(01:18:01):
But right now... There's the Bowman Standing Committee who are running their design code.
(01:18:07):
And if people want to build something which isn't currently allowed by the design
(01:18:10):
code,
(01:18:10):
they can lodge an application for this.
(01:18:12):
And then the Bowman committee will process them in some way.
(01:18:14):
And then ultimately, they'll go back every five years or whatever.
(01:18:17):
There'll be a process where it goes back to the local people.
(01:18:20):
And they're like, do we want to add these to our design code list of permitted buildings?
(01:18:23):
Can we do that?
(01:18:24):
I mean, I like the personnel thing.
(01:18:27):
We solved the personnel problem.
(01:18:29):
But I actually,
(01:18:31):
to go back to my,
(01:18:32):
so I think the fudge but actually true answer is that most places just won't have a
(01:18:37):
design code under at least what we're talking about.
(01:18:41):
In a limit case where places did,
(01:18:42):
everywhere had a design code,
(01:18:45):
there would be an incentive for some places to have a very permissive or like a
(01:18:49):
pro-innovation design code,
(01:18:50):
because it would be valuable to allow innovation in some places.
(01:18:55):
That's my kind of limit case answer.
(01:18:58):
There is a potential collectifaction problem where it's value maximising for each
(01:19:01):
neighbourhood to have architectural uniformity.
(01:19:04):
but the city as a whole ought to have a few dissenting areas.
(01:19:08):
But if you only have the votes taking place at the level of each neighbourhood,
(01:19:11):
you don't get any of the dissent that's actually value maximising the level of the
(01:19:15):
city as a whole.
(01:19:15):
So I could see there is a theoretical problem there,
(01:19:17):
but it feels like it's at a margin that's pretty remote from where we are at the
(01:19:21):
moment and maybe a bridge that we can cross when we get there.
(01:19:23):
One of them good problems.
(01:19:24):
Right, yeah.
(01:19:25):
Thanks very much for listening.
(01:19:26):
Check out worksinprogress.co for more.