1 00:00:00,270 --> 00:00:03,350 Hello, welcome to the Works in Progress podcast. My name's Sam Bowman. 2 00:00:03,830 --> 00:00:07,030 A lot of people have asked me when can I get works in progress in print. 3 00:00:07,650 --> 00:00:10,070 And finally, I'm very happy to say you can do it now. 4 00:00:10,450 --> 00:00:12,070 If you go to worksinprogress.co, 5 00:00:12,290 --> 00:00:16,270 you can subscribe for $100 for the next year of Works in Progress in print. 6 00:00:16,650 --> 00:00:20,550 That's six issues of what I think is one of the most beautiful magazines ever 7 00:00:20,550 --> 00:00:23,350 made filled with some of the most interesting articles I've ever read. 8 00:00:23,850 --> 00:00:26,390 Go to works in progress.co right now and you can subscribe. 9 00:00:27,300 --> 00:00:29,240 Our guest today is Nicholas Boys Smith. 10 00:00:30,200 --> 00:00:32,880 Nicholas is the chairman of a group called Create Streets. 11 00:00:33,620 --> 00:00:38,560 And I think many people may have encountered him indirectly because I think 12 00:00:38,840 --> 00:00:41,160 of him as the inventor of the term gentle density. 13 00:00:41,780 --> 00:00:46,760 And the work Nicholas does is about trying to turn urban areas into much more 14 00:00:46,760 --> 00:00:51,720 livable human-centric places and to draw from empirical evidence and 15 00:00:51,720 --> 00:00:56,400 draw from experience and draw from history to learn what kind of cities are the 16 00:00:56,420 --> 00:00:59,400 nicest and most productive cities to live in. Nicholas, 17 00:00:59,400 --> 00:01:01,400 do you think that's a fair description of what Create Streets does? 18 00:01:01,600 --> 00:01:03,640 A very good description, probably better than I could come up with. 19 00:01:05,190 --> 00:01:07,470 I don't know if I coined the term gentle density. 20 00:01:07,670 --> 00:01:10,600 I've certainly popularised this and got it into the English planning system. 21 00:01:11,000 --> 00:01:12,000 I have a vague sense, 22 00:01:12,000 --> 00:01:14,470 I probably read it somewhere and filched it without realising. 23 00:01:15,220 --> 00:01:20,160 What we mean by gentle density is the type of place which has the advantages of 24 00:01:20,440 --> 00:01:23,320 personal space of control, of your own environment, 25 00:01:23,660 --> 00:01:28,190 but also the advantages of propinquity of proximity to neighbours, 26 00:01:28,690 --> 00:01:31,520 shops, places to work, enough density to support a local shop, 27 00:01:32,000 --> 00:01:35,920 a pub or a bar or a bus or a tram or a train. And 28 00:01:37,530 --> 00:01:41,560 often, not always often a gentle density type development. 29 00:01:41,810 --> 00:01:44,880 Think terrace houses, think mansion blocks, think of Village Green. 30 00:01:44,880 --> 00:01:49,640 Think of town square will optimise those trade-offs for many people much of the 31 00:01:49,640 --> 00:01:51,640 time. So yes, we are often about 32 00:01:53,240 --> 00:01:58,080 encouraging or discouraging super density and encouraging 33 00:01:58,080 --> 00:02:02,920 gentle density and discouraging thoughtless sprawl of 20 or 30 homes a hectare. 34 00:02:02,920 --> 00:02:05,920 So we're trying to help more places get to that trade off, 35 00:02:05,920 --> 00:02:08,600 which we think is better for the environment, 36 00:02:08,600 --> 00:02:12,350 better for the people living there and actually better for productivity because 37 00:02:12,350 --> 00:02:14,000 that then encourages agglomeration effects. 38 00:02:15,310 --> 00:02:19,790 Just so that the listeners can get a sense of the places you're talking about, 39 00:02:20,420 --> 00:02:22,840 what's an example of a good, in your mind, 40 00:02:23,240 --> 00:02:28,120 of well either planned or not planned, but a well ordered urban area? 41 00:02:28,120 --> 00:02:31,160 What's an example of a bad one? A super density one, 42 00:02:31,160 --> 00:02:33,160 and what's an example of the sprawl that you don't like? 43 00:02:33,710 --> 00:02:35,040 It's not a question whether I like or not. 44 00:02:35,040 --> 00:02:37,560 It's a question whether it works optimally. Well. 45 00:02:37,560 --> 00:02:41,480 The one area that was always in my head when I started, 46 00:02:41,660 --> 00:02:42,960 I'm not saying it's the perfect example, 47 00:02:43,700 --> 00:02:45,640 is neighbourhood in central London called Pimlico, 48 00:02:45,640 --> 00:02:50,200 which was built in the mid 19th century. It's about a hundred seventy, 49 00:02:50,200 --> 00:02:52,560 a hundred seventy five homes per hectare. It's a great place to live. 50 00:02:54,470 --> 00:02:58,160 It's got modest gardens, terrace houses, mansion blocks, 51 00:02:58,210 --> 00:02:59,890 quite a tight network of streets. 52 00:02:59,920 --> 00:03:03,090 It's quite a European version of a London neighbourhood. 53 00:03:04,260 --> 00:03:06,370 You wouldn't have those everywhere. That's a pretty good, 54 00:03:06,920 --> 00:03:07,970 good way of optimising. 55 00:03:09,570 --> 00:03:14,210 A bad example of super density would be a new development 56 00:03:14,430 --> 00:03:16,010 in central London called Nine Elms, 57 00:03:17,100 --> 00:03:20,330 where they've taken a previously industrial site along the 58 00:03:22,930 --> 00:03:27,410 southern side of central of the Thames and put a series of tower blocks. 59 00:03:28,070 --> 00:03:31,330 Towers have a place but they're at sort of funny angles to the river to maximise 60 00:03:31,330 --> 00:03:35,650 the number of windows that have a view of the river. I get why they did that, 61 00:03:36,830 --> 00:03:40,250 but it's also created very windy corridors, 62 00:03:40,340 --> 00:03:44,770 unpleasant public places and actually doesn't probably even optimise the density 63 00:03:44,800 --> 00:03:45,633 from the site. 64 00:03:45,870 --> 00:03:48,530 The wind is crazy in Nine Elms. It's really noticeable as you walk through it. 65 00:03:48,550 --> 00:03:51,290 And this stuff ... no surprises. So this stuff we've, 66 00:03:51,290 --> 00:03:55,730 we've understood the stuff for 40 years. Tall buildings create more wind. 67 00:03:55,790 --> 00:03:59,330 Now sometimes that's fine. If you are in Dubai or in a very hot place, 68 00:03:59,330 --> 00:04:00,570 you may be grateful for that. 69 00:04:01,710 --> 00:04:06,610 In a temperate climate such as London on the whole fast 70 00:04:06,610 --> 00:04:08,370 winds are bad, make us less comfortable. 71 00:04:09,190 --> 00:04:14,090 We do walking tours for some of our donors and clients and we always stop them 72 00:04:14,630 --> 00:04:15,010 at St. 73 00:04:15,010 --> 00:04:18,650 James Street where you get The Economist tower because suddenly the microclimate 74 00:04:18,650 --> 00:04:19,483 is less pleasant. 75 00:04:19,600 --> 00:04:22,050 It's always slightly colder there and there's always a wind effect. Now, 76 00:04:22,230 --> 00:04:24,050 on a warm day in central London in the middle of summer, 77 00:04:24,050 --> 00:04:26,130 you might be grateful for that. Most of the year you won't be, 78 00:04:27,070 --> 00:04:31,690 you also asked bad examples of sprawl and should preface this by saying and 79 00:04:31,850 --> 00:04:32,690 sprawl an American American term, 80 00:04:32,690 --> 00:04:36,980 obviously a detached house is a good thing. Detached house 81 00:04:37,580 --> 00:04:41,300 tends to create an environment, a back garden and a front garden. 82 00:04:41,690 --> 00:04:43,140 Lots of space for the people who live there. 83 00:04:43,290 --> 00:04:45,300 When you ask people what's their preferred form of housing, 84 00:04:46,230 --> 00:04:51,060 about 69% in the UK and similar ratios elsewhere in Europe would 85 00:04:51,060 --> 00:04:53,650 say that their preferred performance is detached or family houses as you'd say 86 00:04:53,650 --> 00:04:56,260 in America. There are lots of good things about the detached house, 87 00:04:56,260 --> 00:04:59,060 about the family house. We shouldn't criticise them existentially. 88 00:04:59,370 --> 00:05:01,180 They give you lots of house, they give you garden, 89 00:05:01,180 --> 00:05:03,020 they give control of your immediate environment, 90 00:05:03,020 --> 00:05:05,820 which is why people say they like them. But there are trade offs as well. 91 00:05:06,080 --> 00:05:10,460 So when you then look at the revealed pricing of land values both per hectare 92 00:05:10,460 --> 00:05:14,380 and per square foot, you find that when you do well-planned, 93 00:05:14,380 --> 00:05:15,820 well-designed gentle density, 94 00:05:16,360 --> 00:05:20,330 you are getting most of the advantages of lower density. Getting your own house, 95 00:05:20,330 --> 00:05:22,900 you're getting your own garden. You might be getting a slightly smaller house, 96 00:05:22,900 --> 00:05:24,180 you might be getting a slightly smaller garden. 97 00:05:24,650 --> 00:05:27,620 I live in a detached in a terrace house and we get a garden, 98 00:05:27,640 --> 00:05:31,020 but not as much as I would if I lived out in the far outer suburbs. 99 00:05:31,240 --> 00:05:33,060 But you then get other advantages as well. 100 00:05:33,520 --> 00:05:35,780 You probably get proximity to a school, 101 00:05:35,960 --> 00:05:38,180 you probably get greater proximity to local shops. 102 00:05:38,200 --> 00:05:41,820 You probably get greater proximity to a bus or a train that can get you to work 103 00:05:41,820 --> 00:05:43,380 because the high density makes that affordable. 104 00:05:43,400 --> 00:05:45,140 So you're getting those trade-offs. 105 00:05:45,140 --> 00:05:49,180 This is the case for gentle density between the advantages of private space and 106 00:05:49,180 --> 00:05:52,300 the advantages of propinquity. That's the trick of gentle density. 107 00:05:52,490 --> 00:05:54,180 It's not perfect. Nothing in this world is perfect, 108 00:05:54,200 --> 00:05:59,090 but you are more likely to optimise for more people much of the time in terms of 109 00:05:59,750 --> 00:06:00,400 bad sprawl, 110 00:06:00,400 --> 00:06:03,930 you could point at almost anything done outside London and Manchester and a few 111 00:06:03,930 --> 00:06:07,570 other cities in the UK in the last 20 years. One that just jumps to mind because 112 00:06:07,570 --> 00:06:11,890 it's just so ridiculous. Ebbsfleet, which is a major new development, 113 00:06:12,210 --> 00:06:15,890 close to a train line or on a train line in an old quarry, 114 00:06:16,710 --> 00:06:19,010 they're finally getting around to doing the new town centre. 115 00:06:19,150 --> 00:06:23,010 Now they've already done the housing a bit further out 116 00:06:24,790 --> 00:06:29,330 within a few hundred yards of what should be the town centre, the train station. 117 00:06:29,870 --> 00:06:33,250 You are down into two story detached or semi-detached houses, 118 00:06:33,710 --> 00:06:36,170 wide roads, huge splay junctions, 119 00:06:36,710 --> 00:06:40,930 very inefficient land use when you are about 90 seconds walk from the station. 120 00:06:41,310 --> 00:06:44,960 That's a particularly egregious example of sprawl because it's precisely where 121 00:06:44,960 --> 00:06:45,730 you shouldn't have sprawl. 122 00:06:45,730 --> 00:06:48,570 I mean there is a case to having lower density further out because you are 123 00:06:48,570 --> 00:06:51,890 making a different trade off between proximity to work and personal space. 124 00:06:52,960 --> 00:06:56,450 When you are a few hundred yards from a major train junction, 125 00:06:56,550 --> 00:06:57,450 you shouldn't be building that. 126 00:06:57,590 --> 00:07:00,730 And of course in London we got actually quite a lot of that either with a 127 00:07:00,850 --> 00:07:03,050 functional history or of bombing or whatever it might be. 128 00:07:03,520 --> 00:07:06,570 It's funny you mentioned Pimlico, just a personal anecdote. 129 00:07:06,710 --> 00:07:11,210 When I came to London when I was 15 on my first solo trip 130 00:07:11,520 --> 00:07:14,330 away from Cork, which is where I grew up, I wander around ... 131 00:07:14,450 --> 00:07:15,050 Lovely gentle density in Cork. 132 00:07:15,050 --> 00:07:16,450 Well, I wandered around the city, 133 00:07:16,570 --> 00:07:21,530 I wandered around London basically all day every day for a week and came to 134 00:07:21,600 --> 00:07:24,890 Pimlico and I was completely blown away by how beautiful and lovely it was. 135 00:07:25,030 --> 00:07:28,610 And I remember texting the girl I was going out with at the time saying, 136 00:07:28,930 --> 00:07:30,850 I really hope I can live in Pimlico someday. 137 00:07:31,610 --> 00:07:34,250 I really love Pimlico and I've never ended up living there. 138 00:07:34,370 --> 00:07:38,170 I live pretty close now, but it is a really, really wonderful part of the world. 139 00:07:38,310 --> 00:07:42,210 And it's interesting to see how it was built. So it was built under strict 140 00:07:44,260 --> 00:07:48,730 regulation by the landowner following the London Metropolitan building acts. 141 00:07:49,150 --> 00:07:52,930 So it was part historically of the groner estate. It isn't anymore. 142 00:07:52,930 --> 00:07:55,890 It got sold off to manage death duties in the 20th century. 143 00:07:56,520 --> 00:07:58,650 This isn't a comment on land ownership patterns by the way, 144 00:07:58,670 --> 00:08:03,650 but so it was built by a master. It's hard to put a word for it ... 145 00:08:04,040 --> 00:08:06,770 developer/contractor/architect/ Master ceremoniwa. 146 00:08:06,770 --> 00:08:09,130 He;s a chap called Thomas Cubitt who, if you haven't heard of him, 147 00:08:09,130 --> 00:08:12,010 definitely worth a Google. Fascinating man. 148 00:08:12,350 --> 00:08:15,810 But he built the whole thing out using a pattern book of quite simple house 149 00:08:15,810 --> 00:08:17,010 types. If you actually, again, 150 00:08:17,220 --> 00:08:19,370 worth bringing up on screen or Googling what it looks like, 151 00:08:19,520 --> 00:08:21,970 they're just sort of mid 19th century italianate. 152 00:08:21,970 --> 00:08:24,530 They're all covered in stucco columns in front of the doors, 153 00:08:24,530 --> 00:08:28,970 couple of steps up range of three or four window types, that's it. 154 00:08:29,390 --> 00:08:33,330 But you get that variety in a pattern at quite high density but not overwhelming 155 00:08:33,330 --> 00:08:34,150 density. 156 00:08:34,150 --> 00:08:36,450 So you said a few things there that I want to unpack a little bit. 157 00:08:36,590 --> 00:08:37,610 So what's a pattern book? 158 00:08:37,910 --> 00:08:42,770 So a pattern book sometimes also known as a design code is essentially a set of 159 00:08:42,920 --> 00:08:47,920 pre-done designs for whatever you want in a 160 00:08:47,920 --> 00:08:50,610 town or village or city. It might be a street design, 161 00:08:50,670 --> 00:08:53,010 it might be material types, it might be window design. 162 00:08:54,160 --> 00:08:58,010 Typically it's what's public and I think it's quite important philosophical 163 00:08:58,010 --> 00:09:01,610 difference between the public realm and the public side of the house or a 164 00:09:01,730 --> 00:09:03,970 building and what you do inside. 165 00:09:04,130 --> 00:09:07,650 I mean my personal view would be what you do inside is up to you as long you 166 00:09:07,650 --> 00:09:08,680 don't break the law or hurt anyone, 167 00:09:09,540 --> 00:09:12,970 but actually if you're building in the street, if you're creating a street, 168 00:09:13,180 --> 00:09:14,570 you are not creating something private. 169 00:09:14,590 --> 00:09:19,040 You are by definition creating something public. And that's why on the whole, 170 00:09:19,040 --> 00:09:21,920 and so this is going beyond your question, the state, 171 00:09:22,280 --> 00:09:23,530 whether you like it or not, 172 00:09:23,670 --> 00:09:28,250 has tended to get involved in that and has often ended up defining versions of 173 00:09:28,250 --> 00:09:30,410 what I'm for present purposes calling a pattern. 174 00:09:30,510 --> 00:09:31,920 But you wanted to ask something else as well? 175 00:09:31,920 --> 00:09:33,450 Well, in this case it wasn't the State, 176 00:09:33,450 --> 00:09:34,850 as you were saying it was the Grosvenor estate, 177 00:09:34,850 --> 00:09:37,250 but they kind of acted in the function of the State. 178 00:09:37,430 --> 00:09:38,890 Yeah, so the Grosvenor estate, 179 00:09:38,890 --> 00:09:41,250 and I wouldn't want to give too much detail because I might get it wrong, 180 00:09:41,250 --> 00:09:43,770 but the Grosvenor estate certainly did more than the London Metropolitan 181 00:09:44,040 --> 00:09:44,890 Building Acts required. 182 00:09:45,110 --> 00:09:48,370 But the London Metropolitan building acts like the previous London building Acts 183 00:09:48,370 --> 00:09:52,770 in the 18th and late 17th centuries essentially created a 184 00:09:52,960 --> 00:09:57,530 defacto partial pattern book because they set some stipulations for materials 185 00:09:57,750 --> 00:09:59,770 and distances and building sizes. 186 00:10:00,000 --> 00:10:04,610 It's really interesting because when I talk about design codes in the context of 187 00:10:05,330 --> 00:10:10,040 changing planning and zoning rules, now people often find them quite alien. 188 00:10:10,510 --> 00:10:14,490 The idea that there would be a bunch of rules about the way a thing you build 189 00:10:14,510 --> 00:10:16,890 can look, we're used to rules about safety, 190 00:10:16,950 --> 00:10:19,800 but we're not so used to rules about designs. 191 00:10:19,990 --> 00:10:22,610 But the way you are describing it sounds like this used to be the norm. 192 00:10:22,910 --> 00:10:23,410 It was the norm. 193 00:10:23,410 --> 00:10:26,920 And the the reason why anyone who's even vaguely historically interested can 194 00:10:26,920 --> 00:10:29,800 walk around, we're in London so let's keep with London, 195 00:10:30,300 --> 00:10:33,970 and normally data building with reasonable chance of getting it roughly right. 196 00:10:34,750 --> 00:10:37,450 You basically can tell the difference between the 19th century and 18th century 197 00:10:37,680 --> 00:10:40,770 building or a 20th century building. Yes, there's architectural fashion, 198 00:10:40,870 --> 00:10:45,130 but it's largely because following the regulations and the codes that were 199 00:10:45,250 --> 00:10:46,083 required at the time, 200 00:10:46,320 --> 00:10:50,920 once you get past about 1780 following the 1778 London Building Act, 201 00:10:51,470 --> 00:10:55,250 all of the windows have set in more and you don't have wooden frames other than 202 00:10:55,250 --> 00:10:59,210 the actual mulian and transom bars because it was banned in regulation. 203 00:10:59,270 --> 00:11:02,170 So it does follow that. And just on 204 00:11:03,710 --> 00:11:08,570 the principle of coding and setting the way I would always, I think put it is 205 00:11:10,670 --> 00:11:14,250 use codes and pattern books to make it easy, but don't necessarily, 206 00:11:14,260 --> 00:11:18,800 other than for some fundamental things, don't necessarily ban other things. Just 207 00:11:20,990 --> 00:11:25,200 encourage people to do the good ordinary. You do the good ordinary follow the 208 00:11:25,200 --> 00:11:28,880 pattern book, essentially you're pre-approved off you go, no risk, 209 00:11:29,110 --> 00:11:32,040 just go to the bank, get the debt you need to build the thing and off you go. 210 00:11:32,140 --> 00:11:35,480 If you want to do something bigger and weirder or uglier or more beautiful or 211 00:11:36,000 --> 00:11:40,120 whatever, ten times the heights with glass and bits of funny angles coming up, 212 00:11:40,120 --> 00:11:40,860 that's fine. 213 00:11:40,860 --> 00:11:43,400 The planning system's over there and we can get into the planning system in more 214 00:11:43,400 --> 00:11:46,680 detail. Take your chances, you may get a no, but we're not going to ban you, 215 00:11:46,680 --> 00:11:49,800 but you just need to be aware you're going to be taking a greater level of risk. 216 00:11:49,860 --> 00:11:52,120 So it's less about increasing risk for stuff, 217 00:11:52,120 --> 00:11:56,570 it's more about de-risking things that fit a reasonable lowest common 218 00:11:56,570 --> 00:11:58,770 denominator that most people most of the time will accept. 219 00:11:59,110 --> 00:12:00,970 So I have a small question and I have a big question. 220 00:12:01,110 --> 00:12:02,330 I'm going to ask the small question first, 221 00:12:02,330 --> 00:12:04,570 which is that you mentioned variety in a pattern. 222 00:12:05,480 --> 00:12:08,570 What are you thinking of when you say variety in a pattern as this desirable 223 00:12:08,570 --> 00:12:09,403 feature? 224 00:12:09,640 --> 00:12:14,490 Something we haven't got to but we might is about the evidence about the 225 00:12:14,490 --> 00:12:16,250 types of places that people like and why, 226 00:12:16,250 --> 00:12:17,610 which I think is a fascinating subject, 227 00:12:17,610 --> 00:12:20,650 which is really opening up at the moment and it's possible to talk about it now 228 00:12:20,650 --> 00:12:24,680 with more confidence than even 20 years ago. But by variety in a pattern, 229 00:12:24,720 --> 00:12:28,010 what I mean is as you walk down a street, 230 00:12:28,860 --> 00:12:32,290 there is a pattern of repetition. It might be the same bay width, 231 00:12:32,390 --> 00:12:35,410 it might be a similar colour range, it might be a range of window types. 232 00:12:35,910 --> 00:12:40,610 So there's some coherence and structure and repetition, yes, if you like, 233 00:12:42,850 --> 00:12:44,130 you'd make the analogy to a poem, 234 00:12:44,280 --> 00:12:48,490 it's the rhyme scheme to the poem or perhaps the semi rhymes that go between the 235 00:12:48,610 --> 00:12:51,930 different lines. It's the structure of the sonet, but there's also a difference. 236 00:12:51,930 --> 00:12:52,770 It's not as if a sonet, 237 00:12:52,770 --> 00:12:55,410 it's just the same line or two lines repeated multiple times. 238 00:12:56,710 --> 00:12:58,090 So you've got a different 239 00:13:00,860 --> 00:13:04,390 head to a column there or you've got a different fan light there or suddenly 240 00:13:04,390 --> 00:13:06,350 you've got a slightly different window. So you've get variety, 241 00:13:07,130 --> 00:13:10,790 you get little surprises, but they're within that overall framework. 242 00:13:10,890 --> 00:13:15,510 And the emerging neuroscience of how we respond to places would I think 243 00:13:15,510 --> 00:13:18,230 encourage us to believe, I don't think we've completely proven it yet, 244 00:13:18,460 --> 00:13:22,950 that most of us find that pleasant surprises within a coherent framework, 245 00:13:23,630 --> 00:13:25,790 a more readable and enjoyable place to be. 246 00:13:26,540 --> 00:13:27,750 I've experienced this too, by the way. 247 00:13:27,750 --> 00:13:31,710 So actually I consider myself to have slightly repetitious leaning 248 00:13:32,140 --> 00:13:36,990 preferences. So when I go to, there's that street in the central Paris, 249 00:13:36,990 --> 00:13:38,750 Rue de Rivoli, I think I dunno, 250 00:13:38,750 --> 00:13:41,670 70 bay long building that's identical bay 70 times. 251 00:13:42,370 --> 00:13:44,470 And I see a building like that, I'm like, that looks really great. 252 00:13:44,930 --> 00:13:49,710 And I think I saw a building today in Chicago called the State Mercantile 253 00:13:49,910 --> 00:13:51,390 Exchange or something like that. Biggest building in the world, 254 00:13:51,390 --> 00:13:53,630 4 million square foot takes up several blocks. 255 00:13:53,730 --> 00:13:54,563 At the time, not now. 256 00:13:54,570 --> 00:13:55,330 At the time, 257 00:13:55,330 --> 00:13:59,550 but for a long time and not the tallest but the biggest in terms of total amount 258 00:13:59,550 --> 00:14:02,790 of square footage has its own zip code until 2008. 259 00:14:03,890 --> 00:14:08,790 I just don't want the Romanian Palace of Parliament to 260 00:14:08,790 --> 00:14:09,750 lose its title. 261 00:14:10,530 --> 00:14:12,390 But everyone I meet disagrees with me, 262 00:14:12,390 --> 00:14:14,710 especially American and English people or British people, 263 00:14:15,210 --> 00:14:19,590 and think that the American main Street or the British Village Street where you 264 00:14:19,590 --> 00:14:22,910 have a three story building next to a two story building and everything's a bit 265 00:14:22,910 --> 00:14:25,950 higgledy piggly and there's stuff added over hundreds of years and that everyone 266 00:14:25,950 --> 00:14:27,510 seems to prefer that. Is that your experience? 267 00:14:28,170 --> 00:14:32,630 So I wouldn't say everyone, and this is about probabilities and proportions, 268 00:14:32,650 --> 00:14:33,510 not certainties, 269 00:14:33,570 --> 00:14:37,270 and people disagree on this stuff and have different preferences and they're 270 00:14:37,270 --> 00:14:38,630 influenced by their own experiences, 271 00:14:41,350 --> 00:14:45,570 the types of building that are mere repetition or perhaps a street I should say, 272 00:14:45,570 --> 00:14:46,403 or big building, 273 00:14:47,030 --> 00:14:49,770 you can get away with less variety in the pattern for most people. 274 00:14:49,830 --> 00:14:52,050 I'm not going to say what you will like or dislike because that'd be 275 00:14:52,210 --> 00:14:56,250 unreasonable where you've got a richer or a more sinuous pattern. 276 00:14:56,470 --> 00:15:00,130 So take the extreme case of what you were just describing, 277 00:15:01,350 --> 00:15:04,330 the Royal Crescent of Bath. Now all the Crescent of Bath are actually ... 278 00:15:04,330 --> 00:15:07,610 there's very little variety within the pattern, but they're jolly beautiful. 279 00:15:07,980 --> 00:15:10,930 Often they're sinuous, they well ... by definition they curve. 280 00:15:11,190 --> 00:15:15,930 So the reduced variety bothers us much less because other things are 281 00:15:15,930 --> 00:15:16,763 marvellous about it. 282 00:15:19,230 --> 00:15:24,050 In the two examples of repetition that you just cited, the Rue de Rivoli, 283 00:15:24,050 --> 00:15:25,730 right in the heart of Paris is just opposite the Louvre. 284 00:15:26,000 --> 00:15:29,690 It's deeply rich and textured. You've got the arcade, it's a glorious street. 285 00:15:30,190 --> 00:15:34,010 You've got a level of ornament there that you wouldn't have in most streets, 286 00:15:34,580 --> 00:15:36,970 which I would argue, I mean I'm not going to tell you why you like something, 287 00:15:36,970 --> 00:15:39,050 but certainly I also like that street I should say. 288 00:15:39,050 --> 00:15:40,530 And that's one of the reasons I like it. 289 00:15:40,680 --> 00:15:45,290 I've also got happy memories of spending time there when I was 18 or 19. But 290 00:15:48,840 --> 00:15:50,740 the new proposed Marks and Sparks, 291 00:15:50,740 --> 00:15:52,900 just to take a controversial example in Oxford Street 292 00:15:54,680 --> 00:15:58,780 is a spreadsheet without detail or ornaments of the same window repeated time 293 00:15:58,780 --> 00:16:01,020 after time after time without any 294 00:16:03,480 --> 00:16:06,890 texture or pattern to it. Most people, 295 00:16:07,500 --> 00:16:08,570 based on the stats, 296 00:16:09,080 --> 00:16:12,970 dislike that type of repetition without any level of greater detail. 297 00:16:12,970 --> 00:16:14,410 So that would be my ... 298 00:16:14,680 --> 00:16:18,890 Well, to play devil's advocate though, if sometimes you add variation, 299 00:16:18,890 --> 00:16:22,170 it makes things even worse. So not to pick on a particular building, 300 00:16:22,190 --> 00:16:26,730 but I'm about to the rear facade of the eye hospital in 301 00:16:26,800 --> 00:16:27,633 Morefield. 302 00:16:28,110 --> 00:16:31,610 We polled that when I used to work at policy exchange and it was by far the 303 00:16:31,610 --> 00:16:35,170 least popular hospital design in the country that we could get. And basically, 304 00:16:35,370 --> 00:16:36,203 I dunno if you know it ... 305 00:16:36,610 --> 00:16:36,930 I can't recall. 306 00:16:36,930 --> 00:16:41,810 Hanging triangular orange shards going down the side and then there's a 307 00:16:41,810 --> 00:16:44,090 completely randomly shaped box that comes out the middle. 308 00:16:44,230 --> 00:16:45,450 So that sounds incoherent to me. 309 00:16:45,520 --> 00:16:46,330 Okay. 310 00:16:46,330 --> 00:16:48,570 I haven't seen it so I can't comment or I probably have seen it but I can't 311 00:16:48,690 --> 00:16:49,770 remember it. So yes, 312 00:16:49,910 --> 00:16:53,650 the point is that you've got coherence in the pattern and it's not just random 313 00:16:53,780 --> 00:16:54,690 thing here thing there. 314 00:16:55,030 --> 00:16:59,850 And the reason why on the whole patterns that have been used for many years, 315 00:16:59,950 --> 00:17:03,130 or I've got a particular contextual geographic reference, 316 00:17:03,440 --> 00:17:06,010 Glasgow or Gothic or Chinese or whatever, 317 00:17:06,560 --> 00:17:10,570 typically they've grown out of organic ways of building things. 318 00:17:10,570 --> 00:17:14,650 So they've sort of got their own inherent common sense and coherence because 319 00:17:14,930 --> 00:17:18,050 ultimately it's a memory of a transom or a tree or whatever it might be. 320 00:17:18,460 --> 00:17:19,720 So here's a big question then. 321 00:17:20,650 --> 00:17:21,390 I thought small question was quite big, 322 00:17:21,390 --> 00:17:22,650 but there might have been about four of them. 323 00:17:22,840 --> 00:17:25,570 It's just a very interesting small question. So the big question is, 324 00:17:25,570 --> 00:17:26,720 and this is something I'm very, 325 00:17:26,720 --> 00:17:31,610 very interested in and maybe even the first reason why I ever knew what create 326 00:17:31,610 --> 00:17:34,610 streets was. So first and foremost, 327 00:17:34,830 --> 00:17:39,570 Sam and I got into this because we were interested in building and why 328 00:17:39,670 --> 00:17:43,170 so many people are against new building happening nearby them. 329 00:17:43,220 --> 00:17:45,570 And I think there are lots and lots of interesting reasons why that isn't. 330 00:17:45,710 --> 00:17:47,960 And the thing that I'm about to talk about isn't the only one, 331 00:17:48,310 --> 00:17:49,890 but I would like to know your opinion. 332 00:17:50,270 --> 00:17:54,130 Do you think that people thinking that buildings are ugly is one of the factors 333 00:17:54,130 --> 00:17:56,090 that goes into this and how strong can we show this? 334 00:17:56,270 --> 00:17:59,130 Is it true or is it just an excuse people make? 335 00:18:00,850 --> 00:18:01,630 Actually it's both of those things. 336 00:18:01,630 --> 00:18:04,240 It is true and it's also an excuse perhaps more profoundly. 337 00:18:04,240 --> 00:18:09,010 It's just an assumption. So it's come that from several ways, 338 00:18:10,320 --> 00:18:14,010 it's always a hard thing to pull on this because there's a tendency here that 339 00:18:14,010 --> 00:18:18,770 people give you the answer that they think that you want or the high status 340 00:18:18,770 --> 00:18:19,603 answer. 341 00:18:19,720 --> 00:18:23,130 'I just don't think it looks nice' doesn't feel like the type of thing you might 342 00:18:23,130 --> 00:18:25,960 want to admit to. So I think there is a bit of that that goes on. Nevertheless, 343 00:18:26,390 --> 00:18:27,530 ask the question a different way. 344 00:18:27,600 --> 00:18:32,520 There was from a YouGov poll from a few years ago, 2% of the British public, 345 00:18:32,820 --> 00:18:37,400 2% - it's not a typo - believe that new development will make an existing place 346 00:18:37,400 --> 00:18:41,320 better. That's not a great statistic if you're a developer or a landowner. 347 00:18:42,120 --> 00:18:46,880 I sometimes use that quote or that number talking to conferences of architects 348 00:18:46,880 --> 00:18:49,080 or planners and then I sort of hit them with By the way, 349 00:18:49,080 --> 00:18:53,840 7% think the planners can make things better by their interventions. 350 00:18:54,100 --> 00:18:59,040 So at a deep cultural level, this is coming back to your question, very, 351 00:18:59,040 --> 00:19:03,960 very low levels of trust that new building and new interventions will improve my 352 00:19:03,960 --> 00:19:05,160 place for my neighbourhood. 353 00:19:06,780 --> 00:19:11,200 Is that what buildings look like? Well that's certainly a part of it. Again, 354 00:19:11,200 --> 00:19:14,960 looking at the polling and looking at some of the focus groups, 355 00:19:15,940 --> 00:19:19,440 we did a paper on this some years ago looking at evidence in the uk, us 356 00:19:21,180 --> 00:19:23,880 all anglophone and a bit of French, and we didn't get into other countries, 357 00:19:23,880 --> 00:19:26,280 it was before AI made it easy to translate everything. 358 00:19:28,990 --> 00:19:30,930 Loss of green space that bothers people, 359 00:19:33,780 --> 00:19:37,690 buildings not feeling of here, people who live here, not feeling of here, 360 00:19:38,650 --> 00:19:43,410 consequences for infrastructure and traffic and doctors places and school 361 00:19:43,410 --> 00:19:48,090 places. Not trusting the developer, 362 00:19:48,110 --> 00:19:50,930 not trusting the local council. And if you don't trust them, 363 00:19:50,930 --> 00:19:53,450 then even if the things they say look great or are great, 364 00:19:53,870 --> 00:19:58,090 if you literally don't believe them, then in a way you discount the whole thing. 365 00:19:58,310 --> 00:20:00,450 So is it just about what buildings look like? No, 366 00:20:00,460 --> 00:20:04,960 I'd never say that and I never have said that there is a deep vicious circle of 367 00:20:05,010 --> 00:20:07,690 I don't believe the people, I think they'll make it uglier. 368 00:20:07,960 --> 00:20:09,850 I dunno what the consequences will be for me. 369 00:20:11,440 --> 00:20:15,890 Does that get you into a spiral of just not trusting? Yes, it definitely does. 370 00:20:16,460 --> 00:20:18,570 Based on our experience, this is, again, 371 00:20:18,570 --> 00:20:22,930 it's quite a hard thing to research in the abstract. We certainly now have a 372 00:20:22,930 --> 00:20:25,570 growing number of examples either that we're aware of or that we've worked on or 373 00:20:25,570 --> 00:20:27,770 indeed done ourselves where we can say, look, 374 00:20:27,770 --> 00:20:31,960 we can change the local politics with the key bit starting bit. 375 00:20:32,050 --> 00:20:32,960 I don't think this is the only thing that matters, 376 00:20:32,980 --> 00:20:36,240 but certainly how it looks deeply changing situation. 377 00:20:36,240 --> 00:20:40,170 So if it's okay to give a long answer public, I can totally cite this. 378 00:20:40,170 --> 00:20:44,450 So we've been working for some years for a lovely part of England called 379 00:20:44,450 --> 00:20:48,930 Litchfield, which is a market town in the middle, in the Midlands. 380 00:20:49,780 --> 00:20:53,450 We've been working for the council in the council's role as a landowner rather 381 00:20:53,450 --> 00:20:55,690 than the council's role as a planning authority. 382 00:20:56,310 --> 00:21:00,450 And there's a site called the Bird Street? No, not the Bird Street site. 383 00:21:00,450 --> 00:21:03,130 I think just on the edge of the city centre I should say. 384 00:21:03,130 --> 00:21:06,410 It's a mediaeval city in origin. Now largely Georgian and 18th century to look 385 00:21:06,410 --> 00:21:07,690 at with a lovely cathedral in the middle. 386 00:21:08,110 --> 00:21:10,410 And between the train station and the city centre, 387 00:21:10,760 --> 00:21:15,450 there's a sort of bit of scrub land and car park and a former multi-story car 388 00:21:15,450 --> 00:21:17,290 park, a bit of nowheresville. It could be anywhere. 389 00:21:18,210 --> 00:21:20,570 Which should have been developed years ago but just hadn't. 390 00:21:20,570 --> 00:21:24,810 And fundamentally why hadn't was because the politics and the economics and the 391 00:21:24,930 --> 00:21:27,610 planning were in contradiction. So the people said, 392 00:21:27,610 --> 00:21:31,810 we want back to my earlier point about detached houses. We want detached houses, 393 00:21:31,860 --> 00:21:36,240 three cars, a bit of suburbia, that's what we want. Thank you. 394 00:21:37,510 --> 00:21:38,960 The planning and the developer said, 395 00:21:38,960 --> 00:21:42,050 this is this city centre site that's ridiculously low intensity, 396 00:21:42,160 --> 00:21:43,810 inefficient land use, which is correct. 397 00:21:44,670 --> 00:21:48,170 We should do much bigger things and perhaps we should do a big cinema and do the 398 00:21:48,170 --> 00:21:51,410 next big building next to it because it's next to the city centre. But the 399 00:21:51,410 --> 00:21:53,770 people, the populus as expressed through the political process, 400 00:21:53,920 --> 00:21:58,010 kept basically rejecting that so that this council owned site sat there doing 401 00:21:58,010 --> 00:22:00,930 nothing wastefully for years after years. So when we were asked, 402 00:22:01,130 --> 00:22:05,930 we flipped the process round and we didn't start by asking about the site, 403 00:22:06,030 --> 00:22:10,290 but we both in community sessions and then in an online survey that we ran a 404 00:22:10,290 --> 00:22:13,930 visual survey, we said, what is your favourite bit of Litchfield? 405 00:22:14,510 --> 00:22:16,330 And we had a list of places and the list of building. 406 00:22:16,330 --> 00:22:20,480 So people could either respond to specific prompts or they could unprompted just 407 00:22:20,480 --> 00:22:23,810 suggest places. We then summarise that and what came out of that. 408 00:22:24,030 --> 00:22:26,530 Not that surprisingly, because Litchfield is a lovely place, 409 00:22:26,930 --> 00:22:30,690 I recommend listeners and watchers to go and visit it you and it has an amazing 410 00:22:30,690 --> 00:22:34,240 cathedral people in Litchfield like Litchfield don't blame 'em. 411 00:22:34,240 --> 00:22:36,090 Very rational decision, the lovely gentle density, 412 00:22:36,090 --> 00:22:40,170 it's variety in a patern somewhere between the Rue de Rivoli the a High Street. 413 00:22:40,550 --> 00:22:45,160 And so we then wrote a code for the 414 00:22:45,160 --> 00:22:49,120 council saying well look code for more of Litchfield 415 00:22:50,120 --> 00:22:52,840 slightly reduced parking near the city centre and it's near the train station so 416 00:22:52,840 --> 00:22:57,680 you can take down parking a bit, 3, 4, 5 story terrace houses, 417 00:22:57,720 --> 00:23:02,670 little bit of mansion blocks code for that. And that's what we did. 418 00:23:04,170 --> 00:23:08,430 And that's now been accepted. There hasn't been a political explosion. 419 00:23:09,530 --> 00:23:12,110 And on the basis of that code, which is now established as local policy, 420 00:23:12,130 --> 00:23:14,670 the site's been sold and we're now supporting the counciling. 421 00:23:14,930 --> 00:23:18,630 So we have used ultimately what it looks like and what it feels like. 422 00:23:18,660 --> 00:23:20,910 It's also the urban form and the degree of enclosure. 423 00:23:20,910 --> 00:23:22,510 It's not just what the buildings look like, 424 00:23:22,510 --> 00:23:26,830 but that is I think an existential part of it to unblock the planning. 425 00:23:27,190 --> 00:23:29,270 I had a quick question on what is a mansion block? 426 00:23:30,810 --> 00:23:33,030 So it's a very interesting question that actually, 427 00:23:33,190 --> 00:23:37,430 because a mansion block is a term that was coined in the 19th century when 428 00:23:38,530 --> 00:23:41,670 places like America and the UK started using what at the time felt like a rather 429 00:23:41,670 --> 00:23:45,650 continental or rather Parisian form, but it's a posh way, 430 00:23:45,890 --> 00:23:50,810 a posh old fashioned way of saying a medium rise block of flats that looks 431 00:23:50,840 --> 00:23:53,530 nice and is often associated in English. 432 00:23:53,530 --> 00:23:58,480 English with Edwardian red brick houses with coins and 433 00:23:58,650 --> 00:23:59,450 undressed windows. Am. 434 00:23:59,450 --> 00:24:03,730 I right in thinking that they're all named after one specific mansion block 435 00:24:03,730 --> 00:24:05,810 called Kensington Mansions or something like that? 436 00:24:05,980 --> 00:24:08,690 Oh, I don't know if that's meant to be a trick question. You've tricked me. 437 00:24:09,050 --> 00:24:09,883 I don't know. 438 00:24:10,240 --> 00:24:12,050 If it's true you probably would know it. 439 00:24:12,670 --> 00:24:14,210 I'm not saying it's not true, I just don't know. 440 00:24:14,230 --> 00:24:15,890 But what is interesting is that, 441 00:24:15,950 --> 00:24:18,610 and Osbert Lancaster did a very good pair of cartoons on this. 442 00:24:19,230 --> 00:24:22,690 So at the same time as the posh mansion blocks are being built in places like 443 00:24:22,690 --> 00:24:26,770 Mayfair and Kensington, actually the London County Council, 1920s, 444 00:24:27,130 --> 00:24:27,963 1930s were building something 445 00:24:29,150 --> 00:24:32,890 pretty similar often with slightly bigger rooms actually though with less 446 00:24:33,210 --> 00:24:36,810 external ornaments in the bit of London that we've actually just driven through 447 00:24:37,010 --> 00:24:39,850 places like Kensington and Elephant and Castle. 448 00:24:40,850 --> 00:24:43,890 I think it's very important to stress this point that you've just made, 449 00:24:43,890 --> 00:24:46,810 that this isn't just about architecture, this is about the urban form. 450 00:24:46,870 --> 00:24:47,150 Yes. 451 00:24:47,150 --> 00:24:51,690 And I've heard you in the past talk about doors opening onto the street or 452 00:24:51,920 --> 00:24:53,170 animation of the street, 453 00:24:53,170 --> 00:24:57,970 which you can explain what that means in a second or windows or 454 00:24:58,080 --> 00:25:01,050 just stuff, human level stuff at the street level. 455 00:25:01,590 --> 00:25:03,570 And it's certainly true that if you walk through, 456 00:25:04,490 --> 00:25:08,450 especially financial districts where they've built glass towers and things like 457 00:25:08,450 --> 00:25:10,210 that, which I really like by the way from afar, 458 00:25:10,310 --> 00:25:13,450 but once you get to the street level, it's often totally blank, 459 00:25:13,450 --> 00:25:16,480 totally anonymous at the street level and it's just a kind of a wall of glass. 460 00:25:17,430 --> 00:25:22,050 And you have talked a lot about the shortcomings of that kind of approach and I 461 00:25:22,050 --> 00:25:25,010 wonder if you can talk a little bit about what you think is wrong with that and 462 00:25:25,830 --> 00:25:28,290 why an alternative approach is better. 463 00:25:28,560 --> 00:25:32,480 Yeah, it's both about the use of the streets, the feel of the streets 464 00:25:34,110 --> 00:25:35,970 and the safety of the streets. I should say though, 465 00:25:37,770 --> 00:25:41,240 probably the first person to write about this with real influence was an amazing 466 00:25:41,690 --> 00:25:43,610 American lady, Jane Jacobs who some of you may have heard of. 467 00:25:43,650 --> 00:25:44,810 I was wondering if you were going to mention her. 468 00:25:45,230 --> 00:25:49,210 It's unfair to talk about street animation without referencing her She certainly 469 00:25:49,210 --> 00:25:52,010 had the breakthrough insights though she was following earlier writers to some 470 00:25:52,010 --> 00:25:55,090 degree. As a quick aside, it is, I think it's worth referencing, 471 00:25:56,190 --> 00:25:57,330 she was very much a journalist. 472 00:25:57,330 --> 00:26:00,450 She was writing in the 1960s complaining about what was happening to New York 473 00:26:00,450 --> 00:26:01,283 under Robert Moses. 474 00:26:02,110 --> 00:26:05,690 The level of criticism that she received from architects and professional 475 00:26:05,690 --> 00:26:07,170 planners was vicious. 476 00:26:07,450 --> 00:26:09,970 I mean in terms of was shocking then and even more shocking now. 477 00:26:10,010 --> 00:26:14,690 I mean she was condemned as the rantings of a sort of coffee stained woman. 478 00:26:14,690 --> 00:26:18,650 There was an appalling level of casual abuse that she received from the 479 00:26:18,650 --> 00:26:19,230 professions. 480 00:26:19,230 --> 00:26:21,570 But pointing out something that we can now say and I'll now answer your question 481 00:26:22,150 --> 00:26:26,450 was true. So she was right and they were wrong and I'm not an non-expert person, 482 00:26:26,450 --> 00:26:30,480 but the experts were wrong on this. So to answer your question, the morphology, 483 00:26:30,830 --> 00:26:31,663 the form 484 00:26:33,230 --> 00:26:36,240 of streets and towns matters in several ways. First of all, 485 00:26:36,240 --> 00:26:38,370 it matters in terms of where your backs and fronts are. 486 00:26:38,590 --> 00:26:42,370 So one of the big mistakes that was made post-war was we stopped having clear 487 00:26:42,420 --> 00:26:45,130 backs and fronts to streets and to blocks and to houses. 488 00:26:46,980 --> 00:26:49,830 That has several levels of problem. First of all, 489 00:26:49,980 --> 00:26:51,430 actually it makes them less safe. 490 00:26:51,850 --> 00:26:56,710 So if you can imagine a conventional block with all of the mansion blocks 491 00:26:56,710 --> 00:27:01,350 or terrorist houses facing outwards and the backs facing in with gardens, 492 00:27:01,800 --> 00:27:04,790 maybe a communal garden and a bit of shared space in the middle, maybe not. 493 00:27:05,370 --> 00:27:09,550 That's actually a very safe way of creating an urban block, 494 00:27:09,550 --> 00:27:13,830 which is correlated in UK and Australian data with lower crime in that block 495 00:27:13,980 --> 00:27:15,150 because it's just quite hard to break in. 496 00:27:15,150 --> 00:27:19,510 You've got a public street with doors and windows which are basically closed and 497 00:27:19,510 --> 00:27:21,350 you've got a continuous form, or a near continuous form, 498 00:27:21,350 --> 00:27:24,430 if you've got the semi detached house and the vulnerable bit around the back 499 00:27:24,430 --> 00:27:28,310 where the kitchen window may be left open or whatever you just physically can't 500 00:27:28,310 --> 00:27:31,830 get to. So there's a very practical case for that. 501 00:27:32,060 --> 00:27:34,430 There's also then a psychological case, 502 00:27:34,760 --> 00:27:38,830 which is that if you put all the public facing activity 503 00:27:39,960 --> 00:27:42,350 might be depending on where you are in the town, it might be the front garden, 504 00:27:42,610 --> 00:27:43,670 it might be the shop front, 505 00:27:43,810 --> 00:27:46,830 it might just be the front door facing in the same direction. 506 00:27:46,830 --> 00:27:51,070 Then you just get more stuff happening. And when you have more stuff happening 507 00:27:51,090 --> 00:27:55,230 up to a point and makes it busier again that correlates with a safer place. 508 00:27:56,170 --> 00:28:00,550 The safest places in towns are ones which are either inside your own home or are 509 00:28:00,550 --> 00:28:05,510 quite busy and more sociable places where people by the nature of the urban form 510 00:28:06,530 --> 00:28:08,830 are helped to come together, I say rather than forced to come together. 511 00:28:09,090 --> 00:28:13,990 So if you've got so small front gardens are correlated with 512 00:28:14,480 --> 00:28:17,400 speaking to your neighbours more. If they're too big, 513 00:28:17,660 --> 00:28:20,920 either the house is buried away behind a hundred yards of garden, 514 00:28:21,310 --> 00:28:24,600 then you're not going to be pruning the roses and spot Joe or Jane as he or she 515 00:28:24,600 --> 00:28:27,520 walks past. If there's no front garden, you're less likely to be out there. 516 00:28:27,900 --> 00:28:32,320 If you've got a bay window or a window above the ground floor looking out, 517 00:28:32,390 --> 00:28:37,230 then A, you can see the street B, it actually, if it opens onto the street, 518 00:28:37,560 --> 00:28:39,440 I don't think I could prove this. This is common sense, 519 00:28:39,600 --> 00:28:41,360 I would argue rather than something I can statistically show. 520 00:28:41,440 --> 00:28:43,200 I think everything else I can statistically demonstrate 521 00:28:44,870 --> 00:28:48,640 there's more sense that people will be looking out onto the street. 522 00:28:49,060 --> 00:28:53,320 So people are more likely to behave in an antisocial fashion if they think 523 00:28:53,540 --> 00:28:56,280 either, either no one's looking or they think that no one's looking. 524 00:28:56,580 --> 00:29:01,480 So if you've got a confused back or front and you've got blank walls facing onto 525 00:29:01,560 --> 00:29:04,290 a street, no one's there, nothing's there. 526 00:29:04,290 --> 00:29:06,410 There's nothing that interests your eye or brain. 527 00:29:06,470 --> 00:29:10,730 And practically if there's nothing to stop you behaving in an antisocial 528 00:29:11,010 --> 00:29:15,530 behaviour if you've got that fashion. Actually as we were talking earlier, Sam, 529 00:29:15,690 --> 00:29:17,810 I was talking about where the Create Streets story started. 530 00:29:18,190 --> 00:29:22,890 It actually started for me as I started looking at some rebuildings of a failed 531 00:29:22,890 --> 00:29:24,290 post-war estate in South London. 532 00:29:24,680 --> 00:29:29,370 Literally one of the first walls I looked at built within the last 20 years was 533 00:29:29,410 --> 00:29:34,370 a blank wall with a ground floor car park and an open access to 534 00:29:34,410 --> 00:29:37,330 a corridor up at the first floor so that if you were to stand on my shoulders, 535 00:29:37,810 --> 00:29:41,730 I could hoist you up into that corridor. You you'd have the full run of that 536 00:29:41,970 --> 00:29:43,090 corridor with no one looking at you. 537 00:29:43,430 --> 00:29:46,410 And the street itself is just unpleasant because it's just a long blank wall. 538 00:29:47,360 --> 00:29:51,130 Some people like blank walls, but as the same fact, most of us don't. 539 00:29:51,150 --> 00:29:52,890 So it's a way of concentrating activity. 540 00:29:53,200 --> 00:29:57,810 Lots of random encounters happen at street corners where two sets of passage 541 00:29:57,810 --> 00:30:00,290 happen. So if you map where people speak to each other, 542 00:30:00,640 --> 00:30:02,210 it's more likely to be at a street corner, 543 00:30:02,340 --> 00:30:04,290 hence the cliche than it is on the street. 544 00:30:04,530 --> 00:30:08,250 You've got those two lines interacting. So if you create that finally, 545 00:30:08,750 --> 00:30:11,170 and again, it's not just about how the street looks, 546 00:30:11,200 --> 00:30:15,210 it's then also about having a street passing with a high collectedness ratio. 547 00:30:15,950 --> 00:30:19,170 You've got lots of streets, all of their traditional block pattern. 548 00:30:19,480 --> 00:30:23,730 That means it's easier to get from any given A to any given. B, 549 00:30:24,780 --> 00:30:26,640 you can walk this way or cycle or drive, 550 00:30:27,260 --> 00:30:31,160 but there are lots of ways of cutting through the street pattern without having 551 00:30:31,160 --> 00:30:33,440 to do great big detours. So again, 552 00:30:33,440 --> 00:30:36,760 you get that happy medium between you're likely to bump into someone, 553 00:30:36,780 --> 00:30:39,480 but you're not all funnelled into that one way of going there. 554 00:30:39,620 --> 00:30:43,400 So as with gentle density, trade-offs are the way to do it. 555 00:30:43,880 --> 00:30:46,720 I had one little thought there, which you would be able to tell us, 556 00:30:47,380 --> 00:30:49,360 you would be able to tell us this, but it happens to be in my brain, 557 00:30:49,360 --> 00:30:52,360 so I'm going to tell us this, which is before, I don't know, 558 00:30:52,360 --> 00:30:56,040 before the 1920s when you were building a street in London, 559 00:30:56,570 --> 00:30:58,800 there weren't that many rules that you had to abide by, 560 00:30:58,800 --> 00:31:03,640 but you are one of the landowners expanding the city with say some street in 561 00:31:03,640 --> 00:31:07,840 South London. You couldn't build a culdesac over about, I don't know, 562 00:31:08,040 --> 00:31:10,800 150 feet or something. I think something like 50 feet. Can't remember. 563 00:31:10,800 --> 00:31:11,800 There was, 564 00:31:11,800 --> 00:31:14,600 there's a limit to the length of you could do one without four houses on it, 565 00:31:14,600 --> 00:31:16,920 but you couldn't build a true cul-de-sac. 566 00:31:16,920 --> 00:31:18,600 You had to interconnect all your streets. 567 00:31:18,660 --> 00:31:23,400 So even though the street network wasn't planned by the city 568 00:31:23,500 --> 00:31:24,400 as it was in say, 569 00:31:24,400 --> 00:31:27,720 Madrid or Barcelona or Paris or New York or basically anywhere else, sorry, 570 00:31:27,720 --> 00:31:29,160 not Paris, anywhere except for Paris, 571 00:31:30,260 --> 00:31:32,520 you would still got the interconnected streets you're talking about. 572 00:31:32,700 --> 00:31:35,160 So the were rules on streets. But yes, 573 00:31:35,180 --> 00:31:38,040 the States until the early 20th century to the best of my knowledge, 574 00:31:38,040 --> 00:31:40,880 took no role in the actual laying out of street patterns. 575 00:31:40,900 --> 00:31:43,800 It was sort of implicit in some of the rules like that, 576 00:31:43,800 --> 00:31:45,600 but they didn't take any role in doing it. I mean, 577 00:31:45,720 --> 00:31:48,400 cul-de-sacs really interesting actually. So cul-de-sacs are, 578 00:31:49,460 --> 00:31:52,280 I'm about to say something now that would annoy lots of urbanists culdesacs, 579 00:31:52,320 --> 00:31:55,160 a very sensible and rational response to motor cars 580 00:31:56,660 --> 00:32:00,080 and houses on cul-de-sacs are worth more -- revealed preferences -- 581 00:32:00,350 --> 00:32:03,040 than the house just off the cul-de-sac because they're quieter, they're safer, 582 00:32:03,100 --> 00:32:04,600 and if you've particularly got a child, 583 00:32:04,790 --> 00:32:08,200 much rather your child probably played out on your front lawn in a cul-de-sac 584 00:32:08,200 --> 00:32:10,960 than on a road that's got busy traffic going along it because who knows what 585 00:32:10,960 --> 00:32:11,793 that car will do. 586 00:32:12,940 --> 00:32:17,640 The problem then becomes if you create a place which is just a series of big 587 00:32:17,640 --> 00:32:22,240 feeder roads and then cul-de-sacs off those big feeder roads, A, 588 00:32:22,240 --> 00:32:25,080 it's a very inefficient land use B comes back to what we're talking about 589 00:32:25,080 --> 00:32:28,960 earlier. It then actually is very inefficient to get from any A to any B, 590 00:32:29,750 --> 00:32:31,480 even though you might be quite close to someone, 591 00:32:31,480 --> 00:32:33,960 unless you are basically breaking up the cul-de-sacs for a lot of pedestrian 592 00:32:33,960 --> 00:32:35,160 routes, which is a sensible thing to do. 593 00:32:36,220 --> 00:32:39,330 You are very often then left driving to get from A to B because it's actually 594 00:32:39,330 --> 00:32:43,730 five times as long as it should be. So in context, 595 00:32:43,730 --> 00:32:44,810 like how detached houses are not a bad thing. 596 00:32:45,040 --> 00:32:47,930 They're quite good at an individual level and there's certainly a rational 597 00:32:48,210 --> 00:32:49,130 response to other things, 598 00:32:49,750 --> 00:32:52,210 but put 'em all together and you don't necessarily get a good outcome. 599 00:32:52,530 --> 00:32:57,170 I live on an estate in Blackheath that was planned in the 1970s to have 600 00:32:57,390 --> 00:33:00,810 no through routes for cars, but have through routes for pedestrians. 601 00:33:00,870 --> 00:33:01,730 That's a good tradeoff. 602 00:33:02,390 --> 00:33:04,850 So that way you can kind of get the best of both worlds in that there's no 603 00:33:04,850 --> 00:33:07,530 reason for any, I mean maybe selfishly get the best of both worlds. 604 00:33:08,110 --> 00:33:11,410 You make all the drivers nearby, you have a slightly worse time, 605 00:33:11,850 --> 00:33:12,610 they could go through you, 606 00:33:12,610 --> 00:33:14,890 they have slightly higher network capacity at certain times. 607 00:33:15,270 --> 00:33:16,530 But from your perspective, 608 00:33:16,590 --> 00:33:18,410 you can drive everywhere just as well as you could before. 609 00:33:18,630 --> 00:33:20,930 You can walk conveniently through just as well as you could before, 610 00:33:20,950 --> 00:33:22,730 but there's no traffic going past your house. 611 00:33:23,470 --> 00:33:25,410 The jargon for that is 'filtered permeability'. 612 00:33:25,770 --> 00:33:28,010 I know you always like a bit of jargon in at Works in Progress. 613 00:33:28,750 --> 00:33:30,850 Is that what they're doing in Barcelona with super Blocks? Yeah. 614 00:33:30,850 --> 00:33:31,610 No, it's interesting. 615 00:33:31,610 --> 00:33:35,010 I mean the whole debate in the UK about low traffic neighbourhoods and things 616 00:33:35,010 --> 00:33:39,970 like Superblox in Barcelona is basically that it's retrofitting by stopping 617 00:33:39,970 --> 00:33:42,450 the cars going through, but keeping pedestrian or cycling access. 618 00:33:42,550 --> 00:33:44,930 And it is actually, it's often a sensible thing to do, 619 00:33:44,930 --> 00:33:46,570 but it doesn't necessarily mean it's always a sensible thing to do. 620 00:33:47,070 --> 00:33:51,650 How much of what we're talking about in terms of these different urban forms 621 00:33:51,760 --> 00:33:54,290 relates to different times in people's lives. 622 00:33:54,970 --> 00:33:57,010 I think back to when I was younger, before I had a family, 623 00:33:58,010 --> 00:33:59,770 I lived in a tower block, it was fine. 624 00:33:59,930 --> 00:34:01,290 I didn't really want to know my neighbours. 625 00:34:01,370 --> 00:34:04,490 I wasn't really at that stage in my life. I liked being quite central. 626 00:34:04,950 --> 00:34:07,730 It was cheap. It was a pretty good place. 627 00:34:08,170 --> 00:34:08,710 Tell me about the tower block, 628 00:34:08,710 --> 00:34:10,320 was it cheaper than a Non-towerblock around the corner? 629 00:34:10,860 --> 00:34:14,930 It was. It was an ex-council. It was a pretty rundown tower block to be honest. 630 00:34:15,390 --> 00:34:17,840 But now that I have children, 631 00:34:18,450 --> 00:34:22,800 I live in a what you would call gentle density terraced house, 632 00:34:22,820 --> 00:34:25,690 and I'm very lucky to do so when they're a bit older, 633 00:34:25,790 --> 00:34:26,840 we probably want a bit more space. 634 00:34:26,940 --> 00:34:30,290 Maybe we might want to move to a semi-detached house, something like that, 635 00:34:30,450 --> 00:34:31,320 a little bit further out. 636 00:34:31,670 --> 00:34:34,210 And maybe when I retire I'll want a little cottage or I'll. 637 00:34:34,210 --> 00:34:35,043 Never retire. 638 00:34:35,050 --> 00:34:38,010 Bungalow or something like that. And I wonder how much the, 639 00:34:40,680 --> 00:34:43,090 for whatever reason, maybe you have ideas, 640 00:34:43,520 --> 00:34:45,420 we are oversupplying one type of house. 641 00:34:46,450 --> 00:34:50,300 What I think is we don't want to do is to sort of say, 642 00:34:50,300 --> 00:34:51,340 this is good and this is bad. 643 00:34:52,040 --> 00:34:55,740 And you're not saying this particular form is good and this particular form is 644 00:34:55,740 --> 00:34:55,900 bad. 645 00:34:55,900 --> 00:34:59,180 You're saying this particular form is maybe undersupplied relative to this other 646 00:34:59,180 --> 00:34:59,920 form. 647 00:34:59,920 --> 00:35:03,500 And that it's a good way of trading off for people for a longer portion of their 648 00:35:03,500 --> 00:35:07,420 life. So yeah, your hypothesis, your premises correct 649 00:35:09,970 --> 00:35:11,570 that we have different demands. 650 00:35:11,890 --> 00:35:14,180 I've evidently you just set out at different times of our lives. 651 00:35:16,200 --> 00:35:20,700 The nice thing about gentle density I would argue is that it can fit a higher 652 00:35:21,020 --> 00:35:25,900 proportion of our life than the two extremes. Let's take example of towers. 653 00:35:27,960 --> 00:35:29,610 If you've got the cartoon version of Create Streets, 654 00:35:29,610 --> 00:35:31,300 you probably put us down as against towers box. 655 00:35:32,420 --> 00:35:34,020 I hope it's not quite as simplistic as that. 656 00:35:34,050 --> 00:35:38,490 I think what we'd say is towers work well for some people and they work well in 657 00:35:38,490 --> 00:35:39,323 some places. 658 00:35:39,920 --> 00:35:43,970 They tend to be much more expensive buildings to run, 659 00:35:43,970 --> 00:35:46,970 particularly as they age. So it's interesting what I picked you up on, 660 00:35:46,970 --> 00:35:50,570 your pricing points, they tend to be harder to retrofit. 661 00:35:50,570 --> 00:35:53,840 So as building regs change, they just tend to get really expensive to update. 662 00:35:54,170 --> 00:35:57,530 It's quite hard to totally ignore future regs as you take it forward. 663 00:35:58,960 --> 00:36:01,890 They are quite consistently associated in the data, 664 00:36:01,890 --> 00:36:02,890 some of which is now quite old. 665 00:36:03,170 --> 00:36:05,890 There are fewer studies done on this now than there were 30 years ago after the 666 00:36:05,970 --> 00:36:07,360 post-war wave of tower blocks. 667 00:36:08,240 --> 00:36:11,930 They're quite consistently associated with less good wellbeing outcomes for 668 00:36:11,930 --> 00:36:15,210 their residents, particularly children. Not saying they're always bad things, 669 00:36:15,300 --> 00:36:17,530 I'm just saying that's what the data tends to say, 670 00:36:17,770 --> 00:36:19,650 particularly for less prosperous people. 671 00:36:20,240 --> 00:36:23,650 They're certainly associated with knowing your neighbours less well than a 672 00:36:23,650 --> 00:36:24,650 gentle density neighbourhood. 673 00:36:24,820 --> 00:36:27,570 We tend to not want to talk to people in a corridor. 674 00:36:27,710 --> 00:36:30,090 We tend to be more happy talking to people in a street or in a slightly more 675 00:36:30,090 --> 00:36:32,650 public space. We can get into why 676 00:36:34,470 --> 00:36:38,210 and they tend to work better for people who've got a home elsewhere. So are they 677 00:36:38,210 --> 00:36:42,210 a good place for some younger or some older people in city centres for some rich 678 00:36:42,210 --> 00:36:45,840 people who've got a house elsewhere probably without children. Yeah, 679 00:36:46,770 --> 00:36:47,603 I think that's fair. 680 00:36:47,750 --> 00:36:49,930 But that doesn't sound to me like a recipe for towers everywhere. 681 00:36:50,470 --> 00:36:55,360 By the same token, interesting you mentioned older people. I mean, 682 00:36:55,360 --> 00:36:56,570 we are now starting to see this in some of the market, 683 00:36:58,630 --> 00:37:02,050 the key thing's happening about older people is that people are older for longer 684 00:37:02,070 --> 00:37:05,800 now because living older and often now with health conditions and with mobility 685 00:37:05,800 --> 00:37:08,690 consequences, people actually tended to die faster. 686 00:37:09,450 --> 00:37:13,320 A generational or two ago often would move to a house in the country into the 687 00:37:13,320 --> 00:37:17,010 outer suburbs, that greenery, that sense of control space, able to relax. 688 00:37:17,090 --> 00:37:18,530 Those are all understandable things. 689 00:37:19,070 --> 00:37:23,490 But actually once you start having mobility issues, suddenly you are very, 690 00:37:23,490 --> 00:37:26,320 very stranded if you're in the country or an outer suburbia if you can't get 691 00:37:26,320 --> 00:37:28,490 around easily. So what's starting to happen, 692 00:37:28,890 --> 00:37:33,090 I think rationally is we're starting to see more retirement homes sheltered 693 00:37:33,090 --> 00:37:36,730 living actually in historical old towns. So a place like Salisbury in England, 694 00:37:36,730 --> 00:37:37,930 there's a whole rush of them. 695 00:37:38,150 --> 00:37:40,970 I'm presuming something in the market and planning going on there as well. 696 00:37:41,390 --> 00:37:42,930 I'd say it's a very rational actual place. 697 00:37:43,550 --> 00:37:45,360 If you can't walk more than a few hundred yards, 698 00:37:45,470 --> 00:37:48,570 living in a town like Salisbury or Winchester is probably a very, 699 00:37:48,570 --> 00:37:49,840 very sensible place to live. 700 00:37:50,070 --> 00:37:53,840 You can have a bit more space than you might in a real city centre. So yes, 701 00:37:54,030 --> 00:37:56,130 to answer your question, the short answer to your question is yes, 702 00:37:56,710 --> 00:37:58,970 but I don't think it means you ban everything or ban. 703 00:37:59,070 --> 00:37:59,550 Well, no, 704 00:37:59,550 --> 00:38:04,490 but this is important because I am personally somewhat invested in two 705 00:38:04,860 --> 00:38:08,650 groups. We could call them the make it easier to build things group. 706 00:38:08,840 --> 00:38:11,410 Some people call them YIMBYs, I would agree. 707 00:38:11,990 --> 00:38:16,130 And the make it easier to have children group, some people call them protists. 708 00:38:16,750 --> 00:38:19,570 And within those and across those two different groups, 709 00:38:19,590 --> 00:38:23,890 you often get fights about what things should be built. The pronatalists think, 710 00:38:24,150 --> 00:38:24,490 'oh, 711 00:38:24,490 --> 00:38:27,210 it's a really big problem if we build too many apartments because people have 712 00:38:27,210 --> 00:38:30,410 fewer children and so on'. The YIMBYs often, 713 00:38:30,970 --> 00:38:35,050 although a lot of YIMBYs I think are relaxed about gentle density and love it, 714 00:38:35,430 --> 00:38:36,410 and I'm one of them, 715 00:38:36,630 --> 00:38:40,570 but often think it's crazy to just build urban sprawl. 716 00:38:40,570 --> 00:38:44,170 And why would you do that when you could fit so many more people in? 717 00:38:44,170 --> 00:38:46,610 And we know all the benefits of density if you do it right. 718 00:38:47,470 --> 00:38:52,450 And it seems like a kind of confected debate when really the point is 719 00:38:53,150 --> 00:38:56,320 at different times in your life where you may have different preferences, 720 00:38:56,510 --> 00:38:59,010 but you need different things. And the mix, 721 00:38:59,190 --> 00:39:02,570 the urban mix needs to accommodate people throughout their entire life cycle, 722 00:39:02,990 --> 00:39:07,530 not just, well, Sam Bowman likes this type of terraced house, 723 00:39:07,820 --> 00:39:10,130 so how many Sam Bowmans are there out in the world? 724 00:39:10,390 --> 00:39:12,010 It changes across Sam Bowman's life. 725 00:39:13,300 --> 00:39:14,133 Yes, 726 00:39:15,030 --> 00:39:19,670 but I'd still say that if you've got a medium 727 00:39:19,820 --> 00:39:21,910 rise terraced house, 728 00:39:22,000 --> 00:39:26,710 which is quite an easy thing to retrofit into a flat and turn back into a house 729 00:39:26,710 --> 00:39:27,190 again. In fact, 730 00:39:27,190 --> 00:39:29,990 I happen to know the house you live in did used to be a series of flats, 731 00:39:29,990 --> 00:39:32,150 as did mine. I also live in a terraced house, 732 00:39:32,450 --> 00:39:34,390 so houses or buildings I should say, 733 00:39:34,390 --> 00:39:37,470 that can easily flex and change and evolve the good things. 734 00:39:37,650 --> 00:39:40,190 So a shop that can turn into a house can turn back into a shop and into an 735 00:39:40,190 --> 00:39:42,910 office. That's a good thing. In my view. We cannot know the future. 736 00:39:43,050 --> 00:39:45,390 We can't know what the different market demands will be. 737 00:39:45,390 --> 00:39:46,670 And if we're building sensibly, 738 00:39:46,970 --> 00:39:49,910 I'd say we build a house that's going to last longer than we will 739 00:39:51,470 --> 00:39:53,820 a gentle density house, to which in the regs, 740 00:39:53,820 --> 00:39:57,820 it's quite easy to add a story or two stories in a way that's predetermined. So 741 00:39:57,820 --> 00:40:01,430 you could possibly particularly say we're building a new settlement or extending 742 00:40:01,710 --> 00:40:02,543 existing settlement, right? 743 00:40:03,090 --> 00:40:06,910 We pre-approve all these terraced houses and some semi detached and some 744 00:40:06,910 --> 00:40:09,030 detached and a couple of bigger buildings in the middle, 745 00:40:09,970 --> 00:40:12,990 but we pre-approve them in such a way that you can build it at three stories or 746 00:40:12,990 --> 00:40:14,860 you can build it at five. And we are totally relaxed. 747 00:40:15,360 --> 00:40:19,550 And if you want 10 years down the line, go up two stories, that's fine too. 748 00:40:19,610 --> 00:40:22,150 So building in some degree of flexibility into it, 749 00:40:22,470 --> 00:40:25,070 I think is a wise thing to do and something we basically 750 00:40:26,570 --> 00:40:28,570 kill certainly in the UK in different ways, 751 00:40:28,570 --> 00:40:30,570 in different countries taken out of the system. 752 00:40:30,570 --> 00:40:33,780 Now it's very hard for places to evolve organically. Ben, 753 00:40:33,820 --> 00:40:35,500 I know that you've written about ... 754 00:40:36,090 --> 00:40:39,380 Well yeah, and we also had Samuel Hughes to talk about The Great Downzoning, 755 00:40:39,670 --> 00:40:43,900 which is on this podcast, which is not repeat. No, no, that's fine. 756 00:40:44,020 --> 00:40:46,220 I think repeating the best themes is really worth doing. 757 00:40:46,280 --> 00:40:50,660 And that's what I wanted to put pressure on this a little bit because I'm sure 758 00:40:50,660 --> 00:40:55,540 you've seen one of those fanciful visual maps of New York City in say 759 00:40:56,380 --> 00:40:59,340 1830, and then seen the same picture in 1930. 760 00:41:00,110 --> 00:41:03,940 And obviously New York City in Manhattan, I'm talking about here, 761 00:41:04,380 --> 00:41:06,900 Manhattan in 1830 is like a gentle density paradise. 762 00:41:07,110 --> 00:41:11,780 It looks like Philadelphia or most of DC or Brooklyn now. 763 00:41:12,520 --> 00:41:15,460 And then in 1932, it's like giga density. 764 00:41:15,650 --> 00:41:17,090 Obviously things have changed a little bit, 765 00:41:17,090 --> 00:41:19,180 but essentially you have by the park, 766 00:41:19,180 --> 00:41:22,660 you've got 10 20 story apartment blocks, 767 00:41:22,880 --> 00:41:25,660 and in Midtown and lower Manhattan, 768 00:41:25,680 --> 00:41:29,740 you have big tower blocks for offices and stuff like that. Now, 769 00:41:29,740 --> 00:41:33,970 presumably you are not going to tell me that the answer should have been they 770 00:41:33,980 --> 00:41:37,610 build way more railways and they just keep spreading out a gentle density 771 00:41:38,960 --> 00:41:41,730 even on a constrained island. But tell me, is that your contention? 772 00:41:41,730 --> 00:41:43,290 Well, New York is not just Manhattan, as you know. 773 00:41:43,590 --> 00:41:44,423 Yeah. 774 00:41:44,510 --> 00:41:47,730 So interestingly I'll disagree then I'll agree 775 00:41:49,570 --> 00:41:50,360 embarrassing. 776 00:41:50,360 --> 00:41:54,570 I forget the statistic I did used to know it much less of Manhattan is 777 00:41:54,570 --> 00:41:55,730 giga-density, to use your phrase, 778 00:41:56,280 --> 00:42:00,650 than is commonly assumed because obviously it's the giga density you see from 779 00:42:00,650 --> 00:42:05,130 the photograph taken from an aeroplane. And a lot of it is brownstone, 780 00:42:05,750 --> 00:42:09,010 medium rise. And I'd argue that the big apartments by the park, 781 00:42:09,320 --> 00:42:11,930 they're just an extreme version of gentle density. They say they look nice. 782 00:42:13,150 --> 00:42:16,490 So a portion of people in New York and even in Manhattan, 783 00:42:16,630 --> 00:42:20,320 not living in giga density is surprisingly high, though embarrassing. 784 00:42:20,320 --> 00:42:23,530 I can't remember the number as I talk now. So I'd slightly challenge 785 00:42:25,480 --> 00:42:29,890 your premise, but nevertheless, I would agree with what's implicit, 786 00:42:29,890 --> 00:42:31,610 even though I think it's less true than you say, 787 00:42:33,110 --> 00:42:35,930 should city centres in ancient or old, 788 00:42:35,930 --> 00:42:38,360 well-established cities get really high density? Yeah, 789 00:42:38,360 --> 00:42:40,530 they probably should. Most of the time it's not always going to be possible. 790 00:42:41,780 --> 00:42:44,530 Would I want to do that to Paris? Frankly? No, I like it so much. 791 00:42:44,630 --> 00:42:49,360 I'm happy to contradict myself and I'll fight to defend 792 00:42:50,800 --> 00:42:55,090 the Rue de Rivoli against something abhorrent. But the Strand, 793 00:42:55,400 --> 00:42:58,360 take an example that pops into my head strand in London, 794 00:42:58,940 --> 00:43:03,360 which is descended from the old German word for beach because when the 795 00:43:03,570 --> 00:43:06,490 Anglo-Saxons restarted London in the seventh century, 796 00:43:06,920 --> 00:43:09,800 they pulled their long boats up the bank, 797 00:43:09,820 --> 00:43:13,290 the northern bank of the Thames where the tide brought them in onto the beach. 798 00:43:13,340 --> 00:43:14,800 And that's why the strand is called the strand. 799 00:43:15,030 --> 00:43:17,970 And although you started having quite big buildings on the southern side of the 800 00:43:17,970 --> 00:43:20,970 strand facing the river in the middle ages, that's a nice river view. 801 00:43:20,970 --> 00:43:23,770 And the river was a key wave getting around in the middle ages. 802 00:43:24,110 --> 00:43:27,410 The northern end of the strand right into the 17th century is basically 803 00:43:27,410 --> 00:43:30,610 cottages. And now if you walk down the strand, it ain't cottages anymore. 804 00:43:30,840 --> 00:43:35,250 It's huge. Great buildings, old restaurants, theatres, mansion blocks, 805 00:43:35,250 --> 00:43:39,170 office blocks, and quite rightly so they go. 806 00:43:40,770 --> 00:43:43,150 In some areas like an individual person's neighbourhood, 807 00:43:43,570 --> 00:43:45,750 can I build a block of flats in your neighbourhood? 808 00:43:46,210 --> 00:43:49,310 The design of that particular block of flats is probably not going to be the 809 00:43:49,540 --> 00:43:52,860 driving factor behind whether they think it's good or whether they think it 810 00:43:52,860 --> 00:43:54,070 should happen or not. Maybe in some cases ... 811 00:43:54,650 --> 00:43:57,340 The height will put people off beyond about seven or eight stories in most 812 00:43:57,340 --> 00:43:57,860 cases. 813 00:43:57,860 --> 00:43:58,693 Exactly. 814 00:43:59,810 --> 00:44:03,270 So the purely aesthetic elements of the design are not going to be the driving 815 00:44:03,270 --> 00:44:03,730 force. 816 00:44:03,730 --> 00:44:08,070 But I think when people think about should we have strict historic preservation 817 00:44:08,180 --> 00:44:12,310 like the listing system in the UK? So the reason why most of Manhattan is, 818 00:44:12,330 --> 00:44:16,790 as you say, like brownstone terraced houses, is because they've been preserved. 819 00:44:16,790 --> 00:44:19,830 They would all have been turned into apartment blocks at various times in 820 00:44:19,830 --> 00:44:24,070 history. And although I consider myself to be one of the pro-housing people, 821 00:44:25,030 --> 00:44:28,550 I would feel quite reluctant to remove that kind of protection of a building 822 00:44:28,550 --> 00:44:32,360 that's obviously going to get worse. And so if we could trust, 823 00:44:32,770 --> 00:44:33,730 I think for city centres, 824 00:44:34,230 --> 00:44:37,490 the question is more like if we could trust what they would do would be good, 825 00:44:38,200 --> 00:44:42,650 then I think I would be demolish all of the Victorian buildings because if a 826 00:44:42,650 --> 00:44:45,050 Victorian would've thought I can do a better building than the current building 827 00:44:45,050 --> 00:44:45,720 that's sitting, 828 00:44:45,720 --> 00:44:49,810 when they demolished the whole of Regent Street and put in the 1920s version, 829 00:44:50,040 --> 00:44:52,170 they were just thinking, well, yeah, John Ashes built a great street, 830 00:44:52,170 --> 00:44:55,010 but we can do better. And that was the normal way of thinking, 831 00:44:55,030 --> 00:44:56,690 and they were often right, right. 832 00:44:57,520 --> 00:45:00,170 It's framed as you're describing it, which I think is right. 833 00:45:00,400 --> 00:45:02,810 It's framed as historical preservation, but very, 834 00:45:02,810 --> 00:45:04,970 very few of these buildings are actually historically significant. 835 00:45:05,080 --> 00:45:09,530 They're just nice and they're just better than what people expect to come 836 00:45:09,530 --> 00:45:10,030 afterwards. 837 00:45:10,030 --> 00:45:14,970 I think I'm not going to go quite as far in this, knock it all down. 838 00:45:17,450 --> 00:45:19,730 I do love an old building, but no, I basically agree. 839 00:45:20,140 --> 00:45:22,330 Where does the heritage movement come from? 840 00:45:22,830 --> 00:45:27,690 It comes from the collapse of confidence and the quality of what we 841 00:45:27,690 --> 00:45:29,090 will do to the built environment. 842 00:45:29,590 --> 00:45:34,330 So is there a heritage movement in the 18th century or the 19th century? 843 00:45:34,550 --> 00:45:35,090 No, 844 00:45:35,090 --> 00:45:39,970 I mean to our way of thinking staggering series of photos done right 845 00:45:39,970 --> 00:45:44,170 at the end of the 19th, early 20th century in what we now call Aldwych. 846 00:45:44,170 --> 00:45:46,730 So that's actually recreated name. It didn't used to be called that. 847 00:45:46,740 --> 00:45:50,130 There was a street called Wych Street which ran through that bit of London, 848 00:45:50,140 --> 00:45:53,050 which doesn't exist anymore, though it is well photographed again. 849 00:45:53,050 --> 00:45:55,530 I go and have a look at the photographs. It's like, 850 00:45:55,670 --> 00:45:57,290 what's it called in Harry Potter Diagon ...? 851 00:45:57,290 --> 00:45:57,360 Alley. 852 00:45:57,360 --> 00:45:59,360 Basically it's Diagon Alley and right in the heart of London, 853 00:45:59,770 --> 00:46:04,570 a mediaeval street with an incredibly rich array of mediaeval 854 00:46:04,890 --> 00:46:09,410 jacobian, 17th, 18th century shopfronts and pub fronts. I mean, it's glorious. 855 00:46:09,650 --> 00:46:12,290 I can't look at that and not regret that It's not there. I have to, 856 00:46:12,380 --> 00:46:16,050 sorry to break it to you. So if I could wave a magic wand and bring it back, 857 00:46:16,050 --> 00:46:18,170 even though I quite like Aldwych, yeah, I would actually, 858 00:46:18,290 --> 00:46:19,360 because I'd just love to walk down it. 859 00:46:20,510 --> 00:46:25,330 And it now seems just staggering that within just the 860 00:46:25,490 --> 00:46:27,890 lifetime of my grandfather that this could be pulled down. 861 00:46:28,640 --> 00:46:33,170 However I agree with you. Basically there was just no sense 862 00:46:35,590 --> 00:46:38,570 til the 20th century that what we replace it with would be worse. 863 00:46:38,950 --> 00:46:42,490 You start to get just inklings of it in the 1920s and thirties. 864 00:46:42,490 --> 00:46:43,530 So you talked about Regent Street, 865 00:46:43,530 --> 00:46:47,050 you're quite right. Basically what happened was that the crown lease fell in 866 00:46:47,050 --> 00:46:50,930 after a century. So the crown, which was the landowner, basically said, well, 867 00:46:52,200 --> 00:46:55,530 it's John Nash stuff. I mean, it's all four story high, it's done out of stucco. 868 00:46:55,590 --> 00:46:56,770 It's not in great nick anymore. 869 00:46:57,380 --> 00:47:00,130 Let's whack it up six or seven stories Portsmouth stone, 870 00:47:00,190 --> 00:47:02,050 and we'll make more money and it can still look lovely. 871 00:47:02,180 --> 00:47:03,810 There was a little bit of disquiet. 872 00:47:03,810 --> 00:47:06,930 So something called what became the Georgian group did get formed and there were 873 00:47:06,970 --> 00:47:07,590 a few complaints, 874 00:47:07,590 --> 00:47:10,690 but it never got any purchase because not that many people were interested in 875 00:47:10,710 --> 00:47:14,730 the new Regent Street, which are now of course, all grade I listed is lovely, 876 00:47:16,110 --> 00:47:20,840 but then it's in the 1960s and 70s that you start getting a major reaction 877 00:47:20,840 --> 00:47:23,490 against this stuff. And Simon Jenkins, 878 00:47:23,950 --> 00:47:26,130 who was a young journalist in the sixties and seventies, 879 00:47:26,550 --> 00:47:29,900 he went to some of the public meetings where they were planning to knock down 880 00:47:29,900 --> 00:47:32,650 the strand down, sorry, most of Whitehall, 881 00:47:33,230 --> 00:47:36,970 get rid of Covent Garden and replace it with the motorway box. 882 00:47:37,390 --> 00:47:40,810 And his quote was, public officials were lucky to get out alive. 883 00:47:41,750 --> 00:47:43,690 The GLC, which at the time was Conservative run, 884 00:47:44,040 --> 00:47:48,250 basically got voted out of power because the incoming Labour administration 1970 885 00:47:48,250 --> 00:47:50,970 something basically said, no scrap that we're not going to do it. 886 00:47:51,670 --> 00:47:53,530 So it became very, very political. 887 00:47:54,440 --> 00:47:58,090 That does relate to something that Ben and Samuel Hughes have both written about 888 00:47:58,090 --> 00:48:01,490 for us, which is this point about collective land ownership. 889 00:48:01,750 --> 00:48:06,570 And when you have land ownership that isn't just the street or properties 890 00:48:06,590 --> 00:48:08,570 on the street, but the whole area, 891 00:48:08,800 --> 00:48:11,530 there's an incentive to preserve things like the Diagon Alley, 892 00:48:11,530 --> 00:48:13,090 Wych Streets something like that. 893 00:48:13,310 --> 00:48:16,010 Not because they are intrinsically valuable by themselves, 894 00:48:16,470 --> 00:48:19,530 and if it was just the street owned by itself, it might not be that valuable, 895 00:48:19,590 --> 00:48:22,290 but it enhances the value of the entire area. 896 00:48:22,430 --> 00:48:23,970 It basically becomes a tourist attraction, 897 00:48:24,740 --> 00:48:26,330 which is something that I know Ben has. 898 00:48:26,590 --> 00:48:28,250 Or an attraction to people who live there. Yeah, 899 00:48:28,250 --> 00:48:29,330 and I think there's an interesting quandary, 900 00:48:29,330 --> 00:48:33,130 and I think I leave it to the economists to try and resolve this one collective 901 00:48:33,130 --> 00:48:33,840 land ownership, 902 00:48:33,840 --> 00:48:38,170 which in some ways can feel quite uncomfortable if it's done wisely. 903 00:48:38,760 --> 00:48:40,840 It's not always done wisely, but done wisely. 904 00:48:41,270 --> 00:48:45,210 It leads to great bits of urbanism. The classic recent example, 905 00:48:45,360 --> 00:48:46,840 I mean literally only a few years old, 906 00:48:48,390 --> 00:48:52,570 is a new street that's been created by the Cadogan Estate just running north 907 00:48:53,270 --> 00:48:55,090 of Sloane Square that said, it's a new street. 908 00:48:55,090 --> 00:48:57,290 They've essentially repurposed what was just the back of things. 909 00:48:57,640 --> 00:48:59,570 They put little shops there, they, they've done it nicely. 910 00:48:59,570 --> 00:49:03,130 They've put a few houses there clearly, although it could, 911 00:49:03,360 --> 00:49:05,930 it's quite low density for Central London. But it's lovely, it's very tight. 912 00:49:06,240 --> 00:49:09,770 It's always crammed when I'm there and clearly it's adding value to their rental 913 00:49:09,910 --> 00:49:12,810 income from surrounding properties like that. 914 00:49:12,860 --> 00:49:17,210 So they'll regard that as the right thing to do commercially as well as in 915 00:49:17,210 --> 00:49:18,043 stewardship terms. 916 00:49:18,450 --> 00:49:21,650 I have heard you use in this conversation a little bit, 917 00:49:21,710 --> 00:49:25,650 but also at other times while listening the phrase Traffic Modernism, 918 00:49:25,720 --> 00:49:26,570 what do you mean by that? 919 00:49:28,857 --> 00:49:29,690 It's me being a little bit naughty. 920 00:49:29,690 --> 00:49:33,560 So there was a huge confidence 921 00:49:35,150 --> 00:49:39,720 mid-century that the city of the future would look 922 00:49:40,200 --> 00:49:43,110 profoundly different from the city of the past. 923 00:49:44,610 --> 00:49:47,800 And there were several strands running into that, 924 00:49:48,860 --> 00:49:52,240 but I'll just take one man to epitomise it. I could give others. 925 00:49:52,700 --> 00:49:57,240 So the Swiss-born French practising architect who's known as local 926 00:49:57,340 --> 00:49:58,173 Corbusier, 927 00:50:00,160 --> 00:50:04,200 I believe sincerely believed that the invention of a motorcar meant that we 928 00:50:04,200 --> 00:50:06,110 should basically start again with cities. 929 00:50:06,380 --> 00:50:09,680 And that the idea of creating a walkable city in which you will bump into your 930 00:50:09,920 --> 00:50:13,080 neighbour was just unhygienic and sort of silly. 931 00:50:13,340 --> 00:50:17,200 So his vision for the city and different versions of this done by different 932 00:50:17,200 --> 00:50:20,960 architects at different time. Corbusier was a fan of big buildings, 933 00:50:21,150 --> 00:50:26,110 huge towers zoned by use and by social class with 934 00:50:26,110 --> 00:50:31,050 motorways freeways in between them connecting them and then just parkland 935 00:50:31,830 --> 00:50:34,770 and some versions of it had the motorways running at ground level. Other ones 936 00:50:34,770 --> 00:50:37,970 done by others later had them running literally above the buildings and over the 937 00:50:37,970 --> 00:50:40,010 top of the buildings, which I think present other challenges. 938 00:50:40,010 --> 00:50:42,530 But leave that to one side and that would be the city of the future. 939 00:50:43,830 --> 00:50:47,650 He was funded by a French motor company, 940 00:50:49,340 --> 00:50:51,840 Voisin, to propose a future vision for Paris, 941 00:50:51,840 --> 00:50:55,410 which was known as the plan de Voisin, which literally ... 942 00:50:55,410 --> 00:50:56,730 I would protect Paris, I have to tell you. 943 00:50:57,280 --> 00:51:00,840 Basically took out Paris and replaced it with a series of tower blocks and 944 00:51:00,840 --> 00:51:05,090 streets, and in a slightly less radical version, 945 00:51:05,950 --> 00:51:08,010 the London Plan done by Patrick Abercrombie, 946 00:51:08,010 --> 00:51:10,050 whom I'm distantly related ironically, 947 00:51:10,430 --> 00:51:13,770 and then pushed further by other writers in the fifties and sixties, 948 00:51:14,200 --> 00:51:15,970 essentially proposed versions of the same. 949 00:51:16,340 --> 00:51:18,730 So London was to be surrounded by a series of six, 950 00:51:18,840 --> 00:51:20,490 I think it was change of various times, 951 00:51:20,490 --> 00:51:24,610 five/six/three/seven at various times. So concentric motorways or fast roads 952 00:51:24,960 --> 00:51:28,410 with massive rebuilding in between. For a period, 953 00:51:28,700 --> 00:51:33,010 every property built in Central London had to have connecting points at first 954 00:51:33,010 --> 00:51:37,970 floor level so you could connect into the first story walkways 955 00:51:37,970 --> 00:51:40,930 that would connect buildings because below would just be sort of a sea of cars. 956 00:51:42,750 --> 00:51:46,170 The amount of urban destruction that would've required would've made the blitz 957 00:51:46,170 --> 00:51:49,690 of 1940 to 1941 look like a modest rounding error. 958 00:51:50,470 --> 00:51:51,690 So it was a very radical, 959 00:51:51,890 --> 00:51:55,210 I think everyone can agree on that vision about the future. 960 00:51:56,110 --> 00:51:57,490 So that's what I mean by Traffic Modernism. 961 00:51:57,790 --> 00:52:02,050 But what I took that was also linked to a very different view about 962 00:52:02,130 --> 00:52:06,050 architecture, which was purely, I mean the Vitruvian triad. 963 00:52:06,050 --> 00:52:10,690 Vitruvius is the only ancient writer about architecture whose works properly 964 00:52:10,690 --> 00:52:11,523 come down to us. 965 00:52:11,550 --> 00:52:14,570 He said that what we should create buildings that are beautiful, 966 00:52:14,800 --> 00:52:16,450 that are useful and that are strong. 967 00:52:16,510 --> 00:52:20,210 So he's got different ways of thinking about it. But at the same time, 968 00:52:21,860 --> 00:52:26,010 modernists went on a journey Initially they actually continued to think the 969 00:52:26,090 --> 00:52:26,860 building should be beautiful. 970 00:52:26,860 --> 00:52:29,130 So the early writings of Corbusier does talk about beauty, 971 00:52:29,510 --> 00:52:33,490 but by the end of Corbusier and the second generation that's increasingly being 972 00:52:33,490 --> 00:52:37,290 denied. So alongside this view of a totally reconceived city, 973 00:52:38,510 --> 00:52:43,440 spread out zoned much wider land use because the idea that 974 00:52:43,440 --> 00:52:45,640 petrol might be rationed is not even in their minds. 975 00:52:47,660 --> 00:52:49,360 You also get a view of buildings, 976 00:52:49,360 --> 00:52:54,080 which is they're just purely utilitarian expressions on the 977 00:52:54,080 --> 00:52:58,680 outside of what's going on in the inside. In fact, 978 00:52:58,960 --> 00:53:03,280 I was interviewing an architect yesterday who's explaining how he tried in his a 979 00:53:03,280 --> 00:53:06,240 architecture school to ask questions about what a building looked like, 980 00:53:06,240 --> 00:53:07,880 whether it should look nice and that people should like it, 981 00:53:08,380 --> 00:53:12,840 and very experienced and senior architect basically said, 'No, no, no. 982 00:53:12,840 --> 00:53:16,400 What it looks like on the outside is just an expression of the inside.' So it's 983 00:53:16,400 --> 00:53:19,880 a very different functionalist, a very private, I'd say very selfish, 984 00:53:20,200 --> 00:53:22,400 a very uncommunal, a very antisocial, I would say, 985 00:53:22,700 --> 00:53:23,880 way of thinking about buildings. 986 00:53:23,940 --> 00:53:27,330 So although that pure version of plan was of course never came to pass, 987 00:53:28,630 --> 00:53:30,450 we do see consequences of that in cities. 988 00:53:31,110 --> 00:53:35,650 11 of the 12 poorest lower super output areas in England have got a fast road 989 00:53:35,650 --> 00:53:37,570 running alongside them all through them. Now, 990 00:53:37,710 --> 00:53:39,090 I'm not quite saying that's consequential. 991 00:53:39,090 --> 00:53:42,130 What happened in London was they started doing this quite successfully in the 992 00:53:42,130 --> 00:53:43,010 poor bits in the east. 993 00:53:43,510 --> 00:53:45,930 So when they started trying doing it in the centre and the west that the 994 00:53:45,930 --> 00:53:49,490 politics blew up in their faces. So that's what I mean by traffic modernism. 995 00:53:49,790 --> 00:53:50,890 In its extreme case, 996 00:53:51,270 --> 00:53:54,050 the consequences normally are a little bit less extreme than that, 997 00:53:54,270 --> 00:53:57,970 but it's fast roads, ugly buildings, and no sense of place or home in the world. 998 00:53:58,590 --> 00:54:02,530 What's different or maybe there is nothing different between when they cut. 999 00:54:02,750 --> 00:54:03,360 So in the past, 1000 00:54:03,360 --> 00:54:08,010 cities of the 19th century used to decide that we are over congested. 1001 00:54:08,010 --> 00:54:10,770 We need more infrastructure. So what we do, 1002 00:54:10,770 --> 00:54:14,330 we'll take a s swat of buildings and just demolish them and build a road through 1003 00:54:14,330 --> 00:54:17,490 there so that we can have space to do it. And this was extremely common, 1004 00:54:18,500 --> 00:54:22,010 especially with unplanned cities like Paris and London. 1005 00:54:22,310 --> 00:54:26,930 So the Metropolitan Board of Works built Shaftsbury Avenue and a Regent Street 1006 00:54:26,930 --> 00:54:28,170 was driven through all these buildings. 1007 00:54:28,170 --> 00:54:30,130 There are many other examples of streets like that. 1008 00:54:30,310 --> 00:54:34,650 What's difference different between that and the Ring Waves project or maybe 1009 00:54:34,650 --> 00:54:36,690 that was also bad Thes project and. 1010 00:54:36,690 --> 00:54:39,930 I think you sort of answered it yourself and your questions. Let's imagine, 1011 00:54:40,090 --> 00:54:40,860 I mean, 1012 00:54:40,860 --> 00:54:44,490 let's think about the difference between Regent Street and an urban motorway. 1013 00:54:45,090 --> 00:54:49,070 They're very different places to be and they've got very different levels of 1014 00:54:49,270 --> 00:54:54,150 building. So does driving a new street through an existing place, 1015 00:54:54,180 --> 00:54:58,230 does that have negative effects for people who lose their home or get bought out 1016 00:54:58,610 --> 00:55:00,030 or feel As is often the case, 1017 00:55:00,830 --> 00:55:04,860 it's often the poorer and the less able who are on the bad end of that deal, 1018 00:55:06,410 --> 00:55:10,030 but you are left with something that is still demonstrably part of the urban 1019 00:55:10,090 --> 00:55:13,910 fabric or tissue. You haven't unseeded or deitch the city. 1020 00:55:14,130 --> 00:55:16,790 You've just created a bigger road going through it. In fact, 1021 00:55:16,930 --> 00:55:19,190 let me use that more quickly. You've created a bigger street going through it. 1022 00:55:19,210 --> 00:55:23,750 I'd say that is still a street a clue in the title of Create Streets. When you 1023 00:55:23,750 --> 00:55:27,230 create a dual carriageway or a very wide road, 1024 00:55:28,070 --> 00:55:31,430 normally there must be some exceptions without buildings on either side. 1025 00:55:32,010 --> 00:55:36,110 I'd say you are creating a scar in the urban fabric, you're dest stitching it, 1026 00:55:36,490 --> 00:55:39,510 and you are creating a shatter zone around it. 1027 00:55:39,930 --> 00:55:44,390 So if you look at the property values or Charles booth's map in the late 19, 30, 1028 00:55:44,630 --> 00:55:47,470 20th century, those buildings onto the busy streets, 1029 00:55:47,940 --> 00:55:51,390 they're normally of the higher social status than the slightly smaller buildings 1030 00:55:51,390 --> 00:55:52,223 around the back. 1031 00:55:52,360 --> 00:55:55,950 If you look at the land values per square foot in a modern city, 1032 00:55:56,530 --> 00:56:00,070 the buildings immediately proximate to that very wide and fast street are 1033 00:56:00,310 --> 00:56:03,630 normally much lower value per square foot than the buildings further off. 1034 00:56:03,930 --> 00:56:07,860 So the consequences for the neighbourhoods, I would argue, is very, 1035 00:56:07,860 --> 00:56:11,750 very different as a function of the width, the speed, 1036 00:56:12,330 --> 00:56:15,470 and the fundamental concept of what you're doing. 1037 00:56:16,150 --> 00:56:17,310 I think if we take that too far, 1038 00:56:17,310 --> 00:56:20,430 then we start to say that there are these things which have big benefits for the 1039 00:56:20,430 --> 00:56:21,150 city overall. 1040 00:56:21,150 --> 00:56:25,050 So agglomeration benefits come from being able to move quickly around a city. 1041 00:56:25,340 --> 00:56:28,610 If you can't move from one end of the city to the other in an hour, 1042 00:56:28,670 --> 00:56:30,930 you can't do the commute basically. So we start with that. 1043 00:56:32,310 --> 00:56:37,090 We start with that. Railways are almost above ground. 1044 00:56:37,090 --> 00:56:39,770 Railways are basically always urban scars, right? Especially if you've got four, 1045 00:56:40,490 --> 00:56:43,410 you've got four lines. So if you think of, for example, in London, 1046 00:56:44,910 --> 00:56:48,510 Primrose Hill, I mean I'm sure Primroses Hill likes it quite a great deal, 1047 00:56:48,530 --> 00:56:53,110 but Primroses Hill is walled off from Camden by eight lanes of eight railways 1048 00:56:53,110 --> 00:56:54,310 and there's only one bridge over, 1049 00:56:54,570 --> 00:56:57,070 and it's quite difficult to get between the two of them so that they can have 1050 00:56:57,300 --> 00:57:00,340 basically cut off the urban form, deliberate cut, 1051 00:57:00,410 --> 00:57:03,950 in this case a desirable cut from the perspective of residents of Primrose Hill. 1052 00:57:04,610 --> 00:57:05,830 But railways do this too. 1053 00:57:05,980 --> 00:57:08,950 Basically all infrastructure has and railways very loud. 1054 00:57:08,970 --> 00:57:12,860 If you live next to the DLR and it's turning, people probably be, 1055 00:57:13,360 --> 00:57:16,470 the L is very unpopular when it's turning. 1056 00:57:16,690 --> 00:57:18,590 My point isn't you shouldn't have any fast roads. 1057 00:57:19,290 --> 00:57:24,070 My point is merely that the disbenefits to the neighbourhoods from a modern fast 1058 00:57:24,220 --> 00:57:27,070 road are much greater than from a 19th century street, 1059 00:57:27,070 --> 00:57:31,750 which I think is unarguable. Your point on trains is clearly true. At one level, 1060 00:57:32,090 --> 00:57:32,610 the big, 1061 00:57:32,610 --> 00:57:37,590 big qualitative difference between trains and a motorway is that 1062 00:57:37,590 --> 00:57:41,190 trains aren't continuous. I've lived actually next to train. 1063 00:57:41,750 --> 00:57:42,590 I actually quite liked it. 1064 00:57:44,130 --> 00:57:46,350 My grandparents' house had a train running along the back of it, 1065 00:57:46,350 --> 00:57:48,510 and my sister and I would go and wave at it as it came past, 1066 00:57:48,570 --> 00:57:49,990 and it happened five or six times a day. 1067 00:57:49,990 --> 00:57:53,950 That was a particularly infrequent train. I concede. So your point, 1068 00:57:53,950 --> 00:57:56,670 I think it fundamentally, your point is fair, but I think 1069 00:57:58,900 --> 00:58:00,910 it's in the gradient that the difference happens. 1070 00:58:01,850 --> 00:58:04,630 Is a big city going to have some motorways going into some portion of it? Yes, 1071 00:58:04,630 --> 00:58:05,463 it clearly will. 1072 00:58:06,090 --> 00:58:10,860 Should we move for most of us much of the time from a 1073 00:58:11,300 --> 00:58:14,260 situation where you assume you are going to drive from one end of the city to 1074 00:58:14,260 --> 00:58:19,100 the other two, it's incredibly easy to go buy, bike, e-bike, 1075 00:58:19,750 --> 00:58:21,860 train, tram, tube. Yeah, 1076 00:58:21,900 --> 00:58:26,020 I think we probably should because we come back to your point about efficiency, 1077 00:58:26,520 --> 00:58:28,100 the agglomeration effects of towns, 1078 00:58:28,100 --> 00:58:30,860 and we know that cities get more efficient and productivity goes up as they get 1079 00:58:30,860 --> 00:58:32,940 bigger, as density increases in size increases. 1080 00:58:33,600 --> 00:58:35,140 We all know that you probably know better than me, 1081 00:58:36,600 --> 00:58:40,460 you want people to be able to get around a street. 1082 00:58:41,180 --> 00:58:42,620 I hope I'm going to get my numbers right here. It's from memory, 1083 00:58:43,140 --> 00:58:47,980 a street that's doing walking or tramming or cycling basically takes about 1084 00:58:47,980 --> 00:58:51,460 20 times as many people as a car does. So that's not a profound, 1085 00:58:51,540 --> 00:58:53,940 and cars have their role. Cars are great liberators in the countryside. 1086 00:58:54,170 --> 00:58:58,020 They bring freedom and there can be lovely places to sit in and they can look 1087 00:58:58,020 --> 00:58:59,940 cool, but in a town, 1088 00:58:59,940 --> 00:59:03,100 they're just not a very good way of optimising movement for most of us, 1089 00:59:03,100 --> 00:59:03,933 most of the time. 1090 00:59:04,260 --> 00:59:07,700 Although we have to look at people kilometres per second, not people per second. 1091 00:59:07,700 --> 00:59:10,860 Because if you're moving through the space quicker, 1092 00:59:11,010 --> 00:59:12,260 then you use it for less time. 1093 00:59:12,960 --> 00:59:14,100 But you're typically in a town you're not, 1094 00:59:14,100 --> 00:59:16,660 because I'm sure the average speed in Central London, 1095 00:59:16,700 --> 00:59:20,060 I don't have all the cities at my fingertips basically stayed the same as best 1096 00:59:20,080 --> 00:59:24,250 we can judge for over a hundred years because the constraint on how far a car 1097 00:59:24,250 --> 00:59:27,970 moves in a city is not what it can do. It's all the other people, 1098 00:59:28,460 --> 00:59:29,570 which is also true for cars. 1099 00:59:29,640 --> 00:59:32,090 Another provocation then, if it's true. 1100 00:59:32,210 --> 00:59:33,650 I didn't think your heart was in the last provocation. 1101 00:59:34,200 --> 00:59:38,330 Well, maybe if it's true that the most efficient way of moving people around is 1102 00:59:38,930 --> 00:59:42,450 railways cycling, all these other in towns. Yeah, in towns. 1103 00:59:42,640 --> 00:59:44,770 Then why is the most productive part of the world? 1104 00:59:44,790 --> 00:59:49,450 The San Francisco Bay area basically have extremely bad transit and 80 to 1105 00:59:49,450 --> 00:59:53,770 90% car/taxi mode share. 1106 00:59:54,190 --> 00:59:56,130 So in this particular place, 1107 00:59:57,150 --> 01:00:02,090 all the guys going to work in Palo Alto or wherever they're 1108 01:00:02,090 --> 01:00:04,010 driving in a car, nearly everyone. 1109 01:00:04,510 --> 01:00:07,770 So the most productive place in the world is a car-based place. 1110 01:00:07,990 --> 01:00:09,290 So I've not spent time there, 1111 01:00:09,350 --> 01:00:11,650 so I am always a little bit nervous of answering that. 1112 01:00:12,470 --> 01:00:17,450 My understanding is that you've still got hubs of more traditionally 1113 01:00:17,730 --> 01:00:20,130 conceived bits of town and village where people do come together. 1114 01:00:20,270 --> 01:00:23,650 I'm happy to be disputed on that. I've not spent time on the west coast. 1115 01:00:25,290 --> 01:00:27,450 I mean America has had a great luxury, 1116 01:00:27,980 --> 01:00:31,770 which is infinitely more space than we have in much of Europe. Come back. 1117 01:00:31,770 --> 01:00:35,170 We talked, we touched on the politics earlier. Can we imagine, 1118 01:00:35,370 --> 01:00:38,130 I mean the current government sort of trying to do it, but perhaps not wisely, 1119 01:00:38,630 --> 01:00:42,050 can we imagine a situation in which London literally takes over all of the 1120 01:00:42,050 --> 01:00:44,250 southeast of England, which is what we'd be talking about to get to that? 1121 01:00:44,930 --> 01:00:47,970 I don't think that's politically imaginable. It's conceivable, 1122 01:00:47,970 --> 01:00:51,250 but I don't think it's imaginable. So if we concede that, then you're saying, 1123 01:00:51,250 --> 01:00:52,610 okay, well fine. How do we build those homes? 1124 01:00:53,120 --> 01:00:55,890 Well, that leads exactly into what I wanted to talk about next, 1125 01:00:56,220 --> 01:00:58,210 which is housing reform in the world today. 1126 01:00:58,270 --> 01:01:02,730 So we ... Yes, yeah. Well, 1127 01:01:02,770 --> 01:01:04,130 I think that lots of people, 1128 01:01:05,700 --> 01:01:09,220 everyone I know basically is interested in housing reform and in getting more 1129 01:01:09,220 --> 01:01:10,260 houses built and 1130 01:01:11,840 --> 01:01:15,700 thinks that it's a big problem that we are under building around the world. 1131 01:01:15,760 --> 01:01:19,340 And we talked about one way where to get more houses built, 1132 01:01:19,340 --> 01:01:22,820 which is design places that people like a bit more either because of better 1133 01:01:22,820 --> 01:01:25,460 architecture or because better urban design and the other ways we've talked 1134 01:01:25,460 --> 01:01:28,820 about fronts and backs and having doors onto the street and public spaces and so 1135 01:01:28,820 --> 01:01:33,540 on. But one other, I'm interested, I know you as a person, 1136 01:01:33,640 --> 01:01:35,220 so I happen to know some of the things you've done. 1137 01:01:35,400 --> 01:01:38,940 You've worked in housing reform in the uk. Where do you think, 1138 01:01:39,770 --> 01:01:42,580 what have you worked on and what do you think are the most promising things? 1139 01:01:42,810 --> 01:01:45,300 What are you excited about? What are the general rules here? 1140 01:01:46,460 --> 01:01:48,780 I mean, right now I'm a little bit depressed by it. So 1141 01:01:50,600 --> 01:01:55,500 are millions of homes short in the UK and we've got a very unbalanced 1142 01:01:55,500 --> 01:01:58,540 economy where we're very dependent on the southeast and a few other hotspots. 1143 01:01:58,540 --> 01:02:00,820 So it is almost perfectly difficult to solve. 1144 01:02:02,440 --> 01:02:05,100 We got some good legislation through under the last government, 1145 01:02:05,100 --> 01:02:06,860 which is still usable now. 1146 01:02:07,360 --> 01:02:11,020 So the government has given itself a high target of 1.5 million homes, 1147 01:02:11,040 --> 01:02:13,620 not actually high compared to what we need, but I think quite high politically, 1148 01:02:13,910 --> 01:02:16,380 given what the current system is producing, 1149 01:02:16,890 --> 01:02:21,730 they've put a lot of focus on new towns and reform to the 1150 01:02:22,490 --> 01:02:26,130 planning of infrastructure. Those are both good things to focus on, 1151 01:02:26,470 --> 01:02:28,490 but almost by definition they're both slow. 1152 01:02:28,550 --> 01:02:33,250 Infrastructure is going to be upstream from building homes and by definition is 1153 01:02:33,250 --> 01:02:37,770 more likely to be new settlements or extensions to existing settlements than 1154 01:02:37,770 --> 01:02:39,770 making use of existing infrastructure within a town. 1155 01:02:39,990 --> 01:02:42,130 New towns by definition is new. 1156 01:02:44,280 --> 01:02:46,060 The planning infrastructure bill is going slowly. 1157 01:02:46,520 --> 01:02:48,060 The new towns is going very slowly. 1158 01:02:48,200 --> 01:02:50,020 So they've had over a year to do the commission. 1159 01:02:50,170 --> 01:02:52,700 It's now 15 months since it was commissioned and we still haven't seen the 1160 01:02:52,700 --> 01:02:57,460 results and they've watered down some of the terms of reference from what we've 1161 01:02:57,460 --> 01:02:58,293 initially suggested. 1162 01:02:58,480 --> 01:03:01,140 We need to move from being house builders to town builders without that gentle 1163 01:03:01,140 --> 01:03:03,140 density. So I'm quite worried about those. Frankly, 1164 01:03:03,790 --> 01:03:08,540 where I'm hopeful or I would like to be hopeful is a series of 1165 01:03:08,540 --> 01:03:13,220 reforms made under the 2023 at the local Levelling up and Regeneration Act 1166 01:03:13,890 --> 01:03:18,500 plus actually some reforms made about a decade ago under Localism Act in 2012 1167 01:03:18,500 --> 01:03:22,220 from memory are just sitting there right now and I think have enormous 1168 01:03:22,290 --> 01:03:26,900 potential. So this is something I was halfway to doing. 1169 01:03:27,020 --> 01:03:28,980 I think if I could wave my magic wand, 1170 01:03:30,100 --> 01:03:33,420 I would encourage the government to put far more focus on what they like to call 1171 01:03:33,420 --> 01:03:38,020 brownfield passports. By that I mean not a free-for-all, do anything anywhere. 1172 01:03:38,090 --> 01:03:41,140 What I mean is back to our earlier conversation about design codes and pattern 1173 01:03:41,140 --> 01:03:41,973 books, 1174 01:03:42,460 --> 01:03:47,390 predetermine empirically using evidence as to what local 1175 01:03:47,390 --> 01:03:51,790 people will stomach fashions to intensify existing streets 1176 01:03:52,530 --> 01:03:55,430 or to intensify underused sites. 1177 01:03:55,820 --> 01:04:00,590 What about smaller things? So you said you lived in a historic terraced house. 1178 01:04:00,930 --> 01:04:02,150 Do you have a roof story? 1179 01:04:03,290 --> 01:04:05,950 So this is unfair because something here. 1180 01:04:06,010 --> 01:04:08,790 So this is the only policy we've ever promulgated from which I think I 1181 01:04:08,790 --> 01:04:09,670 personally would benefit. 1182 01:04:11,370 --> 01:04:14,670 So I do live in a historic terraced house as you well know, Ben. 1183 01:04:15,290 --> 01:04:19,550 So there are lots of cases where it actually, the policy has not got better, 1184 01:04:19,960 --> 01:04:23,950 where it should be easier to go up a story or two stories and create extra 1185 01:04:23,950 --> 01:04:27,630 bedrooms. Now that doesn't help count the government on its targets. 1186 01:04:27,910 --> 01:04:31,750 They're talking about homes. But as I think as you and others have shown, 1187 01:04:32,390 --> 01:04:35,190 creating extra bedrooms nevertheless does help the housing crisis. 1188 01:04:35,550 --> 01:04:39,070 It creates obviously extra giving the system and more fluidity and more places 1189 01:04:39,140 --> 01:04:40,430 that individuals, 1190 01:04:40,430 --> 01:04:44,190 single adults or young adults or older adults can rent or share in. 1191 01:04:44,770 --> 01:04:45,603 So it's a good thing. 1192 01:04:46,530 --> 01:04:50,590 We did get a change in what's called the National Planning Policy Framework to 1193 01:04:50,590 --> 01:04:55,310 encourage that there's been a change since 1194 01:04:55,690 --> 01:04:57,470 the change of government last year, 1195 01:04:58,040 --> 01:05:01,790 which pushes it in a more YIMBY direction. So it is actually looser in terms of 1196 01:05:01,810 --> 01:05:05,030 its requirements for design quality. I actually worry, 1197 01:05:05,030 --> 01:05:06,590 so this it's my non-YIMBY side, 1198 01:05:06,990 --> 01:05:10,830 I think I'm at heart a YIMBY actually worry that that might lead to 1199 01:05:12,740 --> 01:05:13,710 mechanism well. 1200 01:05:13,710 --> 01:05:17,130 So local councils being less likely to approve it and to it therefore not 1201 01:05:17,130 --> 01:05:19,890 happening as much or political blowback. And as a statement of fact, 1202 01:05:19,890 --> 01:05:22,530 we are seeing at Create Streets in some of the actual cases we're working on, 1203 01:05:22,860 --> 01:05:26,730 we're seeing that local officials remain incredibly resistant to this, 1204 01:05:27,090 --> 01:05:28,690 particularly in heritage context. 1205 01:05:29,110 --> 01:05:33,050 And it normally relies on motivated owners and local counsellors, 1206 01:05:33,050 --> 01:05:36,530 elected representatives to push it through. So we are seeing examples, 1207 01:05:37,010 --> 01:05:38,010 actually we were talking about one earlier. 1208 01:05:38,510 --> 01:05:43,370 So a whole series of streets in Tower Hamlets have just had mansard roofs. 1209 01:05:43,670 --> 01:05:47,370 One story pre-approved, a really interesting case study, 1210 01:05:47,370 --> 01:05:48,690 which is hot off the press, actually Ben, 1211 01:05:48,690 --> 01:05:53,290 you won't know this. So there was one made last year in Kensington, Chelsea, 1212 01:05:53,450 --> 01:05:56,170 a very prosperous bit of Central London, very modest, 1213 01:05:56,650 --> 01:06:01,610 actually a predefined local development order by pre-approving a mansard 1214 01:06:01,610 --> 01:06:04,890 uplift on 12 houses. I mean ridiculous amount of effort for 12 houses. 1215 01:06:05,110 --> 01:06:07,890 The good news is you could copy it across hundreds of other houses. 1216 01:06:08,190 --> 01:06:10,810 And the reason they got it through and the local officials, actually, 1217 01:06:10,910 --> 01:06:11,970 I'm assuming this, I dunno this, 1218 01:06:12,410 --> 01:06:16,130 I assume the reason the local officials didn't basically stop it was because the 1219 01:06:16,130 --> 01:06:18,730 other half of the street is already done and because the half of the street 1220 01:06:18,730 --> 01:06:22,530 we're talking about had lost some of its ballast trade details or lovely running 1221 01:06:22,530 --> 01:06:24,010 along the top, only one of them has it. 1222 01:06:24,150 --> 01:06:27,410 So the terms of the local development order, you must put back the ballast. 1223 01:06:27,670 --> 01:06:28,503 I'm fine with that. 1224 01:06:29,310 --> 01:06:32,690 In the just over a year since that mechanism was made, 1225 01:06:33,200 --> 01:06:36,570 five out of the 12 houses have submitted a planning application or even 1226 01:06:36,570 --> 01:06:40,130 physically started building. So the latent demand is being revealed. 1227 01:06:40,510 --> 01:06:42,770 So I think we should do a lot more of that. And in some cases, 1228 01:06:42,950 --> 01:06:46,890 and you've written about this, if it's semi-detached or modern houses, I would, 1229 01:06:47,120 --> 01:06:51,410 with a little bit of pre-approval, I would pre-code for terraced houses, 1230 01:06:51,560 --> 01:06:54,610 mansion blocks, and pre-approved for millions of new homes. 1231 01:06:56,190 --> 01:07:00,010 So I see it as a continuum. And again, just as a case study, 1232 01:07:00,270 --> 01:07:03,890 we did a project on this in a place called Chesham in Buckinghamshire where 1233 01:07:03,890 --> 01:07:07,530 working for the town council, we worked up a neighbourhood development order, 1234 01:07:07,530 --> 01:07:09,850 which is a similar mechanism controlled at a different level 1235 01:07:11,720 --> 01:07:15,690 from memory 950 homes within the carpus of the town. 1236 01:07:16,000 --> 01:07:20,850 This is a town which had just had a political lost to the conservatives 1237 01:07:20,870 --> 01:07:22,970 in a bi-election because it was trying to build on the green belt, 1238 01:07:22,970 --> 01:07:24,290 which was politically unpopular. 1239 01:07:24,710 --> 01:07:29,490 But we got strong local support for these 950 homes within the town. I remember 1240 01:07:29,490 --> 01:07:33,290 one conversation I was in where we always do drop-in sessions, 1241 01:07:33,390 --> 01:07:35,930 we go to the high street or we go to the summer fair or the Christmas market, 1242 01:07:36,190 --> 01:07:38,930 and the guy came up to me ready to have a fight, 1243 01:07:39,780 --> 01:07:42,570 ready to complain about the four story and the three story buildings that we 1244 01:07:42,570 --> 01:07:46,570 were essentially suggesting in the high street of the historic town night I 1245 01:07:46,570 --> 01:07:49,090 turned around and I said, 'Well look, this is four stories. 1246 01:07:50,900 --> 01:07:52,040 And look, actually, 1247 01:07:52,040 --> 01:07:55,520 this is one of the houses we used as a model' and that was basically the end of 1248 01:07:55,520 --> 01:08:00,400 the fight. So we believe we can get that level of pre-approval if it fits in. 1249 01:08:02,490 --> 01:08:06,990 You've talked quite a bit about London. 1250 01:08:07,490 --> 01:08:10,230 You've talked a lovely amount about London and a bit about Paris. 1251 01:08:11,120 --> 01:08:13,270 Where else in the world to kind of wrap us up, 1252 01:08:13,730 --> 01:08:18,450 can listeners go if they want to see great streets, what cities, towns, 1253 01:08:18,460 --> 01:08:20,370 parts of the world would you recommend? 1254 01:08:21,310 --> 01:08:23,130 Well, first of all, I apologise for talking too much about London. 1255 01:08:23,270 --> 01:08:28,010 I'm a Londoner so it comes more naturally to mine than other 1256 01:08:28,010 --> 01:08:30,210 streets and other cities. I apologise for that. Look, 1257 01:08:30,210 --> 01:08:33,250 the good news is I'm very glass half full on this type of stuff. 1258 01:08:35,580 --> 01:08:38,840 Any street built before the onset of traffic modernism is probably lovely. 1259 01:08:39,230 --> 01:08:42,270 It probably uses local materials and it probably rhymes with a street around the 1260 01:08:42,270 --> 01:08:46,840 corner. One of my favourite streets, well, in England, 1261 01:08:47,190 --> 01:08:48,720 this is a bit of a cheat because it's a bit weird. 1262 01:08:48,790 --> 01:08:51,480 There's a street called Gold Hill, 1263 01:08:52,090 --> 01:08:56,120 which winds down a slope in a lovely town called Shaftsbury on the Dorset 1264 01:08:56,120 --> 01:08:56,460 border. 1265 01:08:56,460 --> 01:08:58,040 You've seen it in the Hovis adverts. 1266 01:08:58,040 --> 01:09:01,840 Yeah, yeah. Well I've seen it more recently, but yeah, 1267 01:09:02,010 --> 01:09:04,440 could you build every street in England like that? No, you couldn't. 1268 01:09:04,850 --> 01:09:09,080 But you've got a row of cottages curving down the street with the countryside of 1269 01:09:09,080 --> 01:09:11,760 England and the sinews of the hills are behind. 1270 01:09:11,760 --> 01:09:15,400 And I defy anyone not to go there and say, what is jolly nice actually, 1271 01:09:15,400 --> 01:09:19,200 so good streets are available elsewhere in other countries. 1272 01:09:21,230 --> 01:09:25,040 I think one of my favourite street types are the fundamental in Venice, 1273 01:09:25,330 --> 01:09:30,200 which are the streets where one side is the canal and then one side is the 1274 01:09:30,200 --> 01:09:32,270 row of houses. The fascinating thing about Venice, again, 1275 01:09:32,270 --> 01:09:33,270 we were talking about pattern books earlier, 1276 01:09:33,340 --> 01:09:37,840 is obviously you've got your great churches and your famous palaces and palazzos 1277 01:09:37,840 --> 01:09:40,560 along the Canal Grande in Venice. But actually if you look at the back streets, 1278 01:09:41,020 --> 01:09:43,560 most of 'em are incredibly simple and they're just lovely. 1279 01:09:43,590 --> 01:09:45,680 They're actually quite normal. They're good ordinary, 1280 01:09:46,100 --> 01:09:49,080 and often because you've got the slightly wider street and you've got a little 1281 01:09:49,080 --> 01:09:51,080 bit of water, people love looking out on water. It's a very, 1282 01:09:51,100 --> 01:09:53,400 very findable pattern. In land values. 1283 01:09:55,220 --> 01:09:57,560 Add a view of water to the same street slightly, 1284 01:09:57,560 --> 01:09:59,040 depending on the quality of the water and other things. 1285 01:09:59,040 --> 01:10:01,960 You'll push up land value between 15 and about 85% wide range. 1286 01:10:01,960 --> 01:10:03,310 But it'll always go up. I mean, 1287 01:10:03,310 --> 01:10:07,310 unless you've got invaders coming in or something. So I think yes, 1288 01:10:07,310 --> 01:10:10,520 so fundamental in Venice and Gold Hill in Shaftsbury. There you go, there's two. 1289 01:10:10,630 --> 01:10:11,640 What about New Streets? 1290 01:10:13,060 --> 01:10:15,960 So I mean maybe your projects are the answer to this question, 1291 01:10:16,260 --> 01:10:20,230 but outside of your own projects stuff that's in the last, since 2000, 1292 01:10:20,230 --> 01:10:22,310 basically what's been done really well? 1293 01:10:23,330 --> 01:10:26,480 Where can we look to for inspiration of the new neighbourhoods that we should 1294 01:10:26,480 --> 01:10:26,850 be? 1295 01:10:26,850 --> 01:10:29,480 The good news is actually, I mean we didn't touch on this. 1296 01:10:29,520 --> 01:10:31,120 There is a renaissance starting to happen. 1297 01:10:31,340 --> 01:10:36,200 So I'm far from the only person writing and thinking about this. But in America, 1298 01:10:36,460 --> 01:10:39,040 in France, in Germany, in Holland and Denmark in the UK, 1299 01:10:39,450 --> 01:10:41,230 right wing/left wing/ no wing at all, 1300 01:10:41,710 --> 01:10:44,840 more and more people are doing this type of research, thinking about it, 1301 01:10:44,840 --> 01:10:46,840 writing about it, and then creating new places, 1302 01:10:47,560 --> 01:10:50,840 responding more thoughtfully to traditional patterns. 1303 01:10:50,840 --> 01:10:53,840 But with modern technology. So almost at random, 1304 01:10:55,910 --> 01:10:58,080 some of the streets in Seaside in America, 1305 01:10:58,080 --> 01:11:01,270 which you've all seen in the Truman Show, are gorgeous, very simple, 1306 01:11:01,590 --> 01:11:04,560 very walkable wooden streets. 1307 01:11:05,160 --> 01:11:09,200 I visited the first time a place called Clammer on the outskirts of Paris a 1308 01:11:09,200 --> 01:11:11,520 couple of months ago, coming back from my holidays. 1309 01:11:13,430 --> 01:11:16,510 I was literally speechless. I forgot doing this. 1310 01:11:18,100 --> 01:11:20,790 It's really fascinating. They've created a lake, 1311 01:11:21,900 --> 01:11:25,710 it's a tram and a metro wide away from central Paris. So that comes back to that 1312 01:11:25,980 --> 01:11:29,670 transport. It's slightly higher density than traditional Paris, 1313 01:11:31,930 --> 01:11:33,270 6, 7, 8, 9 stories. 1314 01:11:33,540 --> 01:11:37,510 It's got more balconies than you'd have in a traditional house or apartment 1315 01:11:37,520 --> 01:11:40,710 block in Paris because they're creating all this value by creating all these 1316 01:11:40,710 --> 01:11:41,980 views and the balconies over the lake. 1317 01:11:42,090 --> 01:11:44,630 But they've done it in a way that it still feels very Parisian. 1318 01:11:44,630 --> 01:11:45,870 It's got the traditional limestone, 1319 01:11:46,100 --> 01:11:49,950 it's got some of the metal mouldings that you all immediately recognise as Paris 1320 01:11:50,590 --> 01:11:53,190 people, like things that feel like of here, even if it's not your here. 1321 01:11:53,560 --> 01:11:57,060 So we're actually about to publish something on that, a short little essay, 1322 01:11:57,060 --> 01:12:01,470 but Clamart in Paris or Plessis Brion down the road are just staggering 1323 01:12:01,790 --> 01:12:02,450 actually. 1324 01:12:02,450 --> 01:12:05,390 So we are doing good stuff again and obviously what the King's been doing in 1325 01:12:05,390 --> 01:12:10,020 Poundbury you can create some marvellous streets with street trees very cleverly 1326 01:12:10,100 --> 01:12:14,870 brought out into the carriageway to just gently slow down the traffic without 1327 01:12:14,870 --> 01:12:15,790 making it feel annoying. 1328 01:12:16,680 --> 01:12:19,520 Well, on that note, thank you very much, Nicholas for joining us. 1329 01:12:19,810 --> 01:12:20,810 Thank you for listening. 1330 01:12:21,140 --> 01:12:25,330 Don't forget you can go to works in progress.co to get your subscription to the 1331 01:12:25,330 --> 01:12:26,730 new print edition of Works in Progress, 1332 01:12:27,770 --> 01:12:31,370 possibly the best magazine ever produced. And if you want to read more of us, 1333 01:12:31,390 --> 01:12:33,290 you can read it there as well. Nicholas, 1334 01:12:33,290 --> 01:12:35,890 thank you very much for joining us and thank you very much for listening. 1335 01:12:35,890 --> 01:12:36,930 Thank you very much for having me.