Building utopia

March 2022

How can new housing developments work for everyone?

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We’ve emerged from the last two years excited to get out into the world again. With two of the us team living in London, they’re busy bees taking up every opportunity to learn about the latest thinking in areas relevant to our work. Earlier this month, our Content and Research Strategist, Stephanie was in her happy place, learning about housing. Here she explores how housing could deliver better outcomes for communities…

In a wood panelled room in Church House, Westminster four panellists came together to launch the ‘Building Utopia; How can new developments work for everyone?’ report from Policy@Manchester and Social Market Foundation. The session aimed to answer, ‘How can health become a root of urban planning processes?’

The panel was made up of:

James Kirkup, Director, Social Market Foundation (Chair)

Dr Caglar Koksal, Contributing Author of Building Utopia, The University of Manchester

Dr Daniel Slade, Policy and Projects Manager, Town and Country Planning Association

Dr Sue ChadwickStrategic Planning Advisor, Pinsent Masons

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It starts with a dream

It starts with a dream

When considering the housing of the future, Dr. Slade suggested, “Starting with utopia. System change is a great place to begin.” I tend to agree; having lofty ideals enables us to strive for better. Now, this doesn’t mean throwing realistic expectations out of the window but instead, working out ways to get the best from the resources we have at our disposal – all with the goal of ‘achieving the dream’ in mind. Of course, Daniel made a salient point that for planning, housing and public services the chronic underfunding that has been in place since 2010 has exacerbated inequalities. In terms of planning, this underfunding has shifted delivery away from policy change and future planning and has departments bogged down in processes. All when in fact, these professionals need time, resources and the ability to forge partnerships to build for healthy futures. One idea that was floated in the session was the NHS becoming long-term stewards over land. This could look like having the implementation of housing and built environment development corresponding with the NHS Constitution, putting the health needs of communities at the heart of delivery. Approaches that relate to this ideal are being piloted via NHS Healthy New Towns. One project from Catalyst Housing, St Ann’s New Neighbourhood is being developed on the land of St Ann’s Hospital in Haringey in partnership with the Mayor of London. This project has health at the heart of its design and delivery and has undertaken consultation with the local community to include resident opinion in its development. Across the session, ‘longtermism’ came forward as one of the most important philosophies that should influence everything we do. In terms of achieving ‘utopia’ from planning, the panellists pointed towards the work being done in the devolved UK governments. In 2015 for example, Wales passed ‘The Well-being of Future Generations Act’. In Scotland, planning law has started to embed the creation of 20-minute neighbourhoods, a topic that us explored in depth for the Resident Voice Index™ Neighbourhoods & Communities report in 2020.

Encouraging private business to think health

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Dr Koksal made it clear that developers need to be compelled to include health outcomes in their projects. This can be achieved with public pressure, legislation, incentive, or tax. Dr Chadwick put forward that the public should not underestimate the power of good PR as a driving factor for developers to undertake community consultation processes and embed health and wellbeing outcomes in their projects.

A PR driver should not be seen as problematic. Whatever leads to good outcomes, eh? Optics can matter and when that publicity is backed by action, things can actually improve.

Overall, the panellists and the report impressed upon those of us in the audience that these changes really are doable. Building with good health outcomes in mind is achievable with the right will and the right methods – and should not be dismissed as an exercise in ‘pie in the sky’ utopian thinking. This event gave hope that public pressure on the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities and continuing to encourage the good PR and ethical investment machines out there could achieve tangible improvements in our neighbourhoods and communities.

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