The British are more aware of class than Americans. So when Paul Dacre, the editor -in-chief of the working-class Daily Mail, says, “there is an unpleasant intellectual snobbery about the Mail in leftish circles, for whom the word ‘suburban’ is an obscenity,” the Brits know what he means.
While some Brits may be ashamed to admit it, more live in suburbs than central cities, though thanks to highly restrictive land-use laws, they tend to live on small lots or in semidetached homes. This suburb is southeast of London. Flickr photo by diamond geezer; click for a larger view.
Suburban hostility among British elites actually preceded that in the United States by at least a couple of decades. As Clive Martin, the former Lord Mayor of London, observes, there may be no “aspect of the British experience that comes in for more derision than suburbia,” a lifestyle that is “relentlessly mocked” as “an acquired taste for people with no taste.”
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To “save the countryside” from the evils of suburban sprawl, Britain was one of the first places in the world to create greenbelts. The result is that Britain also has some of the least affordable housing in the world. Unlike the United States and Canada, where some regions are unaffordable and others remain affordable, virtually all of Britain has become unaffordable thanks to restrictive land-use laws dating back to 1947. Neighbor Ireland, whose land-use laws go back to 1963, is similarly unaffordable.
The problem is that the impact of greenbelts and other planning restrictions fall mainly on the poor, and the elites who make these laws are almost by definition not poor. So, as much as they claim to care about the poor and working classes, they don’t care what their wonderful planning laws do to them.
Meanwhile, back in the colonies, we may not be as aware of class, but we are distinctly aware of race. One of the elitist cities in the country, Madison, Wisconsin, has recently been rated one of the most racist. Blacks in the Madison area are 5.5 times more likely to be unemployed than whites; black children are 15 times more likely to live in poverty; and black high school students are three times more likely to drop out of high school before graduating. Everyone in the city will tut-tut over this report, but “between doomed social engineering projects,” says one resident, “and elected officials beholden to unions, nothing will change.”
We tell ourselves that things like farmland preservation, high-speed rail, and smart-growth housing policies are needed for the good of society. But really, we just want them for ourselves, so long as someone else pays for them, preferably people who we don’t like, such as those members of the working class who drive loud cars and live in little suburban homes but don’t really appreciate the great outdoors. Until we get it out of our heads that other people should pay for the things we want, our society will continue to grow less equitable and, for the most part, less wealthy each year.
“While some Brits may be ashamed to admit it, more live in suburbs than central cities, though thanks to highly restrictive land-use laws…”
That’s right. The prevalence of the suburban landscape is the product of city planning not the absence of it. Most often suburbia is protected through covenants, deed restrictions or zoning. Almost all of the rugged individuals that trumpet their way out to the suburbs inevitably form some sort of collective bureaucracy to protect and establish “their” turf. Those with means protect their turf, those without hop around to where it’s affordable.
My understanding of the reasons for the British 1947 planning act was that new development was simply being extended along major bus routes along paved roads between towns. This was called “ribbon development”. Gradually people perceived that the countryside was being built over as when they traveled from one city to another the roads between were built on, sometimes only one house deep, but they didn’t see countryside. Hence the very restrictive 1947 act. A better approach may have been to simply try to have some open space between cities that was always visible, but allow more building otherwise. The same perception may be occurring in the US where development follows freeways. In the San Francisco Bay area most of the land is open space and underdeveloped. Only a very small percentage of the population even knows where the open space is and thinks there is much less open space as they mostly see development from the freeways. I am constantly amazed at how many people do not even know where the open space is and never actually use it. In fairness much open space is deliberately inaccessible by automobile and therefore hardly ever used.
Perhaps a better method of growth control would be to make sure there is always some visible open space between cities but otherwise allow more development away from the freeway.
The Antiplanner wrote:
Suburban hostility among British elites actually preceded that in the United States by at least a couple of decades. As Clive Martin, the former Lord Mayor of London, observes, there may be no “aspect of the British experience that comes in for more derision than suburbia,” a lifestyle that is “relentlessly mocked” as “an acquired taste for people with no taste.”
J. K. Rowling, in her Harry Potter books, wrote that Harry’s life with his aunt, uncle and cousin in a single-family detached home on fictional Privet Drive in the fictional community of Little Whinging in the real English county (very suburbanized in places) of Surrey. In the stories by written Rowling, life is miserable for Harry, and the people he deals with there are (mostly) miserable.
Note that I still commend her books to everyone here, as she is a gifted writer.
The Antiplanner also wrote:
We tell ourselves that things like farmland preservation, high-speed rail, and smart-growth housing policies are needed for the good of society. But really, we just want them for ourselves, so long as someone else pays for them, preferably people who we don’t like, such as those members of the working class who drive loud cars and live in little suburban homes but don’t really appreciate the great outdoors. Until we get it out of our heads that other people should pay for the things we want, our society will continue to grow less equitable and, for the most part, less wealthy each year.
Randal, it’s beyond just getting someone else to pay for them. It’s also about people (usually in an economically comfortable position (in the D.C. area, often wealthy or extremely wealthy people, sometimes retirees from the federal government (Civil Service or military)) living in single-family detached homes, often on large lots) prescribing a life of living in a cramped apartment (with no parking spaces available) near a rail transit station – for other people.
Antiplanner,
I spent some 10 weeks in the UK six years ago on behalf of my employer, Big Evil Corporation, backfiling for a colleague of mine. I spent enough time there where I can find my way around London, and took a number of trips out of the city on weekend during the time I was there.
When I was there, the average rental price of a flat in London was about 400 pounds per week, and the UK pound was trading at $2 at the time. I understand now that the price is now up to 500 pounds per week. I’ve got plenty of photos in my home library of flats for sale that were in the 750,000 – 1,500,000 UK pound range, and the subject of the cost of housing was on everyone’s minds while I was there as it came up a number of times in casual conversation.
My colleague I backfilled for is a Scotsman who was trying to buy a place. He has a wife and three kids (now four), and eventually he gave up on trying to buy in London because the price of housing was simply beyond him. And, my colleague is no slouch either. He’s a highly experienced IT guy, yet he was another casualty of statist central planning.
I traveled to Oxford, Dover, and out and about in Kent while I was in the UK. For all the hysteria about fears that letting the marketplace work that the entire island of the UK would be paved over if people were to be allowed to buy the housing they wanted, I found that there was plenty of open land in the countryside. If you take a trip to Oxford, which is some 70 miles away from London, one is struck how much open space there actually is once one leaves London. I’ve read where the entire urbanized area of the UK is some 2.5 million acres, or 4,000 square miles, out of 95,000 square miles of land. The Brits could easily loosen up these ridiculous green belts by letting London sprawl out another 2-3 miles in each direction, and that would do a world of good for the affordability of housing. The same should be done for all the other major urbanized areas of the UK.
Neal Meyer wrote:
I traveled to Oxford, Dover, and out and about in Kent while I was in the UK. For all the hysteria about fears that letting the marketplace work that the entire island of the UK would be paved over if people were to be allowed to buy the housing they wanted, I found that there was plenty of open land in the countryside. If you take a trip to Oxford, which is some 70 miles away from London, one is struck how much open space there actually is once one leaves London. I’ve read where the entire urbanized area of the UK is some 2.5 million acres, or 4,000 square miles, out of 95,000 square miles of land.
The same story can be told in more than a few U.S. states that make up (as Paul Krugman called it in a great N.Y. Times op-ed back in 2005) the Zoned Zone.
The Brits could easily loosen up these ridiculous green belts by letting London sprawl out another 2-3 miles in each direction, and that would do a world of good for the affordability of housing. The same should be done for all the other major urbanized areas of the UK.
Agreed. As could a lot of other places, including a fair number on this side of the pond.
How much of the problem are other regulations? At these prices it would seem developers would have ample incentive to buy existing stock for tear down + replace it them with more units on the same footprint.
Prk166,
Regulations do have quite a bit to do with it, in addition to the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act. One of the things that strikes you about London and its urban form, for example, is that practically everything in the inner parts of London – say 3-4 mile radius around Parliament / Big Ben / Whitehall / the Tower of London area – is 4-6 stories tall, with narrow 1-2 lane roads in both directions. There are few skyscrapers or tall structures in London.
So, why is that? My understanding is that there is a long standing ordinance in London that prohibited the building of buildings that restricted the view of St. Paul’s Cathedral, though developers have in recent decades have been building skyscrapers in the city.