Single Aspect Blog

2.1 Appropriate Density

This looks like common sense but I’m sad to say it went over my head when it got on to public transport accessibility levels, although all they’re really saying is don’t build housing where there aren’t good transport links or put in good transport links to where there is isolated housing.

Does Thamesmead come to mind?  It did to me.  Look at it on Google Earth, stuck out there by the river accessible only by bus.  One of the hopes of Crossrail was that the full version would reach Thamesmead but with the budget cuts I don’t know whether or not this will happen, but I can’t help thinking that Boris and his advisers had Thamesmead in mind when they wrote the following:-

“We must avoid the problems that occur when large populations are concentrated in inaccessible places without the necessary facilities.”

Page 29 carries a table whose comprehension I have failed miserably but I’m happy to read that some consideration has been given to the viability of new communities.  Sorry, this isn’t really my area, I prefer talking about the floor plans of good houses and bad flats.

2.2 Residential Mix

Mix of Dwelling Sizes

They start out here talking about the over supply of 1 and 2 bed flats, then move on to what is undoubtedly an important topic in my view which is how to incorporate children into flats by including private outdoor space.  Single aspect flats with so called Juliet balconies are certainly not suitable for families with children in my view because there is no amenity space for the children, and as they grow the problems will worsen.

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1.1 Defining Places

A good start. A lot of common sense which made me think of Islington and Belgravia when they talk about “a strong and consistent architectural character” and made me feel a bit sad having recently walked the Holly Street estate in Hackney and wondered why it wasn’t built in the same style as the surrounding streets.

I like the Alice Coleman references such as “There should also always be clear distinctions between spaces that are for public and private use.” She made a big play of that in “Utopia on trial” and walking around Holly Street recently made me conscious that the architects there had made a determined effort to clearly demarcate front gardens and the area in front of ground floor flats, with iron railings to provide defensible space.

Again, with “placing entrances and windows on street frontages and around public spaces brings activity which in turn increases neighbourliness and security by passive surveillance.”  All good stuff straight from the Oscar Newman and Alice Coleman school of thought.

1.2 Outdoor Spaces

“Spaces that receive some direct sunlight are used more frequently and enjoyed for longer periods throughout the year”.  I like that and I think that a communal outdoor space would have to be very small, or greatly overshadowed not to receive direct sunlight, but I can see the principle of not placing tall buildings next to a communal outdoor space and think that’s a good thing.

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UPDATE 2/3/17 The London Housing Design Guide has been superseded by the London SPG on housing This includes the design standards which makes it mandatory for all housing projects in London.

Mae Architects and the London Development Agency (LDA) have published the new London Housing Design Guide (interim edition), setting out guidelines for all new public homes in the capital.

Download a copy from the London Development Agency -> here <-

Click image above for full page

The London Evening Standard has a good review of the guide here:-

https://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifestyle/article-23868332-boris-the-builder-the-mayors-vision-for-london-housing.do

Mapping existing housing standards from CABE

https://www.cabe.org.uk/files/mapping-existing-housing-standards.pdf

A month ago today I wrote an article entitled Blinkered Boris caves in and subsequently copied the article to the Mayor of London and other contacts.  I received encouraging news from somebody associated with the project which I have added below and today received an email from City Hall which I have reproduced below:-

One more would-be housing regulation bites the dust.  Having implemented Parker Morris + 10% for local authority building but failed to mandate this for private house builders he has now backtracked on the promise to outlaw single aspect flats.

Last summer Johnson issued a consultation on space standards for new homes that included plans to outlaw “single aspect” housing through the planning system, in order to stop the construction of tiny flats he called “hobbit homes”.

“We must not only build quickly, we must build well. In the next year or so we will be judged by the number of houses we have put up. But in ten years we will be judged by the quality of those homes.”

What a pity that logic is not being followed today.

Update 26th April 2010 12:09

‘Mixed and balanced communities are rightly one of the shibboleths of the London Plan. But under Mr Johnson’s this means ‘a mix of tenure should be sought, particularly in neighbourhoods where social renting predominates’. Where, one might ask, are displaced residents to go? Crucially, there is no reciprocal policy for social rented housing to be introduced into areas where private housing predominates.

Nicky Gavron and Karen Buck are the engine of opposition to the “disease spreading ever wider that the land on which council tenants live is available for development” – see Estates under threat

Follow up . . .

Of course government policy would see this as a move in the right direction towards a social and tenure mix and a more balanced community. It probably does not feel like this if you are on the waiting list – mixed communities don’t seem to work in the opposite direction, as the recent nasty little episode about ‘million pound Council houses’ illustrated.

https://www.jonestheplanner.co.uk/2012/11/hackney-hipsters.html

Boris Johnson blustered and blathered his way through a twenty minute grilling from Nicky Gavron who did well to stick to her brief given Boris’s ignorant and uninformed replies. The man both knows nothing about the situation on the ground nor appears to care.
Not once did he use the terms social rented or council housing, nor even council tenant.  He repeatedly used the term affordable as if this were the only form of housing available or envisaged for the future and this in spite of the london.gov.uk website proudly proclaiming that . . .

The Mayor is working to provide many more social rented homes and ensure that social renting provides an opportunity to foster aspirations and gives support to those who need it.

It’s one thing to take a hands off approach, it’s quite another not to even acknowledge that you’re in charge of the process and ought therefore to know the basic facts.

I was at Progressive London 2010 on Saturday.  Got there just after the start at 10am it was bustling in the main foyer.  Being a Dave Hill follower I was keen to see the man in person and  having made it to the back of a crowded and stuffy room on the 2nd floor, standing room only, he was next to speak.  He said that Boris was a milder and more gentle version of what might have been expected, less contentious and more redistributive, that he had increased free access to travel for some groups unexpectedly.

He said that Boris was difficult to get hold of to answer difficult questions, that Ken used to let the Mayor’s question time run on until everybody had had their say but Boris just cut it off when time was up.  He said that it is possible to get answers out of Boris but that you have to follow him around London to his numerous “openings” and tackle him on the spot.  He added that Boris produced a large amount of written answers to questions to such an extent that Dave was encouraging bloggers to go through it all and saying that more bloggers were needed since stories often arose from their writings.  By the time Dave had finished speaking the room was even more crowded and stuffy so I left to get some air.

Downstairs in the foyer I met one of the HandsoffQC people and had a coffee and a chat about the goings on in Hammersmith and Fulham.

Back in Invision Suite 4 with the windows open it was time for the Housing session, less crowded than the earlier Boris do but slowly filled up.  Megan Dobney kicked off, Dave Hill turned up this time as an audience member, with his familiar long grey coat and notebook in hand.  Nicky Gavron had a lot to say about the London Plan which she had worked on with Ken back in the day, but more to say about the dismantling of it going on with the Boris version called the draft London Plan which was abandoning the aims of the Labour version by taking a borough by borough approach and reducing almost to zero those targets for affordable homes in Conservative boroughs while increasing those in Labour ones.  It would seem that under Ken the London plan took a city wide approach to affordable housing.

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