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News Release from: Chartered Institute of Building [CIOB] | Subject: Urban renaissance
Edited by the Buildingtalk Editorial
Team on 07 December 2005
Lord Rogers vision of urban renaissance
Lord Rogers appeals for fresh look at the vision of urban renaissance.
In the original Urban Task Force report, says Richard Rogers in his review of the urban renaissance six years on, we set out a vision of well designed, compact and connected cities supporting a diverse range of uses, in a sustainable environment, well integrated with public transport and adaptable to change So they did: there have been a number of outstanding achievements since in improving the built environment, but a renaissance on the scale looked for in 1999 has yet to happen
This article was originally published on Buildingtalk on 12 Mar 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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The new report indeed confirms this in saying for example, "massive inequalities persist in our cities".
"Competition for space pushes up prices for housing, making access for lower income households much harder." The 1999 report included recommendations which would have moderated this inequality to some extent, but for the most part they have not been acted upon.
This is no doubt why the new report, endorsed by every member of the task force except for reservations on land use by Sir Peter Hall, Bartlett Professor of Planning at University College, London, bears the title Towards a Strong Urban Renaissance.
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This implies that though some progress in realising the vision has been made, it has gone neither fast enough nor far enough.
Many of the 105 recommendations made in the first report require as Lord Rogers puts it, renewed attention from the Government.
However, six years is not a long time in which to realise such a vision, as expressed in the 1999 preface by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, of making Britain's towns and cities not just fit to live in, but thriving centres of human activity.
The inquiry team at that time ran as it were a precursor of Kate Barker's 2005 Housing Supply report in which she put her finger on the essence of the problem: "A key factor underlying the lack of supply and responsiveness is an inadequate supply of developable land".
"More land will need to be released or made viable for development, if housing supply is to increase".
"Better use of existing or previously developed land can be achieved through bringing derelict and contaminated land back into use." Under the heading Managing the Land Supply - a title not far removed in significance from Kate Barker's, the 1999 report said: "We need to make it easier to recycle previously developed land so that a greater proportion of new development flows to our urban areas".
"One of the ways of achieving this is to reduce the barriers to assembling existing sites and buildings that need to be redeveloped".
""Land ownership constraints should not be allowed to atrophy the urban environment.
This means streamlining procedures and providing the human and financial resources necessary to keep our urban land markets fluid and flexible".
Government report on planning gain".
"The Government however has recently been giving a great deal of attention to this issue and the findings of Gordon Brown's Treasury and John Prescott's ODPM are shortly to be published".
"It was around this need for greater flexibility that Kate Barker formulated her ideas for a planning gain supplement".
"Unfortunately, as professionals in the construction and property industries generally agree, the way in which this planning charge has been set out is not practical".
"Yet little is said about the importance of resolving this question in the new Richard Rogers report, though a number of useful clues were given in the original".
"If anything the new report seems to support extension of the expensive social housing grant programme currently costing some GBP2 billion annually".
"In his summary of the measures now being advocated, Lord Rogers says: "Social housing supply is too low.
The Barker Report estimated that an extra GBP1.2 billion is required each year to subsidise 17,000 additional social housing units".
He is right of course about the shortfall, but inflating the subsidy simply raises the charge on the Exchequer and moreover has a tendency to strengthen 'land ownership constraints' by supporting the upward rise of prices.
"Growing housing demand," he says as did Kate Barker in her own way, "is a big challenge.
How can we build compact, well designed, sustainable neighbourhoods which make best use of brownfield sites, are well served by public transport, hospitals, schools and other amenities, and do not weaken existing urban areas?".
Land assembly promoting progress".
"That indeed is the question".
"One good illustration of what can be done is being provided by English Partnerships through its programme of land assembly, mainly brownfield, which is giving the house building industry access to sites which could well provide as many as 17,000 homes, but not within a year and certainly not all qualifying for social housing grant".
"Many of these will be built on small parcels of land, in developments of a scale well in tune with the Rogers vision".
"This group of former hospital sites now moving to the development stage is not the only land assembly project which is currently lifting the economic prospects of the house building industry".
"There are also the 10 Design for Manufacture sites, on one of which the Richard Rogers Partnership is acting as design leader".
"The four sites now under negotiation are expected to produce more than 1,000 new homes and may well demonstrate that - to quote the new Rogers report - integrated urban projects which can stand out as exemplars of sustainable communities, despite their beginnings as products of public investment".
"This of course shows the benefit of collaboration between the regeneration agencies and the house building industry".
"Central government as the driver and provider of new forms of economic housing is perhaps not the ideal way for the industry to develop".
"But what the land assembly programmes do show is that once the constraints so eloquently described in the first Urban Taskforce report are overcome, the industry is able to surge ahead with invention and enthusiasm".
"The obvious pleasure at the outcome shown by the Deputy Prime Minister, the leaders of English Partnerships and the successful contractors should banish ideas about a sluggish and recalcitrant industry being dragged unwillingly into the 21st century".
"Lord Rogers' latest comments on the urban regeneration issue come as he says at a pivotal time".
"He sees the new city regions as engines of economic growth, fundamental building blocks in the national fabric.
"Against this backdrop of a shift in culture, milestones such as the neighbourhood renewal areas, growing housing demand and proposals to develop London for the 2012 Olympics present once in a lifetime opportunities".
"Decisions taken today will dictate for a generation whether English cities can realise their potential to shape a more sustainable future for us all".
A practical approach to regeneration in the form of sustainable communities is being demonstrated by the industry's response to the land assembly programmes now in train, land which is accessible and not penned up behind barriers of the kind described in the first Urban Taskforce report.
If these barriers could be lowered following the Government's response to Kate Barker's report, the present acute problems of affordability could at least be eased.
Keeping the housing markets of the 21st century fluid and flexible as the original Taskforce said they should be, must be the key to unlocking the potential of this critically important sector of the economy.
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