URBLOG

Eco-blind-alley

For green living, head for Mumbai or New York  Simon Jenkins offers an alternative to the ecotown.

New York, London, Mumbai, Hong Kong are crammed with buildings and people, economising on walls, roofs, central heating, offices, open space and mass transit.

In Britain the VAT incentive to replace rather than restore buildings – the result of builder lobbying – is flagrantly anti-green. If Britain must build at all, it should build high-density, low-rise, which conserves energy more efficiently than high-rise.

“Who Cares About Estates?”

The National Estate Churches Network National Conference 2009

How you can make a positive impact on the Estate you serve….
Effective estate projects – examples and stories…
The Struggles and Challenges (and the solutions we use…)

Speakers: Lynsey Hanley author of “Estates: An Intimate History” and
Sister Margaret Walsh

Where: Birmingham, Carrs Lane Conference Centre, B4 7SX
When: 10:00 a.m. – 3:30 p.m., Thursday 12th November 2009

Our city centres are turning into secure enclaves that erode trust

Can we banish fear and loathing from the city?

While the centres of our cities are turning into secure enclaves, high security is also becoming an ever bigger feature of the homes we live in.

The real issue is that most people simply don’t know what is happening, presuming that because the streets have always been public, as far as they are aware, they will continue to be so.

Review by Owen Hatherley

Radio series on post war public building

Britain in their sites BBC RADIO 4 series

Tristram Hunt tells the story of architectural change in Britain over 60 years, tracing the country's changing idea of itself through three controversial public building projects.

In 1948, Peterlee was the future, an exciting New Town planned by architect Berthold Lubetkin for the Durham miners he idolised. Tristram asks why Lubetkin, most famous for London Zoo's Penguin Pool, left Peterlee before a single house was built.

As he looks back at Peterlee's troubled birth, Tristram dissects the furious debates which Lubetkin's failure sparked, and which marked the beginning of Britain's post-war architecture wars.

Fabian pamphlet addresses housing divide

In the Mix: Narrowing the gap between public and private housing A Fabian Policy Report shows a strong association between public housing, worklessness and poverty, but the system also fails first time buyers, people living in cities and even middle class home owners. This is only being made worse by the economic crisis. We need to get housing policy right for the recession years and for the longer term. "Public housing is tainted by association with the imagery and stigma of the sink estate and this undermines popular support for all public housing. The mutual respect we owe each other becomes undermined, with some citizens seen as welfare dependents and somehow ‘other’: alien beings in a subculture that horrifies and fascinates middle England in equal measure. "  Extract

Faith in Affordable Housing

 Faith in Affordable Housing is a free web-based resource, giving practical and technical information to assist churches in providing affordable housing. The guide presents nine case studies from different denominations and from urban and rural areas.

Happy Birthday Basildon!

Will new towns repeat the same mistakes of post-war housing?

As Basildon prepares for its 60th birthday, its critics fear that crucial lessons will be lost in the £9bn Thames Gateway project

Lord Rogers, recently told the House of Lords: "There is something wrong when the Thames Gateway - Europe's biggest regeneration project - is still peppering the banks of the beautiful River Thames with shoddy, Toytown houses and Dan Dare glass towers. I fear that we are building the slums of tomorrow."

Let good sense be no barrier to concreting the countryside

Tristram Hunt in The Guardian

The construction lobby's argument for a greenbelt landgrab has been blown apart by the credit crunch. Yet still they win the day.

...what the price collapse does prove is that the property bubble of the last 15 years was the product of an over-supply of easy credit, rather than an under-supply of prime sites....

Transition Cities Conference 2008

Transition Cities Conference 2008

A gathering of those who have been testing the Transition model in the cities, an Open Space conference to draw together and share ideas and insights, tools and techniques, exploring what works and what doesn’t in urban Transition. Programme.pdf

What is a Transition Town (or village / city / forest / island)?

"It would cost a lot"

  We still need places to live

It's perverse that a market crash should put an end to building social housing that Britain badly lacks.  Lyndsey Hanley in The Guardian

Getting hold of good housing when you haven't got much money is about clambering, ducking and diving, enduring. Why should it be that way? It's a place to live, not an assault course.