'Ouses, Greenbelt and stuff
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Building downward is a fair bit more expensive and the windows get all dirty
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For example.
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The reason those skinny tall ones are allowed is a specific planning quirk in the nyc rules.
They’re not dense just tall and stupid.
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Not sure I feel strongly either way, just that it's not clear cut.
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There's no right to an uninterrupted view of the horizon. There are fairly simple tests and more detailed calculations to determine whether the impact on neighbouring buildings is acceptable or not. It's one of the easier ones to deal with.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
Personal opinion but I wouldn't want to live higher than a fire engine ladder can reach.
The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
We could look at how things turned out when we built lots of tower blocks to house people back in the 60's and 70's. Not a roaring success as I recall.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
It’s possible to learn from that (and I would argue the industry already has). It’s possible to have high quality high rise development, some of the most exclusive housing in the world is in high rise blocks. It’s not for me but it is an important part of the mix for providing housing in heavily urbanised areas where land is at a premium.
Saying it is bad based on the often poorly designed, poorly built 1960s examples is like saying we shouldn’t build terraces because many of the Victorian workers terraced houses were slums.
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That's not to say we can't do a better job, especially having learned a few lessons from the past. However there are some drawbacks that are inherent in high rise living, as the video above points out.
As I've said before, better control of the number of people is also key to solving to solving this. Having the population increase by the current levels every year (who all need somewhere to live, obviously) will mean we will always be chasing our tails.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
Mixed is probably more accurate. The World's End estate has always been popular. Other places - Trellick Tower; Park Hill, Sheffield - started well, fell into decline when maintenance and services were cut, and then with investment have become desirable places to live again.
You could have said the same about Georgian terraces in the 70s. Lots of places that are now listed showpiece streets and garden squares were slums of single room bedsits. The ones that were too far gone were demolished or bombed out. Most of it's down to fashion - give it a bit longer and there'll be another renaissance for mock-Tudor semis.
It's worth noting that the original model for high rise living stressed the importance of parkland surrounding the towers. Clearly that's the bit that gets lost easily on both social housing (postage stamp balconies are pretty useless and too windy above 4th or 5th floor) and more upmarket developments like Nine Elms where everything is surrounded by paving and a few shops. It's certainly true that fire safety becomes more of a challenge the higher you go. The introduction of mandatory second staircases has thrown quite a lot of development into doubt. And the cladding scandal has rendered a lot of properties worthless.
It's certainly not necessary to build that high to achieve the higher density in lots of different ways.
There's the LCC's various garden city estates from the 1920s and 30s.
Post-war mid-rise designs arranged around communal gardens like the Ashburton Estate in Putney.
And more recently Peter Barber has designed several schemes
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
Perhaps they should build some high rise buildings in Rwanda to ease the pressure on land.
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How is that high rise? Those are Commieblocks.
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How is what high rise? They were examples of higher density housing without the need for high rise.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
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Someone queried a while back why I was less than enthusiastic about the performance of the large housing associations. This is why.
They are morphing into mere asset management.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
That may have been me. I do a bit of work with a few of the ones operating in Wales and they seem to be doing a decent job. They're building some nice developments giving various affordable options as well as open market housing that I assume is helping to fund them. My sister has recently got a house through one of them and seems very happy with them (my wife also works for them albeit in a different part of the business). I guess there's good and bad in all sectors and know there were a lot of complaints about the organisation that took over the former Council stock in my area.
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All service charges are going up, because everything e.g. building insurance now costs more.
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I've been told that the objections to my local bit of nimbyism won't have any impact, because it has already been approved. Will be interesting to see how it plays out.
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There's going up and going up. The redevelopment that's been empty for 5 years is not really excusable.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
Yes, I'm not excusing that. As an aside, I did a fascinating tour around the estate just before the final residents were moved out. I also miss the shopping centre there...
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Yes, quite different from most shopping centres. Don't suppose that will be coming back.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
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Maybe the solution doesn't just involve building hundreds of thousands of homes in and around London, but also questioning why all these businesses still feel it necessary for their workforces to be in London, especially when the 'commodity' isn't a physical product. Seems to be a bit of a lack of creative thinking, to an extent, and a self-perpetuating problem.
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There should be some form of levelling up of the UK.
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Well, yeah, but that needs collective imagination, not just some half-baked government scheme. I'd thought that all the WFH stuff in the pandemic might have shifted the dial more, but just like people returning to the norm of driving everywhere in ever-greater numbers, the default of London as being where everything happens just seems like lazy thinking. Even without HS2, cities such as Birmingham and Manchester have loads to offer.
I suspect the London syndrome is rather like building more roads to 'ease' traffic congestion: all it does it to encourage more people to go there, and ends up not improving the situation in the long term.
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Yes because the rest of the world is known for having geographically decentralised finance industries - oh wait, no they don't.
There is a reason finance is an industry where they all work within the same square mile. You're entrusting strangers with an awful lot of money all the time, usually not yours - face-to-face interaction will always be necessary. It's a people business, and people need to see each other.
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Are all of London's 9 million residents international financiers?
I really don't think that you can build yourself out of the problem you're complaining about, as long as the mindset is that everything needs to happen physically in London (hence my analogy about traffic congestion).
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