NEW: Keir Starmer says he will create a new class of “grey belt” land earmarked for development that has few natural or aesthetic qualities! thetimes.co.uk/article/labour…

The Barton Swing Aqueduct is a moveable bridge that literally takes one canal over another. It was built in three years with 1890 technology. How long would it take to plan and build today? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barton_Sw…

‘British Land research shows there is 10 times as much lab space in the US city of Boston as there is Oxford, Cambridge and London combined.’ telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/…

Important job at Our World in Data with the opportunity to write about housing: ourworldindata.org/writer-q2-2024

London’s golf courses could be greener and better for society if some were converted into public parks and more homes, argues Sam Dumitriu:

Eurostat also has the average size of said flats. So not only do Londoners pay the same rent on 3/5 the salary, they also get 20 fewer square meters to live in!

The Federal Statistical Office puts the median monthly wage in the Geneva region (almost certainly higher in the city itself) at CHF 6849 (roughly €7,000) vs. £3,635 (€4,260) in London according to ASHE . I'm at a loss for words.

This is not a chart that it is good to be at the top of:

Yes, the UK has the smallest houses in western Europe.

If only there were some obvious solution to this problem wsj.com/economy/housin…

Your occasional reminder that the big pillars at South Kensington tube station aren't holding up the roof - they're the supports for a 1970s hotel that was planned to go above the station.

The absolute insanity of this is that no one has any way to pressure the environmental agency to build a new reservoir. It should be their statutory obligation to provide water for whatever needs to be development gets made, rather than making them a veto player.

Perhaps design does matter after all? dezeen.com/2024/04/12/bor…

But we need to understand that the cause of high rents is an under-supply of housing (to buy or rent), which puts renters in competition with each other for insufficient number of homes. Trying to hold rents down artificially (as we do already in social housing) won't fix this.

Rent levels are market-driven, Vicky. Landlords don't just 'decide' to put rents up, they do it because they can, because tenants are willing to pay more. If they didn't they'd have 1000s of people applying for their property.

This is why pointing out that we don't have a housing shortage and in fact have more empty homes than homeless people is not very helpful

Ideas from Britain Remade’s Sam Dumitriu and Ben Hopkinson on how the next mayor could get London building to address the desperate shortage of homes: open.substack.com/pub/samdumitri…

A new review is sobering reading for Homes England: ft.com/content/a4282a…

Oops, bad link before. Here's the right one.
urbanstations.russellcurtis.co.uk

OK, having pretty much reached the conclusion of my suburban density study, here's a lengthy and rather geeky explanation of how London's suburbs can accommodate 900,000 new homes through incremental intensification.
Towards a Suburban Renaissance!
russellcurtis.co.uk/2024/04/03/tow…