Britain's decade of Art Deco densification
worksinprogress.news
worksinprogress.news
There's an interesting summary here - https://www.platformspace.net/home/what-are-suburbs-for-pavi.... What's particularly interesting is how successful it was - Croydon seems to have had 4x the number of "homes in small (<10) developments" in the 4 years after it was brought in. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5d01a7efbf4ae5... That's an incredibly good result!
What's unfortunate is the backlash - it seems that there was a lot of outcry over "greedy developers", and the result was the election of a new mayor who cancelled it.
It seems obvious to me that the only real way to achieve the needed housing growth in the places people want to live is to allow suburban and urban densification. Most English cities are shockingly low density - it's crazy that relatively unloved 3 bedroom terraces sit in the shadow of 50 floor apartments.
The current status quo is that a lot of these terraced houses are converted into low quality flats. The density of people is often still there, but they live in terrible accommodation. Building houses in cities should not be a controversial thing to do. Even if it means knocking down a few which aren't suitable any more.
Pros: It was the most spacious flat I've lived on. I'm not talking about area, but the layout itself, it was amazingly well architected. Massive windows too, great lighting (but see cons).
Cons: Single glaze windows (and a protected facade) meant eye-watering energy bills. Poor quality subfloor (with carpet) meant 24/7 creaking when walking over it.
Lots of heat is lost through solid walls though (and ceilings and floors) it is not just windows.
Retro fitting is the way. Don’t tear them down for some new crap.
I live in an old stone building in Scotland - the previous owners installed a kitchen in 2019, and at that time they replaced the flooring. They _could_ have insulated under the floor, and done internal wall insulation but that would have added a few hundred pounds onto their renovation job, and they didn't care, they were content with the asthetic upgrade of the room.
One of the iconic features of many Art Deco buildings is curved windows [1], and the flat windows having very skinny frames. That means nonstandard "heritage" windows, which can be several times the price of normal, mass-produced windows.
Blocks of flats have the additional problem that it's unlikely every owner will have the cash to replace their windows at the same time. So it's tough to save money by getting them all done at once.
Of course often the freeholder has no interest in improving the building other than the minimal maintenance.
Sure - it's the same in our country, with the additional trouble that there is a special institution that has to approve any changes in protected buildings and they are pretty harsh. And even then lots of them get updated.
> Blocks of flats have the additional problem that it's unlikely every owner will have the cash to replace their windows at the same time.
We have that too and what usually happens with changes that apply to the whole building (like the whole facade) is that the community of the owners finances changes like that with a credit on the whole building, there are special laws for that. Happens less often with just the windows because they are so cheap most people can afford them on their own.
Nominally, GDP per capita is ~2.6x higher in the UK than in Poland ($46.5k/$18k) while domestic gas prices are only about 20% higher [1]. Renovations are mostly labour costs so the expected return on investment is almost twice as good in Poland as the UK.
Ultimately the issue is that energy prices in the UK are too low.
[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a749056e5274...
* Landlords don't care their tennants pay too much for energy because there is no competitive pressure, the apartments will rent regardless. And many homes in London are rented.
* The government does not care. The British society is very classist in my experience and the ruling class does not care the general public is freezing. So even while the UK was in the EU and the EU had various drives to improve energy efficiency of buildings, the UK mostly ignored them.
There was a story just a couple of days ago [0] where residents are protesting having their windows upgraded, despite their existing windows being cold, draughty, rusty, and mouldy. One man felt so strongly about it that he said he'd electrocute anyone who tried to change his windows.
They're concerned new slightly thicker window frames might destroy the character of their 60s water-stained concrete brutalist eyesore.
[0] https://www.kentonline.co.uk/thanet/news/yes-it-s-cold-but-y...
As a huge fan of both brutalist architecture and so-called 'tilt and turn' windows, I had already braced myself for feeling conflicted about this when I clicked through. But no, there's nothing particularly distinctive about the windows that would be lost in a renovation. Here's a high-resolution picture for those who want to see for themselves:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/Arlingto...
Notice that only a few of the sliding windows are even open on what appears to be a very pleasant day, so sliding-vs-tilting doesn't seem relevant. I don't think the extra centimetre of window frame is going to be visible from the seaside anyway!
But arguing about money makes people look greedy - or worse (in classist Britain) cheap, aka poor. So they will argue about windows, character, anything.
This is not a "1%" thing; about half of all UK adults live in a home they own. For homeowners, the current setup is pretty sweet. And for a while, the number of homeowners was increasing, hitting an all-time high in 2003 - making it not too undemocratic that the country should be run for their benefit. But now with that figure reducing, mainly at the expense of younger people, it's not surprising that discontent is on the rise (particularly online, where the youngest are the most visible).
Difficult to build -> undersupply -> high prices/rents -> low incentive to improve.
The problem is just that developers have to pay to clean up those sites. You can simply look at the Houchen affair: as soon as the local authority foots the bill, developers will jump on the dirtiest stretch of brownfield, no questions asked.
i.e. more cost, which gets passed onto buyers/renters. Different entry point, same result. Plenty of brownfield sites do get redeveloped, particularly in city centers, but they don’t become affordable housing, they become trendy apartments with industrial heritage museums next door (and not enough of them).
The population of Britain has increased nearly +10M in the 21st century, but the housing supply has lagged far, far behind.
If there is one British obsession, is the expectation that every family should aspire to a semi-detached in the suburbs, with the result that (outside of London) developers only build small flats for singles and childless couples. The semi-detached model does not scale, while flats do. Developers should be forced to include larger flats in new builds, and councils should start thinking in terms of making town centres denser and more attractive to families.
At some point all the windows had been replaced with UPVC double glazed ones. The heating system had some redundancy, so when they closed half of it off to replace it we just had a day or two where they asked us to limit hot water use. (I don't remember but I assume this was done during the summer.)