Monday, 29 September 2008

Holy urbanism

MONU magazine of urbanism is the sort of journal that catches your eye in the more interesting book shops and seduces you away from whatever it was you went in there for. These journals work by constantly reasserting the value of thinking creatively and in different ways about the world around us.

So they have a natural affinity with blogging, which I suspect is why the editor takes the trouble to ask me to mention his latest call for submissions, on the topic of 'holy urbanism', and why I oblige.

29 Sep 2008 14:34:01 | Space and place

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Neighbourhoods and students Communities and Local Government have just published an Ecotec report as part of an evidence gathering exercise 'to review the problems caused by high concentrations of houses in multiple occupation (HMOs), which has been highlighted as a particular problem in some towns and cities, especially those with high numbers of students'. According to the press release, the suggested measures include 'new planning mechanisms and the widespread adoption of a number of the best common sense local solutions that can be easily adopted.' ('Common sense local solutions'? There's something quite un-official about this use of language). The causes and the wider structural issues associated with HMOs, according to the report, are felt to include community cohesion and community imbalance. It's worth keeping in mind that the problem is perceived to be not in HMOs per se but in high concentrations of HMOs. Report is here, press release here. It being that time of year, the Neighbors Project blog has this timely little checklist on 'how to be a neighborly student' - Treat your neighbors here like your neighbors back home Get to know your neighborhood Party with care Work or volunteer in the community Voice your opinion, but remember your place. Now, anyone care to try drafting the corresponding checklist for residents preparing for the next influx?
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Living in interesting times As the overlap of housing crisis and economic crisis blurs and separates like lights in the rain, political hopefuls agonise over the "walk on by society". It no longer seems simplistic to note the connection between an economic system which encourages buying-to-let on the basis of greed, and neighbourhoods with dangerously low levels of informal social control. It all feels so depressingly predictable - not the economic crisis in its severity perhaps, but the almost visible connection between mindless consumer capitalism and the feeling of lost civility. It's obvious enough: if as a society we systematically encourage antisocial values and behaviour (I'm referring to ASB as practised by financiers) and we don't know those around us and don't trust them, prosocial behaviour and social norms are harder to establish, identify with, and reassert. John Harris, no relation, has a detailed and lengthy piece in today's Guardian on 'the rise of exploitative landlordism' and the drastic lack of housing, which includes the thoughts of one Rita Giles, who has lived in her three-bedroom council flat for 32 years. Rita 'stayed put, and watched as a once-solid neighbourhood has been replaced by an ever-changing community of people who often appear to be simply passing through.' "The people who bought the properties don't live in them any more," she says. "This is the biggest problem. They buy them, they do them up, then they sell them, and they get rented out. A lot of them go and live abroad." "Now," she says, "you might have two or three families in one three-bedroom flat. I've seen that happen on our estate. We get a lot from Africa. A lot of short-term people come from Kosovo. The problem is, any sense of community is utterly eroded. Once, you could walk down the road and everybody who spoke to you, you'd know who they were. People still speak to me: they'll say 'Good morning', and I'll say 'Good morning' back, because it's in my nature to do so. But I couldn't tell you who they are, because with 95% of them, it's the only time I've seen them, and I might not ever see them again. They just disappear." Another respondent in the article talks about the homes bought and re-let: "People don't take pride in them, because you've got this six-month transit-camp situation. There's no community cohesion, the neighbours don't know each other..." If the recession brings an end to rampant property speculation in a time of wretched levels of homelessness - and an end to the gormless glut of tv property programmes - that at least will be a blessing. There are two ironies in today's news which only seem to bind these themes even more strangely. The first is that the person who was killed when he went to the aid of a 35-year-old homeless Lithuanian man in Norwich was a banker with a company which manages assets worth £133bn. The second is that just as members of the conservative party reflect on...

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