Originally posted on Centre for London's blog 27 April 2015
Londoners worry differently. We are less concerned about immigration
and the NHS than other Brits, but much more anxious about housing – in
2014, 28 per cent of Londoners cited housing as one of the most
important issues facing the country, versus 13 per cent across Great
Britain (Ipsos MORI Issues Index, 2014 aggregated data).
The symptoms of the housing crisis are more pronounced in London,
too. The average house price is seven times the average salary across
England, but 11 times the average salary in London. Prices rose by 28
per cent across England between late 2008 and late 2014, but by 53 per
cent in London (60 per cent in inner London).
This divergence is hurting the rest of the country as well as London:
at a recent Centre for London event, former mayoral candidate Steve
Norris described high housing prices as “both a fortress and a cage”
preventing mobility between London and the rest of the UK, and
undermining productivity.
So it looks like good news that the main party manifestos are making
commitments on housing. But the specific symptoms and scale of London’s
housing crisis call for specific solutions; many of the policies being
touted are likely to have least impact in the Capital, where the housing
crisis is most acute. The manifestos are missing the mark.
For example, whatever its much-debated merits as policy, the
Conservatives’ proposal to extend right-to-buy to housing association
tenants will have least impact in London, where the National Housing
Federation estimates
that only 15 per cent of tenants would be able to afford to buy their
property (even with a discount), as opposed to 35 per cent in Northern
England. Similarly, Help-to-Buy ISAs’ maximum savings of £12,000 will
only make a small dent in affordability in a city where first time buyer
deposits are as high as £50,000. And high land prices may make London
the least economic location for 200,000 discounted starter homes.
Labour’s plans for new garden cities could relieve pressure on
London, if implemented, though a commitment to working through consensus
will make it hard to find sites in South East England. A preference for
local first time buyers seems parochially mismatched to London’s
churning population; born-and-bred Londoners do struggle to afford
somewhere to live, but so do the thousands of young people who come to
London every year and fuel the Capital’s economy. Meanwhile, the Mansion
Tax would affect more than 100,000 householders in London, many of whom
are not particularly high earners, or ‘mansion-dwellers’ by any normal
definition.
To be fair, other policies will have more of an impact: the
Conservatives commitment to fund brownfield land development, as
prefigured by the London Land Commission announced in the budget, could
favour the capital. Labour’s commitment to rent controls will be
controversial with landlords, but could make a real difference to
private sector renters (who comprise 24 per cent of London households, against 15 per cent in England and Wales),
and powers to intervene against land-banking speculators could ginger
up housing supply (London has 216,000 homes with planning permission in
the ‘pipeline’).
Party manifestos are national documents, so maybe we should not
expect them to be tailored to the specifics of an asymmetric housing
crisis. And they are defensive as well as aspirational, seeking to offer
pledges and commitments that will appeal to the majority, without
opening up a flank that the other side can attack. But if London’s
growth continues to outstrip expectations, how will the city find space
for the ten million people forecast to live here by 2030? This is a
highly-charged debate, on which the manifestos are silent: should we
pursue more housing estate redevelopment, more council-led building to
supplement housebuilders’ limited capacity, higher densities in suburban
locations, remodeling the Green Belt, allowing more
commercial-to-residential conversion?
Each of these ideas has its advocates, but each also has bitter
opponents; losers as well as winners. The discussion may be as
controversial in London as it is nationwide, but it will be harder for
mayoral candidates to duck an issue that is so important to Londoners.
Whether government lets them make a difference is a different matter,
and the omens are not promising. Amidst all the talk of city deals and
devolution, the modest proposal made last year in the Inspector’s report
on the London Plan, that London should begin to think more radically
about where it could accommodate new housing, was firmly slapped down by planning minister Brandon Lewis: Green Belt was sacrosanct, and there would be no going back to regional planning.
Nonetheless, perhaps the candidates standing for election as London’s
next Mayor in a year’s time will feel the urgency of the crisis, claim
the mandate, and demand the powers and resources to do something about
it. And maybe, just maybe, the next government will listen.
Saturday, 27 June 2015
Come bouncing back
Originally published on CityMetric 13 February 2015
Boris Johnson will be banging the drum for the capital with his accustomed panache as he visits Boston and New York this week. That’s not surprising: London has a great story to tell.
But, while we are quick to celebrate London’s gravity-defying recovery from the last recession, we still do not fully understand it. At an LSE London lecture last week, Professor of Human Geography Ian Gordon sought to redress the balance by asking why the capital did not just survive the 2007 financial crash; in its wake, it actually thrived.
A lot of people (including Gordon, and me) expected the years after 2007 to be a re-run, or worse. Instead, between 2007 and 2013, employment in five central London boroughs rose by 23 per cent, a faster annual growth rate than in the period running up to the crash, though unemployment rose across London, and job number recovery rates in the rest of the capital remained at much the same level as the rest of the UK.
Gordon reflected on whether there were structural features of London's economy that helped it survive. He also asked whether there were policy biases in terms of public and private investment and cutbacks, and whether the programmes of economic intervention (bail-outs, guarantees and quantitative easing) had features that favoured London.
The first two factors certainly contributed something. Structurally, the devaluation of the pound by 25 per cent between 2007 and 2009 could have helped tourism and investment (more on this below). What’s more, businesses fought to retain skilled workers , who are disproportionately located in London. And London’s economy was well-equipped to continue to supply luxury goods to rich individuals whose wealth was relatively unaffected by financial vicissitudes (the “plutonomy model”, named after the CitiGroup reports of the mid-2000s).
There were also policy biases towards London. The 2012 Olympics and Crossrail were big capital projects sponsored by government, which boosted the ability of London construction services firms to sell their skills overseas. There is some evidence that firms headquartered in London were quicker to lay off branch office than head office personnel, too.
But these factors shrink in significance, Gordon argued, compared to the sheer weight of financial intervention. He cited Andrew Haldane of the Bank of England in valuing the guarantees given to banks as equivalent to a subsidy of £100bn in 2009 alone (through their reductions in the cost of borrowing).
Meanwhile, quantitative easing was designed to divert nervous money away from safe bonds into more risky and productive investments – but, coupled with low interest rates, it encouraged a surge in equity prices. (Some went to emerging markets in search of even higher returns.) The FTSE 100 index rose from a low of less than 4,000 in 2009 to nearly 7,000 today – around the level of its 2008 high – delivering great returns for many investors.
But the job growth in the five boroughs studied (City of London, Westminster, Islington, Tower Hamlets and Hackney) was not restricted to financial services. It was also in property, real estate and engineering, tourism, hotels and restaurants, public services, and creative and digital businesses.
Going beyond Gordon’s careful analysis, it’s also worth asking what part London’s booming property market played. The devaluation of the pound did little to boost tourism in the short term (visitor numbers did not return to their 2007 levels until 2012); but it did make London a safe haven for overseas investment.
Much of this investment went into property, and particularly the prime central London market, where 60 per cent of purchases by value were by overseas buyers in 2007-11. And after a brief slowdown in 2008, prices recovered fast, rising by 45 per cent across central London by 2013.
But, unlike prices, transaction volumes remained stubbornly low; they fell by about 40 per cent in 2007, and have remained pretty low ever since. In other words, buyers' money was flooding in, but sellers weren't responding; the market has failed to regain its pre-crash liquidity.
Investors wanting to increase their exposure, or to invest gains made in the stock market, had limited options for new purchases. So many chose to extend or dig down, creating catacombs of wealth in London’s most desirable streets – and contributing to the growth in employment in construction, engineering and allied trades.
So, the recovery in London’s economy, or at least in job numbers, has been focused on a very small area of the city. Perhaps more significantly, it could be seen as based on the wealth of a fairly small section of the population, and their spending habits, from underground cinemas to Michelin-starred restaurants.
This influx and expansion of wealth in central London may or may not be a good thing in itself – it has generated employment for a lot of Londoners, but its impact on property prices and the cost of living has stretched far beyond central London. And we shouldn’t become complacent about what it means for the future.
Gordon suggests that, just as this unique set of circumstances cushioned London in the downturn, they are also amplifying a speculative upswing. Central London may not have escaped the recession by means of our extraordinary civic virtue and vigour, by the discovery of some magic formula that has “abolished boom and bust” (remember that?).
Rather, he suggests, it may have prospered through a happy co-incidence of circumstances that has papered over the cracks. A change in interest rates, or exchange rates, or a crash in property prices could also have amplified impacts – equally and oppositely.
How London’s economy will fare longer term is a matter for crystal ball-gazing, not secure prediction. But we owe it to ourselves to reflect more rationally and systematically on whether London has achieved such apparently gravity-defying success through luck or good judgement. Those answers may be helpful if – when – the tables turn.
City sickness?
Originally published on CityMetric on 19 January 2015
The Centre for Cities’ City Outlook 2015,
out today, tells a story of continuing success for the capital. Since
the mid-1990s, the capital’s population and economy have been growing in
tandem, and the city quickly regained the economic ground lost in the
early 2000s and in the last recession.
Over the past ten years, in fact, London’s population has grown by 1.1m. The number of private sector jobs in the city have risen by 650,000, and the number of businesses by 115,000. The growth in population is greater in absolute terms, but the economic indicators are rising more quickly. London’s economy is growing faster than its population.
The sector that grew fastest, accounting for one third of London’s net
new jobs over the past decade, was “professional, scientific &
technical activities” – a sector which includes professions such as law,
engineering, architectural design and accountancy, as well as
management consultancy, advertising, and research & development.
London’s economy is increasingly dominated by knowledge-intensive,
highly-skilled businesses.
Growth in these sectors is the holy grail of economic development, and something to be celebrated – but it presents challenges, too. Firstly, like other UK cities, London has stubbornly persistent levels of unemployment – the claimant count increased by 40,000 (around 25 per cent) over the decade, despite the growth in job numbers. The jobs being created are not in the sectors that are easily accessible to people with low skills levels. At the same time, entrepreneurs in London’s growth sectors are complaining that finding people with the right specialist and generic skills is one of the biggest problems they face in seeking to grow their businesses.
London also faces a growing affordability crisis, particularly in housing costs. Demand for new housing has outstripped supply by a factor of three: in the decade when London’s population grew by more than a million, its housing stock grew by less than 300,000. Combined with the popularity of property – even unoccupied property – as an asset for investment, this has fuelled spiralling house prices, with the average house costing more than 30 times the average wage in super-prime central London boroughs.
This affordability crisis is pushing many Londoners on modest incomes, including people in entry-level jobs in London’s growth sectors, out of the inner city to places where property costs may be cheaper. But high transport costs still inflict a heavy toll. The Centre for London’s report Hollow Promise called these people, earning less than average but above the benefits threshold, ENDIeS: people who are employed but with no disposal income or savings.
There is also evidence that some are moving even further afield than London’s suburbs: commuting from outside London grew by about ten per cent between 2001 and 2011, and recent reports showed that young Londoners are moving away from the capital in record numbers. In 2012-13, indeed, there was a net outflow of 22,000 30-something workers. This is leading to resurgent populations and job markets; but is also putting pressure on housing in other southern cities like Oxford, Cambridge and Brighton. These are seeing London-esque gaps between house prices and earnings, in part as a result of local wages lagging behind the house prices that London commuters can pay.
Taken together, housing affordability and skills are two of the capital’s biggest challenges, as reflected in business group London First’s recent London 2036: an agenda for jobs and growth report. Unless we build more housing and other infrastructure, and invest in our skills base, London’s long-term position as one of the pre-eminent world cities could be threatened.
Does this matter? For better or worse, London’s success over the last decade has been built on its appeal as the destination for skilled workers, from the UK and beyond. This has resulted in a skewed economy, for sure. The distribution of resources, talent and infrastructure has been meant a north/south (or, more accurately, an SE/rest of UK) divide.
But a more balanced economy could also be a less prosperous one. Talent has been concentrated in London, a pre-eminent global city; the alternative is not that we have multiple global cities, but that we have none, and that a big chunk of the business coming into the UK disappears.
Knowledge intensive businesses are not sentimental or nationalistic; with the right infrastructure in place, they can easily sell their services across borders. What they depend on above all is a highly skilled workforce; they will operate from whichever cities can offer them this workforce at competitive rates.
London offers not only the critical mass of high-skilled workers, but the infrastructure and the cultural energy which attracts the biggest, and most lucrative, international employers. Over the last ten years it has become increasingly important to the country’s economy. But if London continues to become unaffordable to everyone but the richest and the luckiest, it will lose the skills that have supported its growth, and growth across the UK.
Some firms may follow the talent to Birmingham or Bristol, and many would welcome that type of rebalancing within the UK economy. But a large number of firms would move to Berlin or Barcelona – and we will all lose out.
The UK’s regions may have lost out from internal migration, but they shouldn’t necessarily welcome the tide turning against the capital. Economically, at least, the affordability crisis in London could become a big problem for all of us.
Over the past ten years, in fact, London’s population has grown by 1.1m. The number of private sector jobs in the city have risen by 650,000, and the number of businesses by 115,000. The growth in population is greater in absolute terms, but the economic indicators are rising more quickly. London’s economy is growing faster than its population.
Growth in these sectors is the holy grail of economic development, and something to be celebrated – but it presents challenges, too. Firstly, like other UK cities, London has stubbornly persistent levels of unemployment – the claimant count increased by 40,000 (around 25 per cent) over the decade, despite the growth in job numbers. The jobs being created are not in the sectors that are easily accessible to people with low skills levels. At the same time, entrepreneurs in London’s growth sectors are complaining that finding people with the right specialist and generic skills is one of the biggest problems they face in seeking to grow their businesses.
London also faces a growing affordability crisis, particularly in housing costs. Demand for new housing has outstripped supply by a factor of three: in the decade when London’s population grew by more than a million, its housing stock grew by less than 300,000. Combined with the popularity of property – even unoccupied property – as an asset for investment, this has fuelled spiralling house prices, with the average house costing more than 30 times the average wage in super-prime central London boroughs.
This affordability crisis is pushing many Londoners on modest incomes, including people in entry-level jobs in London’s growth sectors, out of the inner city to places where property costs may be cheaper. But high transport costs still inflict a heavy toll. The Centre for London’s report Hollow Promise called these people, earning less than average but above the benefits threshold, ENDIeS: people who are employed but with no disposal income or savings.
There is also evidence that some are moving even further afield than London’s suburbs: commuting from outside London grew by about ten per cent between 2001 and 2011, and recent reports showed that young Londoners are moving away from the capital in record numbers. In 2012-13, indeed, there was a net outflow of 22,000 30-something workers. This is leading to resurgent populations and job markets; but is also putting pressure on housing in other southern cities like Oxford, Cambridge and Brighton. These are seeing London-esque gaps between house prices and earnings, in part as a result of local wages lagging behind the house prices that London commuters can pay.
Taken together, housing affordability and skills are two of the capital’s biggest challenges, as reflected in business group London First’s recent London 2036: an agenda for jobs and growth report. Unless we build more housing and other infrastructure, and invest in our skills base, London’s long-term position as one of the pre-eminent world cities could be threatened.
Does this matter? For better or worse, London’s success over the last decade has been built on its appeal as the destination for skilled workers, from the UK and beyond. This has resulted in a skewed economy, for sure. The distribution of resources, talent and infrastructure has been meant a north/south (or, more accurately, an SE/rest of UK) divide.
But a more balanced economy could also be a less prosperous one. Talent has been concentrated in London, a pre-eminent global city; the alternative is not that we have multiple global cities, but that we have none, and that a big chunk of the business coming into the UK disappears.
Knowledge intensive businesses are not sentimental or nationalistic; with the right infrastructure in place, they can easily sell their services across borders. What they depend on above all is a highly skilled workforce; they will operate from whichever cities can offer them this workforce at competitive rates.
London offers not only the critical mass of high-skilled workers, but the infrastructure and the cultural energy which attracts the biggest, and most lucrative, international employers. Over the last ten years it has become increasingly important to the country’s economy. But if London continues to become unaffordable to everyone but the richest and the luckiest, it will lose the skills that have supported its growth, and growth across the UK.
Some firms may follow the talent to Birmingham or Bristol, and many would welcome that type of rebalancing within the UK economy. But a large number of firms would move to Berlin or Barcelona – and we will all lose out.
The UK’s regions may have lost out from internal migration, but they shouldn’t necessarily welcome the tide turning against the capital. Economically, at least, the affordability crisis in London could become a big problem for all of us.
Wednesday, 18 March 2015
Are we not Devo?
[Originally posted on Centre for London blog on 18 March 2015 - I realise I should have been cross-posting, not least to keep a record.]
A devolutionary ‘city deal’ was announced in the budget this morning
for West Yorkshire, adding to those already in place for Glasgow,
Sheffield and Greater Manchester. More are promised, for Cardiff,
Aberdeen, Inverness and Cambridge. But like kids covetously eyeing each
other’s toys, the other cities are asking, ‘How do we get what
Manchester has?’
Manchester (or rather the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, which will comprise the leaders of the ten Greater Manchester councils, plus a directly-elected mayor) is setting the standard. It will have devolved powers over transport, housing, policing and crime, skills, international promotion and – following a surprise announcement last month – NHS spending. The Chancellor’s budget added full retention of growth in business rates (other cities get 50 per cent). Other cities deals announced so far have been far more modest in scope, covering skills, specified infrastructure schemes, business support and some international promotion coordination.
And London is lagging too. The Chancellor’s speech alluded to announcements about devolved funding for skills, more planning powers and a London Land Commission, all of which were made last month when the Mayor and Chancellor launched their Long Term Economic Plan for London. But neither the Greater London Authority nor the boroughs have any control over London’s health service.
To be fair, taking on the NHS in London (which employs 200,000 people, more than the construction industry) could be seen as a poisoned chalice (eve a hospital pass), as institutions (most recently Barts Health NHS Trust) teeter on the brink of failure. But the failure to join up health and social care has become one of the NHS’ big problems, with old people whose care has been neglected ending up in A&E, and hospital beds occupied by patients who are ready for discharge, but can’t access social care services to enable them to leave. The short-term incentives are to dump costs between local government and the NHS, but both parties have an interest in tackling a problem that is leading to unnecessary suffering and huge wastes of money. This may mean some tough choices, but the past few years have certainly given London local government the experience it will need in taking tough choices.
So why can’t London look after its own health services? Other cities have been told that they can’t go ‘The Full Manc’ unless they accept a directly-elected Mayor rather the relying on a congress of council leaders (thereby opening a new front in the war of attrition over elected mayors that has been running for the best part of 20 years). But London has plenty of mayors: Boris Johnson as Mayor of (Greater) London, as well as mayors Bullock, Pipe and Wales of Lewisham, Hackney and Newham respectively.
Perhaps the two-tier local government system makes London too complex? London certainly is complicated, sometimes Byzantine, though the Greater London Authority and London councils are working quietly behind the scenes, including on a shared bid for further devolution. And in any case, the governance arrangements proposed for Manchester, which include a Greater Manchester Strategic Health and Social Care Partnership Board, and a Greater Manchester Joint Commissioning Board comprising NHS England, clinical commissioning groups and boroughs, are hardly straightforward.
Perhaps the real problem is one of government, not governance. Perhaps, as they look over the River at St Thomas’s Hospital, MPs consider that handing over the NHS in the capital to London’s elected leaders is a step too far, as is the case with the Met Police. Perhaps, as in Washington DC, some capital city services are seen as too important for local accountability.
This fear of letting go should not be determining public policy in London. But if it is, Londoners may start to wonder whether the presence of Parliament and Government is a boon to the capital, or a millstone.
Manchester (or rather the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, which will comprise the leaders of the ten Greater Manchester councils, plus a directly-elected mayor) is setting the standard. It will have devolved powers over transport, housing, policing and crime, skills, international promotion and – following a surprise announcement last month – NHS spending. The Chancellor’s budget added full retention of growth in business rates (other cities get 50 per cent). Other cities deals announced so far have been far more modest in scope, covering skills, specified infrastructure schemes, business support and some international promotion coordination.
And London is lagging too. The Chancellor’s speech alluded to announcements about devolved funding for skills, more planning powers and a London Land Commission, all of which were made last month when the Mayor and Chancellor launched their Long Term Economic Plan for London. But neither the Greater London Authority nor the boroughs have any control over London’s health service.
To be fair, taking on the NHS in London (which employs 200,000 people, more than the construction industry) could be seen as a poisoned chalice (eve a hospital pass), as institutions (most recently Barts Health NHS Trust) teeter on the brink of failure. But the failure to join up health and social care has become one of the NHS’ big problems, with old people whose care has been neglected ending up in A&E, and hospital beds occupied by patients who are ready for discharge, but can’t access social care services to enable them to leave. The short-term incentives are to dump costs between local government and the NHS, but both parties have an interest in tackling a problem that is leading to unnecessary suffering and huge wastes of money. This may mean some tough choices, but the past few years have certainly given London local government the experience it will need in taking tough choices.
So why can’t London look after its own health services? Other cities have been told that they can’t go ‘The Full Manc’ unless they accept a directly-elected Mayor rather the relying on a congress of council leaders (thereby opening a new front in the war of attrition over elected mayors that has been running for the best part of 20 years). But London has plenty of mayors: Boris Johnson as Mayor of (Greater) London, as well as mayors Bullock, Pipe and Wales of Lewisham, Hackney and Newham respectively.
Perhaps the two-tier local government system makes London too complex? London certainly is complicated, sometimes Byzantine, though the Greater London Authority and London councils are working quietly behind the scenes, including on a shared bid for further devolution. And in any case, the governance arrangements proposed for Manchester, which include a Greater Manchester Strategic Health and Social Care Partnership Board, and a Greater Manchester Joint Commissioning Board comprising NHS England, clinical commissioning groups and boroughs, are hardly straightforward.
Perhaps the real problem is one of government, not governance. Perhaps, as they look over the River at St Thomas’s Hospital, MPs consider that handing over the NHS in the capital to London’s elected leaders is a step too far, as is the case with the Met Police. Perhaps, as in Washington DC, some capital city services are seen as too important for local accountability.
This fear of letting go should not be determining public policy in London. But if it is, Londoners may start to wonder whether the presence of Parliament and Government is a boon to the capital, or a millstone.
Saturday, 17 January 2015
Socrates and Charlie Hebdo
Culture Secretary Sajid Javid got shot down in twitter-flames this week for referring to Socrates' writings, when defending freedom of speech following the Charlie Hebdo massacre. The thing is, as any classically-educated fule kno, that Socrates didn't write anything; that was Plato. Cue lots of sneering.
Well, fair enough, though the two philosophers are more or less identical for all practical purposes: Plato didn't write anything but dialogues in which Socrates was the speaker, and Socrates' philosophy is only recorded in Plato's writings.
More interesting, to me anyway, was the thought that even if Socrates was executed by the Athenians for his atheistic opinions, and his 'corruption of the young', he was far from being a believer in democracy and free expression (indeed, his association with shady oligarchs may have been one of the factors that led to his downfall).
For example, Socrates would almost certainly have banned Charlie Hebdo. In his discussion of the just city, The Republic, Socrates presents it as one governed by a paternalistic 'guardian-class' of warrior philosophers. Later in the book, Socrates expounds his theory of ideals (sometimes 'forms', but I think 'ideals' is less confusing). Put very simply, everything that we see in the universe takes its identity from its imitation of, or resemblance to, a metaphysical ideal. A table is a table in as much as it resembles the ideal Table; something is good in that it resembles the ideal Good.
This theory explains why, controversially, Socrates exiles poets (and depending on your reading, other artists) from his Republic. Their art is an act of mimesis, imitation, but worse than that - it is an imitation of an imitation. My depiction of a table is a poor copy of a poor copy of the ideal Table. Socrates also suggests that art, particularly effective art, inflames the passions, and is therefore inappropriate material for his serene and ascetic guardians. Anyhow, one way or another, the artists have to go, and certainly the publishers of satirical magazines would have had to go with them.
Socrates' conclusion troubled Victorian admirers (who had been happily going along with the rule by warrior philosophers up to that point), and it worried his interlocutors too; Socrates admits uneasiness with his conclusion, and challenges them to find counter-arguments.
I was reminded of this stipulation when listening to a man being interviewed about the prohibtion on images of the Prophet Muhammed last week. Generally, this prohibiton is understood in terms of the strictures against idolatry found in the Old Testament - we shouldn't confuse workshipping a God with worshipping an (imperfect) image (like the Golden Calf or the Fish-tailed God Dagon, whose followers are so enthusiastically smitten in the Bible).
The interviewee went further, explaining the prohibition in strikingly Platonic (or Socratic) terms: Muhammed was such an excellent, virtuous and handsome man, indeed the ideal Man, that any attempt to portray him is bound to fall short of the reality, and will therefore represent a slander on him. Plato (or Socrates) could hardly have put it better himself.
To be honest, I'm not sure what this shows. Perhaps it is a) that if you throw enough classical education at people, some is bound to stick (however imperfectly) even 25 years later; b) that if you follow any metaphysical theory far enough, logic will lead you down some curious cul-de-sacs; c) that those who die because of expressing their views are not necessarily liberals; and d) that irrational prohibitions are not the exclusive preserve of the abrahamic religions, but can be found in 'rational' Greek philosophy too.
Well, fair enough, though the two philosophers are more or less identical for all practical purposes: Plato didn't write anything but dialogues in which Socrates was the speaker, and Socrates' philosophy is only recorded in Plato's writings.
More interesting, to me anyway, was the thought that even if Socrates was executed by the Athenians for his atheistic opinions, and his 'corruption of the young', he was far from being a believer in democracy and free expression (indeed, his association with shady oligarchs may have been one of the factors that led to his downfall).
For example, Socrates would almost certainly have banned Charlie Hebdo. In his discussion of the just city, The Republic, Socrates presents it as one governed by a paternalistic 'guardian-class' of warrior philosophers. Later in the book, Socrates expounds his theory of ideals (sometimes 'forms', but I think 'ideals' is less confusing). Put very simply, everything that we see in the universe takes its identity from its imitation of, or resemblance to, a metaphysical ideal. A table is a table in as much as it resembles the ideal Table; something is good in that it resembles the ideal Good.
This theory explains why, controversially, Socrates exiles poets (and depending on your reading, other artists) from his Republic. Their art is an act of mimesis, imitation, but worse than that - it is an imitation of an imitation. My depiction of a table is a poor copy of a poor copy of the ideal Table. Socrates also suggests that art, particularly effective art, inflames the passions, and is therefore inappropriate material for his serene and ascetic guardians. Anyhow, one way or another, the artists have to go, and certainly the publishers of satirical magazines would have had to go with them.
Socrates' conclusion troubled Victorian admirers (who had been happily going along with the rule by warrior philosophers up to that point), and it worried his interlocutors too; Socrates admits uneasiness with his conclusion, and challenges them to find counter-arguments.
I was reminded of this stipulation when listening to a man being interviewed about the prohibtion on images of the Prophet Muhammed last week. Generally, this prohibiton is understood in terms of the strictures against idolatry found in the Old Testament - we shouldn't confuse workshipping a God with worshipping an (imperfect) image (like the Golden Calf or the Fish-tailed God Dagon, whose followers are so enthusiastically smitten in the Bible).
The interviewee went further, explaining the prohibition in strikingly Platonic (or Socratic) terms: Muhammed was such an excellent, virtuous and handsome man, indeed the ideal Man, that any attempt to portray him is bound to fall short of the reality, and will therefore represent a slander on him. Plato (or Socrates) could hardly have put it better himself.
To be honest, I'm not sure what this shows. Perhaps it is a) that if you throw enough classical education at people, some is bound to stick (however imperfectly) even 25 years later; b) that if you follow any metaphysical theory far enough, logic will lead you down some curious cul-de-sacs; c) that those who die because of expressing their views are not necessarily liberals; and d) that irrational prohibitions are not the exclusive preserve of the abrahamic religions, but can be found in 'rational' Greek philosophy too.
Saturday, 20 December 2014
Stuck inside of planning, with the new town blues again
I can see the arguments in principle for and against a new generation of new towns or garden cities, as one way to tackle our chronic housing shortage. But in current circumstances, the discussion seems purely theoretical; I can't see how new towns can ever be built.
For example, just to the north of Brighton, a proposal for a new 'market town' of around 10,000 dwellings has been mooted. I can see the constraints on land in the South East and the need for bold moves, but I also have some affection for the area proposed, sandwiched between areas of outstanding natural beauty and a national park, and including one of my favourite pubs. And we need to add the potential impact of a new town on existing communities, to these more sentimental considerations.
In any case, the Mayfield Market Towns proposal appears to have stalled for the moment. The Planning Inspector has just paused his consideration of Horsham's local plan, arguing that they need to be more ambitious in finding housing sites, but also rejecting the Mayfield proposal. His arguments against it are twofold: firstly, he does not believe that such a scale of new development is needed at this stage (though he acknowledges that expansion at Gatwick Airport would force a more fundamental rethink), and he doesn't think a scaled down version would be viable. Secondly, as the Inspector puts it (in a late entry for Understatement of the Year), "the deliverability of the preferred 10,000 dwelling option...within two local authority areas without their support, and in the face of strong opposition from two local MPs, parish councils and local people, including land owners, is also an issue of concern."
This is why I can't see how any new town will become a reality. Proposing a new 10,000 home development requires top-down planning. It is not just a matter of responding to known and projected local demand for new homes (which will rarely if ever demand that scale of development on its own), but of considering and redefining what role a particular site might play in the economic future of its region, of the whole country. This is a matter of creating and redirecting demand, not just responding to it.
And that would probably require pushing a scheme forward in the teeth of local opposition, especially in the areas of South East England where land supply is most constrained. Local councils have no incentive to do that, and Government's 'localist' planning policy gives little scope for forcing their hand. Labour's greater enthusiasm for 'a new Generation of Garden Cities and Garden suburbs', as detailed in the Lyons Review, is also tempered by insistence that their designation must be 'locally-led'. Even where local authorities are more supportive, planning processes take years; if there is a row, we are talking generations.
So perhaps all this jostling is a matter of gesture politics (town vs country, preservation vs 'hard-working families' etc). But it does risk distracting attention from more pressing issues. If we are not going to be a little more directive and ride a little more rough-shod over local opposition, we are not going to build new towns. And if we are not going to build new towns, or at least not in the foreseeable future, we need to stop the make-believe, and focus more sharply on how to build more houses in our existing towns and cities.
For example, just to the north of Brighton, a proposal for a new 'market town' of around 10,000 dwellings has been mooted. I can see the constraints on land in the South East and the need for bold moves, but I also have some affection for the area proposed, sandwiched between areas of outstanding natural beauty and a national park, and including one of my favourite pubs. And we need to add the potential impact of a new town on existing communities, to these more sentimental considerations.
In any case, the Mayfield Market Towns proposal appears to have stalled for the moment. The Planning Inspector has just paused his consideration of Horsham's local plan, arguing that they need to be more ambitious in finding housing sites, but also rejecting the Mayfield proposal. His arguments against it are twofold: firstly, he does not believe that such a scale of new development is needed at this stage (though he acknowledges that expansion at Gatwick Airport would force a more fundamental rethink), and he doesn't think a scaled down version would be viable. Secondly, as the Inspector puts it (in a late entry for Understatement of the Year), "the deliverability of the preferred 10,000 dwelling option...within two local authority areas without their support, and in the face of strong opposition from two local MPs, parish councils and local people, including land owners, is also an issue of concern."
This is why I can't see how any new town will become a reality. Proposing a new 10,000 home development requires top-down planning. It is not just a matter of responding to known and projected local demand for new homes (which will rarely if ever demand that scale of development on its own), but of considering and redefining what role a particular site might play in the economic future of its region, of the whole country. This is a matter of creating and redirecting demand, not just responding to it.
And that would probably require pushing a scheme forward in the teeth of local opposition, especially in the areas of South East England where land supply is most constrained. Local councils have no incentive to do that, and Government's 'localist' planning policy gives little scope for forcing their hand. Labour's greater enthusiasm for 'a new Generation of Garden Cities and Garden suburbs', as detailed in the Lyons Review, is also tempered by insistence that their designation must be 'locally-led'. Even where local authorities are more supportive, planning processes take years; if there is a row, we are talking generations.
So perhaps all this jostling is a matter of gesture politics (town vs country, preservation vs 'hard-working families' etc). But it does risk distracting attention from more pressing issues. If we are not going to be a little more directive and ride a little more rough-shod over local opposition, we are not going to build new towns. And if we are not going to build new towns, or at least not in the foreseeable future, we need to stop the make-believe, and focus more sharply on how to build more houses in our existing towns and cities.
Friday, 4 April 2014
Sometimes, it's hard to be a liberal
I am typing this post using Firefox, an 'open-source' web browser developed by Mozilla, a non-profit organisation that rose from the ashes of AOL/Netscape. Like millions of other Firefox users, I use Mozilla products because they are free, well-maintained (by the wisdom of crowds), and gently cock a snook at proprietory behemoths like Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
This morning (yesterday afternoon in California), Brendan Eich was driven to resign as chief executive of Mozilla, because of his opposition to same-sex marriage, and specifically his support of California's Proposition 8. Obviously, I disagree with his views, and think it's sad that people become so obsessed with preventing other people enjoying equal rights that they throw money at preventing it. But his views don't make Mr Eich a bad chief executive, nor do they make Firefox a bad product (either in terms of its intrinsic quality, or in terms of its wider social and ethical impact).
There's an interesting comparison to be drawn between Mr Eich and Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon. Mr Bezos' credentials are impeccably liberal. The $2.5 million he spent campaigning for gay marriage in Washington State dwarves the $1,000 donation made by Mr Eich. But Mr Bezos heads a business whose huge wharehouses provide minimum-wage employment under Orwellian surveillance, which drives out of business bookshops, record stores and any other retailer it focuses on, and which has been criticised on both sides of the Atlantic for the paltry levels of tax it pays.
Whatever their chief executives' views, I know who I'd rather do business with.
This morning (yesterday afternoon in California), Brendan Eich was driven to resign as chief executive of Mozilla, because of his opposition to same-sex marriage, and specifically his support of California's Proposition 8. Obviously, I disagree with his views, and think it's sad that people become so obsessed with preventing other people enjoying equal rights that they throw money at preventing it. But his views don't make Mr Eich a bad chief executive, nor do they make Firefox a bad product (either in terms of its intrinsic quality, or in terms of its wider social and ethical impact).
There's an interesting comparison to be drawn between Mr Eich and Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon. Mr Bezos' credentials are impeccably liberal. The $2.5 million he spent campaigning for gay marriage in Washington State dwarves the $1,000 donation made by Mr Eich. But Mr Bezos heads a business whose huge wharehouses provide minimum-wage employment under Orwellian surveillance, which drives out of business bookshops, record stores and any other retailer it focuses on, and which has been criticised on both sides of the Atlantic for the paltry levels of tax it pays.
Whatever their chief executives' views, I know who I'd rather do business with.
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