Back to the Future? - Conference Report
As you pull into Letchworth station you will see a sign welcoming
you to ‘the world’s first garden city’, some are unsure what that means exactly
but others know that the town is the international birthplace of modern town
planning. Letchworth Garden City was founded nearly one hundred and ten years
ago and attracted radicals such as Lenin, George Bernard Shaw, Orwell among its
early visitors and inhabitants. Then the term ‘garden cities’ suggested
something radical, utopian and progressive. Though in the century that followed
the ‘Daily Worker’ has been replaced by the ‘Daily Mail’ and the suffix ‘garden
city’ was dropped from the town’s name because of its radical connotations only
to be added back in 2003 to help - one suspects - with house prices. Despite
this there remains an echoed of the old radicalism in the town that cannot be
suppressed or forgotten by any number of blue rinses. Letchworth has in recent
years seen local battles to relight the fire of them garden city movement and
to move it away from a focus on planning and housing techniques to be a social,
governance and environment movement once again.
So it is quite fitting that now the idea of ‘garden cities’
are being reappraised for the 21st century that the conference to focus on
their social and economic as opposed to simple architectural plans would be
held in Letchworth. The conference ‘Back to the Future?’ held in November 2012 was
organised with a focus on co-operative cities, community land trusts and garden
cities.
The conference followed on from a previous co-operative
meeting led by the New Economics Foundation on Co-ops and Garden Cities which
had been held near Kings Cross, London in July 2011. It had concluded that the
co-ops and garden cities were still an idea worth pursuing.
Both co-ops and Garden cities were significant social and
economic movements from the 20th century. Both had their roots in mutualism.
Letchworth as a garden city was founded as a ‘mutual or co-operative’ town what
we would now terms as a community land trust. This conference would be bringing
together radical thinkers, social activists, co-op people and putting them
together with planners, architects and more conservative established bodies
such as the Town & Country Planning Association.
As a social activist - as opposed to being a professional
planner, architect or manager - iIt was my objective to see if we could build
some fresh narrative on garden cities and co-operative cities and see if people
agreed that the idea of community land ownership (as a CLT) was not just a
‘nice to have’ but the key building block for future communities. That is the
aim of our network - the New
Garden City Movement - to take practises and techniques and combine them
with values and principles and build a new garden city movement for the 21st
century.
The meeting at Spirella Building in Letchworth began with a
short presentation by John Lewis the new CEO of the Letchworth Garden City
Heritage Foundation. The Foundation is the successor to the original CLT
company that was originally set up to found Letchworth. John explained that Letchworth had been founded in
1903 by a company owned the town and residents were to become its shareholders.
Today that company still exists though in slightly different form; though it
has lost much of its housing stock (as people bought out their leases) much of
the commercial, industry and agricultural land remain in its hands. It
continues to reinvest profits into the community. It now has assets of £110m,
annual profits of £7m and annually spends £4.5m in the town – all for a
population of only 33,000. The strength of the story of Letchworth is the
town’s assets are still the large extent intact and local ownership has been
retained. The Letchworth example is interesting because of endurance and
because it is town-wide and also most other CLTs are focused on housing and for
the Letchworth that is the one asset is no longer has.
Robin Murray who is a visiting fellow at the London School
of Economics followed. He talked about how relevant is the concept of the
co-operative city is. He noted the success of the co-operative model siting one
example of Botswana where farmers had pooled their resources to gain land and
had then made co-operative farms. Such was the success that co-operative banks
followed and the model has rolled out into the rest of the economy. He made
reference to the Rochdale Co-operative Principles and the idea of ‘co-operative
accumulation’ and how in Botswana it was in practise. It seems to me to be the accumulation of both
social and economic capital. He noted also that in Italy it tended to be
written in the objectives of new co-ops that they had to be create new co-ops. (To me this seems to be a good objective for
any future garden city too).
Following on from Robin was Kate Henderson from the Town and
Country Planning Association (TCPA). Her presentation was refreshingly
progressive. She noted the serious shortfall in British house building - it is
at its lowest point for 65 years. Yet independent analysts suggest, she noted, that
we need to be building some 300,000 houses just to keep up. Ms Henderson
suggested what we didn’t want was ‘bolt-on estates’, what was need, she said
were ‘wonderful places’ for people to live, where the idea of community is
built in from the start. She told the conference that the TCPA had been working
hard to raise the profile of garden cities with the Government and all the
political parties. She told us that some success was achieved when garden
cities principles were referenced in the recent planning legislation, this she
noted the first time for some 40 years.
(What those principles are, she added, the act didn’t say. We would suggest our
11 social principles). She noted too the difference between garden cities of
the past which had often been private schemes to the new town schemes which had
been done by the Government. Lessons should be learnt historically from both.
Bob Paterson from Community Land & Finance spoke next on ‘what are the barriers to
Community Land Trust solutions in cities?’. He noted that though over 100 CLTs
had been established in recent years, the successful ones tended to be in rural
area. In urban areas they found that local authorities are reluctant to
transfer over any assets or trust any community organisations to run them. He
cited one example in Salford where instead of transferring the asset it was
sold to developers instead, who put expensive housing on it. As the value of
the land then rose none of this value benefited the community. He noted that in
some circumstances this was worse as previous generations of families may have
gifted land to the local authority for the public good only to see it sold off
and for others to gain from it. Bob talked about the need to ‘hold value for
the community’. He cited some good examples that had worked. He mentioned
Shoresfield a village in Oxfordshire where residents had from a CLT raised
capital and bought their land. Today like in Letchworth it turns a modest
profit for community benefit (some £40,000 a year). Other good examples given were of Coin Street in London and others in
Bristol. But in the answer to the question he noted the biggest obstacle seemed
to be the political (and presumably bureaucratic) will of local authorities to
engage and give up their assets.
After the
lunch, David Rodgers from ICA Housing noted that CLT and Housing Associations
are not the same thing. A Housing Association, he said often comes from the
public sector and is regulated as a public sector organization whereas CLTs are
held by people in the ‘private sector’.
A CLT he noted is not just about housing but is about ‘holding value locally in perpetuity’. David noted many examples of CLT and Garden
Cities. The most interesting example was of Brentham Garden Suburb. Though like
most other garden suburbs it is no longer socially owned, but while it had been
it had been the childhood home of British tennis ace Fred Perry. His father had
been politically active and he had found a home there. It was playfully
suggested that perhaps the ‘socially owned’ tennis court had helped him to win
Wimbledon?
As for
co-operative housing projects - internationally - he noted that there tended to
be three model - rental; limited equity
and ‘market value’. (Those often a mix of all three). A great social example he quoted was that of
Kappelleveld in Brussels. This housing garden city and co-op had 1,200 rental
properties rented out on an income related model, this had been working
successfully for 40+ years. He listed other international examples from Leeds to Turkey and said that in all the models
there were key underlining features - that they all tended to be novel,
innovative and contentious. (This was
true of Letchworth and from speaking with activists from CLTs in Burlington and
Montreal I know this to be true there too).
Speaking
for the Welsh government, Rhidian Jones spoke about ‘Mutual Home Ownership’ and the
Co-operative Housing Agenda for Wales. He explained that the Welsh housing
minister was a co-op member and that the Welsh Government has a clear
commitment to community land trusts and co-opertative principles. He said that
they felt the measures for success were schemes needed to provide democratic
community membership and the ability for all members to be involved in the
governance. (Something that is also echoed in the 11 principles of the new
garden city movement). He explained that
in Wales they are still in the process of defining CLTs in legislation. Everyone
in the room was encouraged by Rhidian’s speech and the obvious commitment to
CLT’s and co-operative ownership by the Welsh Government.
Pat Conalty from the new Economics Foundation spoke next.
Pat had been at the original meeting on co-operative and garden cities. He
talked about the ingredients needed for co-operative and mutual solutions
(practical land reform; low cost equitable capital and a co-operative and
mutual governance model) and noted how these have been achieved for housing
solutions and also for community land banks helping groups to grow local food.
He noted too on the history of CLT linking the movement back to Thomas
Spence in the 18th century and also to
Robert Owen and to the Chartists movement. He painted an interesting picture of
struggle. He noted that the 20th century saw a revival of the principles in USA
in the 1970s as the CLT movement. These he noted are expanding to include
Burlington, Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis, Albuquerque and Irvine, California.
In Irvine he noted a large town comparable with Letchworth was being built. He
touched on the link between agriculture, food production and CLTs. Burlington
he noted had introduced the Intervale food project with its ‘city garden’ which
now provided 7% of the food for the town and Cleveland had a similar project.
In Cleveland too he noted that the success that co-ops have had in providing
solar energy. Indeed, he made the general observation that huge amounts of US energy
was provided by energy co-ops which had been kick started by President
Roosevelt and was a great American example of successful Mutuals.
Members then broke off into discussion groups to pull
together what they had learnt. A key message coming out of all the groups was
that if land can be mutualised then the value can be captured for the
community. With land held in common up top of it could then be built other
co-operative structures and organisations. All this had a very garden city feel
to it reflecting those original principles of capturing value for the community
in perpetuity. It was felt by the conference that the mutual or garden city
should be on the cutting edge of ideas and that the co-operative movement has a
big role to help in helping the garden city and CLT to grow. It was suggested
that it should help underwrite a development bank for such purposes. Also the
goal should be to lock prosperity into a locality. If a future garden city
should generate a dividend this could even be paid out to citizens in the form
of a local currency so that it has to be spent and invested locally. If this
was linked in with ideas like crowd-funding or peer-to-peer funding, local
funds could receive investments in a local currency.
As groups reported back with ideas such as these and more to
the conference it became clear to all delegates that the potential for garden
cities and for progressive, radical and mutual solutions for the future remains
as strong now as it must have done a century ago. As delegates left, one thing
was clear that the conference must surely have marked the beginning not just of
new discussions but hopefully of a new powerful new movement for the future.
