The announcement today by Lord Wolfson of plans to hold a competition
to build a new garden city in England is to be welcomed. There is general
political consensus around the need to build new towns and settlements to
address the housing and population growth. Cameron has expressed support for
the principle of Garden Cities, as has Nick Clegg and as did Ed Miliband in his
conference speech.
Garden Cities transcend party politics and the issue isn't which party builds the new garden city but that it gets build.
According to a recent report
published by the BSHF the population of England is growing in 2001 it was
49m and in 2011 it was 53m. This is accompanied by the growth in the number of
households from 20.5m to 22.1m an increase of 158,000 households per year. This
growth is projected to accelerate reaching 24.3m households by 2021 and
increase of 221,000 households per year. We need more homes to deal with a
chronic backlog of house building and this growth. The Future Homes Commission
has called for 300,000 extra homes to be built every year in a
"housing revolution" and this concurs with the BSHF and TCPA.
The need for new homes in not disputed the discussion
now moves to where and how. Indisputably the suggestion that new Garden Cities
can be built sounds softer on the ear than new towns or estates. But what is a
garden city?
The day before Ed Miliband’s speech a fringe
meeting debated ‘building real garden cities with community ownership’. In
attendance was Maurice Glasman a strong advocate for community land trusts,
Kate Henderson the CEO of the TCPA, Steve Wyler CEO of the Locality the body that
represents communities and bodies that control local assets, Pat Conaty of
Co-ops and the author of the ‘Resilience
Imperative’ and co-ordinator of last year’s conference
on building garden cities (the report from the
conference comes out on the 5th December this year), myself former Mayor of
Letchworth Garden City and author of the pamphlet ‘21st
Century Garden Cities of to-morrow’ and chaired by
Mrs Patricia Nevins from the New Garden City Movement.
The meeting heard how garden cities had been
originally established as social projects which aimed to bring planning and
architectural practise together (combining the best of town and country) but
also in a co-operative theme to capture the rising land value for the good of
the local community not the crown or absent landlords. The theme of collective
ownership is a strong part of the Garden City ideal, is supported by the TCPA
and is one of the 12 principles in our book.
The founder of the Garden City movement
Ebenezer Howard believed that as investment went into the town and its
infrastructure that the land values would subsequently increase. He called this
the ‘unearned increment’ and instead of this going to absent landlords,
speculative investors he was adamant that this should be captured for the local
community and their benefit in perpetuity.
This may all sound idealistic until you look
at Letchworth and see that the company he founded to control the town still
exists (though in one of many new forms over the last 110 years). Today it
controls of assets worth £127m and makes an annual charitable spend of £7.5m.
Not bad for a town of only 35,000 people.
Milton Keynes though not a Garden City still adopted
the principle of endowing the new town with assets. These assets worth £20m in
1991 (now worth £84m) and 5,000 acres are controlled by a trust. They generate revenue which pays for the upkeep of the parks
and green spaces (about 25% of the city) in perpetuity so it doesn’t have to
compete with the local council for funding.
Community ownership does work and the idea of
endowing assets is also a key feature of the BSHF report.
The key is that Garden cities are not to be
places of charity and paternalism but as places of citizenship and empowerment.
As Kate Henderson of the TCPA told the Today programme it is about ‘capturing
land value’. With community ownership in the form of a community land trust or
community land bank this can be done and they will foster participation in both
the planning, development and governance of the city. Such that people will
call themselves citizens of the garden city an appellation derived through a
sense of place or ownership. Lord Wolfson talked of the need to focus on
governance too. It is governance, ownership and other issues that our tried and
tested 12 principles focus on to define a real garden city.
As for the competition I hope that those in
the co-operative movement and elsewhere can forge together to put in a proposal
in for this competition or in general. In Scotland this is on the blocks with
the proposals for Owens
town.
A new garden city is about more than sleek
urban design, green space and environmental sustainable. These are parts of the
picture but it all. It needs to be also be socially and economically
sustainable providing long time affordable homes and capturing the prosperity
in perpetuity for the community.
I hope that all entrants will embrace the real
ethos of a garden city in their entries to deliver the special ingredients that
can turn houses, offices and factories into strong communities.
Philip Ross is the former Mayor of Letchworth Garden City
and founder of the New Garden City Movement.
and founder of the New Garden City Movement.
