A tale of four manifestos, three issues, and Britain’s cities

The manifestos from four of the main political parties ahead of the British general election are out and – no surprise – they are pretty silent on cities and urban affairs. Given the media focus on the NHS and social care, the cost of living crisis and immigration, issues relating to Britain’s towns and cities and urban development generally take a back seat in the election manifestos.

A crude calculation shows Labour’s 136-page manifesto mentions cities four times and urban twice. The Tories weigh in at 80 pages with five and six, respectively. The Lib Dems mention cities four times but does not use the word “urban” in their 117-page offer. But the winner in both absolute and relative terms (its manifesto is just 28 pages) is the Green Party tagging cities four times and urban five.

But of course, there are many areas of policy that will affect how towns and cities develop. While housing and planning is an obvious one, proposals for reforming public and private transport and strategic visions for how the UK economy will grow are highly relevant.

Home straight

Labour has managed to grab some headlines with its pledge to build 1.5 million new homes over the next Parliament, a rate of between 300,000 and 375,000 a year dependent on its length. To achieve this high ambition — there was a 9 per cent fall last year to 231,100 — the party will restore mandatory housing targets, ensure councils have up-to-date Local Plans and take a “strategic approach” to designating greenbelt land for housing.

The Conservatives have trumped this with a pledge to build 1.6 million homes (or 320,000-400,000 a year) through eight initiatives including abolishing EU nutrient neutrality rules which aim to prevent nutrient pollution from new housebuilding projects, raising density levels and requiring councils to set aside land for smaller builders. They also pledge to invest £4.7 billion — from the shelved HS2 project — for smaller cities, towns and rural areas in the North and Midlands to spend on their transport priorities. The Liberal Democrats have pledged to build a higher number of new homes, 380,000 per year, and said that 150,000 of these should be made available for social rent (1.9 million and 750,000 over a five-year parliament, respectively).

All well and good but the issue is how to get there in the face of likely opposition from people not wanting housing in their backyard. Leaving aside the Green and Lib Dems, the two main parties talk about reforming the planning system — for Labour it is “updating the national planning policies” and for the Tories it is “speeding up” and “streamlining” — but there is little sign of the more strategic overhaul that is urgently needed.

Labour does talk about creating new versions of the post-war towns, which if they are sited in rural or post-industrial areas might involve the suspension of normal planning rules as happen to London’s Docklands 40 years ago. Labour is also talking about “fair” compensation for landowners rather than inflated prices based on the prospect of planning permission. A more ambitious programme would be to replace permissions with zones that the Centre for Cities says could address the backlog of 4.3 million homes needed to meet current and future demands.

Transport of delight…or delay

The rows over Ulez in London and rising fuels costs have made cars a political hot potato. Although they only get a couple of paragraphs in each manifesto, Labour and Conservatives are quite divergent. The Tories will block any road pricing schemes and prevent councils from imposing them while enabling the removal of low traffic neighbourhoods and 20mph zones. Labour seems to have bent to the motorists’ rhetoric, saying that cars are the “most popular” form of transport (albeit not in cities) and focuses on filling in potholes and reducing motor insurance costs.

What will be needed after the election, especially if Labour win power with its net zero 2030 agenda, is how to find ways to reduce car use by making public transport more attractive and integrating it into people’s daily lives so they actively chose public transport.

In most towns and cities that means the bus, which Greater Manchester has recognised with its strategy to use devolved powers to bring its network back under council control as the Bee Network. There should be a post-election review of the franchising system to give mayors greater ability to set the rules of the game for the private operators, as London has done for decades. Allied to that should be a proper examination of road pricing that make the cost of driving more immediate and obvious and enable drivers to see the benefits of adopting public transport as part of a wider modal shift.

It's the economy, stupid

Economic management is primarily a national issue, of course, but policies aimed at stimulating growth will have impacts on the centres of population. All parties now talk about industrial strategy, which is clearly a global theme as evidenced by Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction and CHIPS Acts.

Labour has the strongest rhetoric and largest figures: a £7.3 billion National Wealth Fund to support its growth and clean energy missions and £2.5 billion to rebuild the steel industry. The Conservatives mention small modular reactors, a green industries accelerator, and investing in offshore wind in the “most disadvantaged” communities.

That may not impact cities or large towns directly (other than Port Talbot) as manufacturing tends to take places on its edges or in isolated locations (although the innovation and thinking behind it tends to happen in cities). In terms of fostering activity tackling the issues mentioned above such as transport integration and improved planning would help.

But at the Centre for Cities (again) has identified, a major weakness is the low level of productivity in non-metropolitan cities. Its recent report identified a “prosperity gap” that left the UK economy 8.8 per cent smaller than it would be if cities such as Birmingham and Manchester performed as well as equivalent places such as Lyon and Frankfurt. It called for a CHIPS Act-style funding and reform package. And given that four-fifths of the UK economy — and probably more for urban areas — is made up of services, that’s where future policy should focus.

Manifestos are like newspapers, here today and fish and chip wrapping or door wedges tomorrow. The hope is that once a new government is installed on 5 July, it will bin the rhetoric and make progress on some of those key issues of transport, housing and economic growth that are so important to cities and enable them to contribute to turning around the recent national underperformance.

Trading up: preparing old and new urban housing for higher temperatures

How can #London and other #cities ensure their aged #urban housing stock and new buildings will be ready for higher #temperatures? Innovations in Britain’s colonies at the end of empire provide lessons on delivering #sustainability amid climate change.

Homes in cities in northern countries such as the UK, France and Germany were often built over the last century or so to withstand generally cool and damp conditions. Many were built long before modern insulation was commonplace.

The brick or thick stone walls of houses and apartment buildings and the reinforced concrete and steel of tower blocks were designed to retain warmth during cold winters, not shed heat during scorching summers. Older wooden buildings with many windows  with low-quality, poor insulation also struggle in extreme heat. Top floor apartments or those with dark-coloured roofs can turn into literal ovens when temperatures soar. One answer is air conditioning but that can be very energy intensive.

And the outlook is getting more dire. The 2023 European heatwave caused the deadliest summer on record. Just under 63,000 people died in Europe from heat-related causes, according to a study in the scientific journal Nature Medicine — many of them isolated elderly people in urban areas.

Last year is not likely to be a one off. According to the UK’s Met Office the temperature of hot summer days, by the 2070s, show increases of 3.8 °C to 6.8 °C, under a so-called “high emissions scenario”, along with an increase in the frequency of hot spells. As the climate continues warming, fatal heatwaves could become a more regular occurrence.

This means that policymakers in cities, which are likely to have worse problems because of the urban heat island effect that keeps temperatures hotter, need to take decisive action now to retrofit existing housing and ensure new construction is designed for the new climate reality. There are some, relatively easy wins. Upgrading insulation and ventilation for temperature control, replacing old windows with double or triple-paned versions, adding wall and attic insulation, and installing shades or window tints can all make a big difference.

Not that that would be cheap and the bill would depend on how extensive the interventions were. Work by the Climate Change Commission and Arup looked at a number of packages. One scenario included installing blinds, roof insulation and low G-value window film — which blocks all solar energy — as well as active cooling for some modern flats in London to completely eliminate the overheating risk. They estimated the bill at around £250 billion, (including for the London flats) or five times the UK’s annual defence budget.

Given the low prospect of either major party including this in their 2024 general election manifesto, the next step is to look at what changes can be made to regulations for building new homes (remembering that a Labour government would build 1.5 million over the next five years).

Open facades and sun shades

An exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London that profiles two post-war British architects, Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry, shows that the past can offer useful lessons for the present (even if that history is itself severely tainted).

The focus is on the pair’s work to develop an architecture that would be suitable for the hot and humid conditions in parts of what was then the British Empire. They were among the British Modernist architects to take the view that new buildings made using concrete, glass and steel would create a better world.

Post-war Britain was not yet ready for that more severe style of building and the exhibition makes clear that Fry and Drew were able to find opportunities in West African countries then under colonial rule such as Nigeria, Gold Coast (now Ghana), Sierra Leone and Gambia

They used what was then the latest science around the environment and construction to create what is now known as Tropical Modernism aimed at providing passive cooling, maximising shade and allowing better ventilation.

Techniques included positioning buildings so that solid walls on the East and West blocked the strongest sun while the longer North and South aspects were more open. The exhibition shows how they used techniques such as brise soleils or semi-permeable screens that can divert direct sunlight while allowing a cool breeze to enter. Using long overhanging edges known as wide eaves can keep sunlight off the windows while using adjustable slats can take account of the movement of the sun to keep the heat out.

While modernism took off in the UK with the Southbank Centre and the Barbicani in London and many council offices and car parks around regional cities, Fry and Drew’s climate-resilience ideas did not form part of general building styles. For example, modern office buildings feature huge arrays of glass (with some unfortunate consequences).

As we move further towards a climate emergency perhaps the architectural ideas and practices of Tropical Modernism — shorn of their colonial-era origins — can inform domestic and business construction in an era of hotter and wetter weather.

With heat increasingly becoming a threat, cities ignoring the issue could eventually face even higher costs to react to each deadly heatwave. Taking action now to climate-proof older housing and better design new buildings will be cheaper and smarter in the long run.

How temporary pop-ups can reveal a path to sustainable cities

The rise of the #pop-up shop may be a temporary response to a malaise within town and #city centres thanks to falling footfall and shuttered stores. But the format can ironically give lessons on long-term #urban #sustainability.

The pop-up shop is often seen as a short-term sticking plaster to cover over the scars on the high street created by the collapse of big name retailers such as Wilko, Debenhams and Topshop. But despite their temporary nature, they have the potential to support the movement towards sustainable cities.

There is no doubt that the ubiquity of pop-up shops is a response to economic forces that have led to traditional shops and outlets being shuttered up. The growth of online shopping and home delivery, the Covid-19 lockdowns and the recent cost of living crisis have combined to undermine the business case for bricks and mortar retail. Footfall is down around 5 per cent year on year while almost a third of shopping is now done online.

The rise of the pop-up seems to be an instant response to that opportunity. It is obviously hard to get fixed figures for a moving phenomenon but five years ago, retail consultants Elastic Path estimated its value at £2.3 billion with almost 30% of British businesses beginning their entrepreneurial journey as a pop-up.

Sustainable start-ups

But despite their inherent nature as “here today, gone tomorrow” outfits, pop-ups can play a constructive role in the preservation and development of central urban spaces in four ways.

The first is the potential vacant sites can play as hosts of sustainability-oriented commercial initiatives based around concepts such as upcycled fixtures and products, environmentally friendly practices and carbon-saving technologies. A New York boutique retail outlet, Figure Eight, created an eco-friendly marketplace for luxury products that were sustainable from drawing board to recycling. London’s Regent Street Edit on Crown Estate land featured six sustainability-focused brands.

Second, pop-ups can provide short-notice solutions to meet sudden spikes in demand that cannot be met by traditional suppliers. Many Britons benefitted from vaccines at pop-up clinics held in parks, churches and high street spaces as hospitals took advantage of available spaces. In one reverse arrangement, a corner shop chain installed 20 pop-up stores in hospitals to serve doctors and nurses who could not travel to stores.

Third, pop-up spaces can enable start-up businesses to test their model in a way that would be more challenging if they had to take out a multi-year lease. Homeslice Pizza, which sells the Italian food whole or by the slice, took out a “residency” in a former petrol station in London’s King’s Cross that was being converted into a public space. A year later it opened its first restaurant in Neal’s Yard, Covent Garden. In June 2024, a former Wilko store in Walthamstow, east London, will host the Stow Bazaar made up of small retail units.

Finally, and away from retail, communities can use vacant spaces as temporary homes for displays and meetings to facilitate debate around pertinent local issues and projects in ways not easily available through the governmental channels. In 2000 I was involved with a pop-up hosting proposals to redevelop a piece of industrial land in northwest London: 25 years later that land has attracted a developer.

One study looked at two pop-up spaces: one aimed at getting community feedback on an Australian electricity supplier’s vegetation management programme; and another on active transport on campus at a university.

Identity and resilience

Whatever their purpose, activities that “pop up” in vacant urban spaces support sustainability in many ways. Many accounts point to the positive reaction from local people that “at least somebody believes in our town”. By filling in gaps and engaging with the community, they can help strengthen feelings of identity and resilience that are essential to future sustainability.

But at the end of the day, it could be said that these pop-ups only exist because of wider failures of economic management and urban planning that have led to the vacancies in the first place. Herein lies the most significant potential impacts of the pop-ups.

On the one hand, they highlight the need for the sort of city-wide planning, management and investment that can create a sustainable city that will no longer have space for these temporary innovations. But on the other, they show how any vision of a sustainable city must include the capacity for these unplanned and spontaneous novelties that show that the city is a truly living and lived-in space.