A housebuilding revolution has many advantages – growth being one
Go to tech conferences, and much of the buzz revolves around ‘Web 3.0,’ a catch-all term for the future of the internet that even when pushed most of its proponents struggle to define. Perhaps, then, we should be grateful that government continues to tootle along with plain-old 2.0.
It’s two years or so since Rishi Sunak coined the term Big Bang 2.0 in an interview with this very newspaper, but yesterday Michael Gove added a new London-based ambition: Docklands 2.0, to the east and south of Canary Wharf in Thamesmead, Charlton and Beckton. It’s certainly an area prime for redevelopment, even if the architecture of the place holds a soft spot in the heart of many a brutalism enthusiast.
Needless to say, as with anything in Britain that involves spades in the ground, opposition popped up almost immediately. Business groups warned the plan would eat into precious industrial land.
Others complained the scheme was not ambitious enough, avoiding the obvious fact that ambitious schemes in this country are effectively dead on arrival. Gove, in short, cannot win.
If anything, his ambition – neatly outlined in what was, in the abstract, a good speech – for a housebuilding revolution in this country only made it all the more tragic that Britain continues to slice into the life chances of whole generations by failing to put houses people want to live in, in places they want to live.
Our property-owning democracy of which we are so proud is a fraud; it is increasingly a pipe dream for even high-achieving youngsters to get on the property ladder close enough to the office not to make the commute a misery, unless you happen to have a conveniently wealthy relative soon to meet their maker.
A member of this paper’s senior staff was once asked in a TV interview how to fix Britain’s growth problem. “Open the doors and build some houses” came the answer. It might not be politically palatable, but then, neither should trend growth as flat as the river on a still day.