Interestingly, I'm not sure it is true anymore that British developments - on the whole - are being built without this provision as much as local plans are updated to match the national planning policy framework's sustainability criteria for new development, either as a preventative for new homes where the development is small, or allowing for it in the provision of S106 monies on larger sites. I say on the whole, because a few local authorities are too useless / corrupt to get around to submitting a local plan on time.
I'm not nearly as well informed as you are about the criteria for building new developments. What I've been told is that developers don't start building until they have pre-sold the houses "off-plan". So by the time they have the financing in place they need to break ground, they tend not to have lots to offer to commercial or community enterprises. Or that offering those lots for those enterprises with their specific not cookie-cutter requirements lowers the overall profit to be made in a development.
Sadly, planning policy is one of my specialist policy areas...! So, they sometimes do off-plan to fund the build for phased developments, but S106 monies (contributions to local infrastructure) and planning conditions that ensure the 'sustainability' of the development e.g. access to services by foot or using public transport are attached at the point where planning permission is granted. But yes, these requirements which developers can't get out of do seriously impact the viability of developments, which drives down the overall amount of new houses being built. A big problem at the moment is affordable housing or privately built social housing doesn't make profit on a medium scale (and local authorities are obsessed with only allowing permission for mixed developments) due to the rising costs of labour, materials and regulation. Thus, less developments that are the right size to trigger these conditions are not getting built, regardless of what the government are pledging.
What an impressive mix - social planning + recipe development, cookbooks and catering! I have a friend on the Lords' Commission on Planning who has said, in great frustration, that there seems no route around all the obstacles you identify. So no immediate likelihood of resolving the lack of housing until one side can see its community requirements fulfilled and the other the profits its investors expect. Stalemate, it seems. If Levittowns managed the housing/commercial/community mix after the war, why can't we now?
When I fully explain my career trajectory and what happens simultaneously to what they're always surprised -- because it is all so different! Honestly, I've always thought there should be provision to pair sites somehow within the planning system (or possibly some sort of voucher system which is how nutrient neutrality holding up development is being solved) so infrastructure and affordable homes can be created in different places to fulfil local need in tandem. So, another problem with mixed use sites is the people who buy the executive homes which actually make the developers money don't want to live near social housing. Rightly or wrongly, it would free up much of the system if a developer could get two sites in different parts of a town or at least a local authority area approved together; so the totality could provide the required amount of affordable and social housing, and community infrastructure could be placed where it is most needed and existing connections like public transport links exist, even if each individual site on it's own merits is neither acceptable under policy or profitable. Does that make sense?
It makes more than sense. It's sad that those who can afford 'executive homes' (a neat descriptive) want them in exclusive areas. In London where I grew up, streets - Georgian or contemporary - were mixed between private and state ownership until Thatcher sold off those houses owned by the council. Neighbours could look to immediate neighbours of different economic status for practical labour support from childcare to plumbing and rewiring, creating much less rigid communities. Where I help in a community kitchen, a space that's been established for decades, the absentee landlords, (absent in China and Russia) of a new pricey apartment block have managed to get our external take-out food service for people in need uncomfortable with coming inside to eat shut down despite the fact their block is a recent build so they would have been well aware of our activities.
Here in the middle of America with summer temperatures that are hotter than Baghdad, I rise in defense of the American-sized refrigerator. My decade of dream building my gut kitchen remodel two constants remained: finally a gas range and much more refrigeration.
In the end I gave up my gas-filled dream range and went induction and I have two cabinet depth energy efficient refrigerators. We eat lots of veggies and I like to store flours in a cooler environment. With Covid and its aftermath for us, it has made the difference in our being able to have local and local-ish meats and produce delivered to our door.
While I wish I were in a walkable environment, I am not. I do support local growers and makers with gratitude for their great efforts in a difficult climate. We each have to determine what we can do and do more of it. At the end of the day, with drinks in hand, we can chat about the value of making gas ranges obsolete vs making huge energy efficient refrigerators affordable for the 1%. Cheers! Warning: I didn’t install ice-makers. Had big doubts about the quality of water produced in them and great fears of leaks on my newly installed wood floors!!
It sounds like everything in your fridge gets used. But too much - that established one-third in developed world households - goes straight to landfills. That's the issue we need to tackle rather than pick on the size of fridges as I've just done. It's hard to know what the solution is, with so few as fortunate as me in accessing all my food needs on foot. In the UK, the government is encouraging new build developers to switch within six years to electric and induction cooktops. But 'encouragement' isn't enforceable.
I so wish we had more markets and food shops locally. We have two small supermarkets neither of which has a great range of fresh produce and a butcher. More cafes than any town deserves. The nearest market is once a week and a half hour drive to get there. I buy my meat and eggs direct from farmers as often as possible but storing the meat needs a large freezer. I grow as much as possible but high up a hill in North Wales that’s not as much as I’d like.
I know just how lucky I am to be in walking distance of everything I want to buy. But growing up, it was also the case that the small village could support a butcher and a baker as well as a grocer. Then the supermarket arrived in the local town and it was cheaper for people to drive some miles to load up. If we aren't going to lose our local farmers and producers, we have to accept that food is going to cost us more. But also deliver more nutrition than the stuff that arrives after a flight or ship passage from some poly-tunnel across the world, picked by people who probably can't afford to buy what they're reaping. It sounds that you're doing the best possible under your local constraints - which I know are far more common than my privileged options.
My fly fishing friend agrees whole heartedly about Georgia... I have tomatoes, eggplant and cucumbers this year along with the beginnings of my herb garden. Restarting a garden in the rocky soil of Maine is challenging but every time I feel a windge coming on I take a deep breathe of sea air or a cold plunge and I'm happy as a clam. I can walk and ride to restaurants in the seasonal restaurants in summer and now that I have an e bike I'm riding to breakfast after my seaside walk. Once I get a helmet I can contemplate riding further afield.
Your writing reminded me of my time as an 1890s farm educator... churning butter, explaining how ice houses work, putting food by canning and the laundry mangle.
The geography of food is so interesting and I appreciate the way you get there through traveling and writing and of course cooking❤️
Don't apologise! This landed with my fourth Negroni in Bologna and was just what I needed to reignite my revolutionary fervour in a city of anarchists! ✊🍉✊
Interestingly, I'm not sure it is true anymore that British developments - on the whole - are being built without this provision as much as local plans are updated to match the national planning policy framework's sustainability criteria for new development, either as a preventative for new homes where the development is small, or allowing for it in the provision of S106 monies on larger sites. I say on the whole, because a few local authorities are too useless / corrupt to get around to submitting a local plan on time.
I'm not nearly as well informed as you are about the criteria for building new developments. What I've been told is that developers don't start building until they have pre-sold the houses "off-plan". So by the time they have the financing in place they need to break ground, they tend not to have lots to offer to commercial or community enterprises. Or that offering those lots for those enterprises with their specific not cookie-cutter requirements lowers the overall profit to be made in a development.
Sadly, planning policy is one of my specialist policy areas...! So, they sometimes do off-plan to fund the build for phased developments, but S106 monies (contributions to local infrastructure) and planning conditions that ensure the 'sustainability' of the development e.g. access to services by foot or using public transport are attached at the point where planning permission is granted. But yes, these requirements which developers can't get out of do seriously impact the viability of developments, which drives down the overall amount of new houses being built. A big problem at the moment is affordable housing or privately built social housing doesn't make profit on a medium scale (and local authorities are obsessed with only allowing permission for mixed developments) due to the rising costs of labour, materials and regulation. Thus, less developments that are the right size to trigger these conditions are not getting built, regardless of what the government are pledging.
What an impressive mix - social planning + recipe development, cookbooks and catering! I have a friend on the Lords' Commission on Planning who has said, in great frustration, that there seems no route around all the obstacles you identify. So no immediate likelihood of resolving the lack of housing until one side can see its community requirements fulfilled and the other the profits its investors expect. Stalemate, it seems. If Levittowns managed the housing/commercial/community mix after the war, why can't we now?
When I fully explain my career trajectory and what happens simultaneously to what they're always surprised -- because it is all so different! Honestly, I've always thought there should be provision to pair sites somehow within the planning system (or possibly some sort of voucher system which is how nutrient neutrality holding up development is being solved) so infrastructure and affordable homes can be created in different places to fulfil local need in tandem. So, another problem with mixed use sites is the people who buy the executive homes which actually make the developers money don't want to live near social housing. Rightly or wrongly, it would free up much of the system if a developer could get two sites in different parts of a town or at least a local authority area approved together; so the totality could provide the required amount of affordable and social housing, and community infrastructure could be placed where it is most needed and existing connections like public transport links exist, even if each individual site on it's own merits is neither acceptable under policy or profitable. Does that make sense?
It makes more than sense. It's sad that those who can afford 'executive homes' (a neat descriptive) want them in exclusive areas. In London where I grew up, streets - Georgian or contemporary - were mixed between private and state ownership until Thatcher sold off those houses owned by the council. Neighbours could look to immediate neighbours of different economic status for practical labour support from childcare to plumbing and rewiring, creating much less rigid communities. Where I help in a community kitchen, a space that's been established for decades, the absentee landlords, (absent in China and Russia) of a new pricey apartment block have managed to get our external take-out food service for people in need uncomfortable with coming inside to eat shut down despite the fact their block is a recent build so they would have been well aware of our activities.
Here in the middle of America with summer temperatures that are hotter than Baghdad, I rise in defense of the American-sized refrigerator. My decade of dream building my gut kitchen remodel two constants remained: finally a gas range and much more refrigeration.
In the end I gave up my gas-filled dream range and went induction and I have two cabinet depth energy efficient refrigerators. We eat lots of veggies and I like to store flours in a cooler environment. With Covid and its aftermath for us, it has made the difference in our being able to have local and local-ish meats and produce delivered to our door.
While I wish I were in a walkable environment, I am not. I do support local growers and makers with gratitude for their great efforts in a difficult climate. We each have to determine what we can do and do more of it. At the end of the day, with drinks in hand, we can chat about the value of making gas ranges obsolete vs making huge energy efficient refrigerators affordable for the 1%. Cheers! Warning: I didn’t install ice-makers. Had big doubts about the quality of water produced in them and great fears of leaks on my newly installed wood floors!!
It sounds like everything in your fridge gets used. But too much - that established one-third in developed world households - goes straight to landfills. That's the issue we need to tackle rather than pick on the size of fridges as I've just done. It's hard to know what the solution is, with so few as fortunate as me in accessing all my food needs on foot. In the UK, the government is encouraging new build developers to switch within six years to electric and induction cooktops. But 'encouragement' isn't enforceable.
I so wish we had more markets and food shops locally. We have two small supermarkets neither of which has a great range of fresh produce and a butcher. More cafes than any town deserves. The nearest market is once a week and a half hour drive to get there. I buy my meat and eggs direct from farmers as often as possible but storing the meat needs a large freezer. I grow as much as possible but high up a hill in North Wales that’s not as much as I’d like.
I know just how lucky I am to be in walking distance of everything I want to buy. But growing up, it was also the case that the small village could support a butcher and a baker as well as a grocer. Then the supermarket arrived in the local town and it was cheaper for people to drive some miles to load up. If we aren't going to lose our local farmers and producers, we have to accept that food is going to cost us more. But also deliver more nutrition than the stuff that arrives after a flight or ship passage from some poly-tunnel across the world, picked by people who probably can't afford to buy what they're reaping. It sounds that you're doing the best possible under your local constraints - which I know are far more common than my privileged options.
storytelling festival looks so fun!!
Come! Georgian food is a revelation!
My fly fishing friend agrees whole heartedly about Georgia... I have tomatoes, eggplant and cucumbers this year along with the beginnings of my herb garden. Restarting a garden in the rocky soil of Maine is challenging but every time I feel a windge coming on I take a deep breathe of sea air or a cold plunge and I'm happy as a clam. I can walk and ride to restaurants in the seasonal restaurants in summer and now that I have an e bike I'm riding to breakfast after my seaside walk. Once I get a helmet I can contemplate riding further afield.
Your writing reminded me of my time as an 1890s farm educator... churning butter, explaining how ice houses work, putting food by canning and the laundry mangle.
The geography of food is so interesting and I appreciate the way you get there through traveling and writing and of course cooking❤️
What a wonderfullt lyrical description of your enviable life! A holiday for me to ready!
Don't apologise! This landed with my fourth Negroni in Bologna and was just what I needed to reignite my revolutionary fervour in a city of anarchists! ✊🍉✊