An increasingly important issue in London is housing. How can we fit the rapidly growing population into houses without building onto green spaces, and making new housing whilst also making it affordable? Often it seems that for local councils developers, the answer is simply that it is not possible to sustain all three factors (space, sustainability and affordability) and therefore tower blocks are built onto green spaces, or bypass central government environmental guidelines or, specifically in more central London, priced astronomically. 

 

In Scotland and Northern England, the typical buyer is expected to be in the 30th income percentile, and recent studies have shown that in London, all buyers of a house are above the 90th percentile. To put this into perspective, 70% of the people living in Northern England and Scotland, have the financial resources to buy a house, whether or not that involves taking out a mortgage, whereas only 10% of the people living in London can expect to be able to buy a house. 

 

This is just one example of a housing industry with huge pricing imbalances. Browsing property websites for just 5 minutes, I can find two 3 bedroom flats, one in London, put up for £80,167 pcm, and one in Central Liverpool that has been put on the market for £115 pcm. The disparity is clear in many areas in London, but, in terms of affordable housing, it is not just the prices that are a problem. Many flats and houses, especially in Central London, are just not lived in. Kensington & Chelsea alone has nearly 1,300 vacant addresses, worth a combined £1.7bn, [according to research by the crowdfunding firm Property Partner]. This is viable living space, and yet it is left untouched and uninhabited by its official owners.

 

Another worry that could directly affect housing in the near future is environmental guidelines and laws around new builds that are being bypassed and broken such as the Green Belt. More officially the Metropolitan Green Belt, this 405,700 hectare area encircles London and has been designated with severe restrictions in terms of new construction and environmental measures to preserve some greenery around the city. However, according to the Green Belt Council, there are currently plans to build over 223,000 new homes in the Green Belt, a 200% increase from 2016. This increase in the amount of newbuilds in a protected area demonstrates both the leniency of the government in terms of environmental safety guarantee, as well as disregard of property developers to the future of the Environment as a whole.

 

A perhaps more frightening example of this is a tower block, housing over 140 new flats that, despite 2,500 letters of complaint, as well as an initial rejection from the Ealing borough, has just been given planning permission to go ahead. This is a worrying prospect, if not for the building itself, for the fact that in spite of the huge pushback from the locals in the area, the project went ahead. 

 

So is there a way out of this vicious and oblivious building cycle? According to Curtis J. Moody, founder and chairman of the renowned Moody Nolan architecture firm, yes, there is. Moody thinks that there is a solution to this problem that we have created, and, contrary to popular belief, the solution does not lie in skyscrapers or blocks of flats, but instead relies on properly planned urban spaces, and designing our housing structures efficiently and coherently, that are compatible with the growing demand for houses, but are created with more sustainable materials, and inbuilt renewable energy sources.