A fresh outlook

Mass housing in England has gone through several phases, recognisable by their iconic architectural types from Victorian terraces, post-war prefabs and tower blocks to the eco-homes of today and the future.

In the 1960s, D V Donnison’s book, The Government of Housing, was overseen by lofty mandarins, aiming for half a million new dwellings a year with spacious Parker-Morris dimensions and conveniences.

Just 40 years later, even much smaller numbers of new homes now seem unattainable. This failure to keep up to speed is unsustainability
at its most basic and London mayor Boris Johnson is not alone in bewailing the shoe boxes the post-Thatcher market seems determined to deliver.

The concept of sustainability made its first appearance in the Brundtland report of 1987 (not about housing at first, but a frame for the discourse of successive world summits and all that entailed). Brundtland said sustainable development does not borrow from the future to support our lives today. But this is too narrow a definition for life today as it only accounts for the human world, not the whole natural world of which we are a part.

Our psychological and social constitution determines how we perceive our environment, our expectations and level of satisfaction. Tower blocks seem great in Hong Kong but here in the UK they are socially unsustainable, breakers of marriages and childhood and destined for the wrecking ball.

So how are we to be housed without the concrete frames and slabs which we now understand have made such a contribution to global warming, that litmus of sustainability?

There are still many questions to be answered. Should we build on greenbelt? Is there enough space on brownfield sites, or to carve new dwellings from the empty floors above shopping arcades?

Has the government or its opposition counted up the nation’s population, divided by household size, multiplied by the space requirement and cost per unit area? And have they gone on to really figure out who can pay for the homes we need and what green space their plans leave room for.

‘Retrofitting’ is the mantra of the moment. Insulation, draught-proofing, double glazing, boiler scrappage and energy efficient white goods all help to make our homes more comfortable and climate-friendly. But can we keep up delivery at the rate our society needs to survive? If we do, is even
that enough?

In addressing all of the above, we must give sufficient thought and action to the natural world, not only in our ‘garden’ - the birds, bees and trees - but also the hidden world from which our materials and resources are take.

Even then the challenges keep coming. When we quit the concrete, can we grow the wood? Unless we reduce, re-use, compost or recycle, incinerate or gasify our ‘waste’ we will soon run out of space for landfill. We cannot provide for our water use until we rebuild the sewers to capture the escalating run-off.

We have dilemmas and choices before us. Every citizen must take a knowledgeable interest and be prepared either to forgo or else to pay in full and now - not with a mortgage from posterity and the planet.

Brian Cuthbertson is head of environmental challenge for the Diocese of London