City climate policy, writes about climate justice, housing and the built environment.
Articles by Martha Dillon
Mighty oaks from little acorns: what we can learn from a new ‘biophilic’ school
When pupils at St Mary’s Voluntary Catholic Academy, Derby, were asked to photograph where they would most like to have their lessons, they all took pictures of outdoor spaces: the amphitheatre, forested areas or gardening club shelter. Asked what made them feel calm in their classrooms, they photographed the windows.
Why is Labour failing to join the dots on housing delivery and the climate?
By posting online a New Year’s ‘to-do’ list (pictured) with only six tasks on it, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) was asking for trouble. It could have been written at any point in the past 100 years. Dealing with structural injustices, boosting housebuilding and tackling poor housing quality are longstanding concerns. But times have changed and MHCLG doesn’t seem to be keeping up.
Right to roam. Right to own?
Guy Shrubsole has long been concerned with who has ownership of Britain’s land. His 2019 book Who Owns England? was one of the first attempts to fully map the country’s owners since the Domesday Book, confirming that it is an appallingly tiny group of people. In The Lie of the Land, Shrubsole returns to lay Britain’s deteriorating ecological condition at their feet.
Concrete ceiling: decarbonising the planet’s most consumed human-made material
Recent advances in concrete decarbonisation are enticing but not enough to save the planet from catastrophe In May 2024, Microsoft revealed that its emissions have risen by a third since 2020, a far cry from the year‑on‑year reductions it had planned. Since the company has invested extensively in renewable energy, new emissions are only partly from energy use.
We need more than new homes: new census data confirms UK building stock is growing faster than population
Positive Money analysis of 2021 census data has found that the British building stock continues to grow faster than the population. January 18, 2023 Positive Money analysis of 2021 census data has found that the British building stock continues to grow faster than the population. But despite this increasing new supply, homes in the country remain expensive, neglected and precarious. Debates about house prices still circulate around house building – or lack thereof.
Cashing Out: English landlords selling up in 2023 are set to make thousands in capital gains
New analysis reveals the value of privately rented homes in England jumped an average of 432% between 1990-2022 – winning landlords more wealth than the GDP of South Africa. July 18, 2023 New analysis reveals the value of privately rented homes in England jumped an average of 432% between 1990-2022 – winning landlords more wealth than the GDP of South Africa. This is the outcome of decades of broken housing policies designed to turn homes into financial assets.
Volume 2 Issue 5
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Real estate AI, not software, is the real threat to architects Original
At first glance, US real estate firm Opendoor offers a pretty good deal. People looking to sell their home can upload their address, basic details and some photos to the website. It scours the information, cross-references market data and makes an offer. If the offer is accepted, the seller is sped through the transaction process, chain and broker-free. Once sold, Opendoor makes some renovations and resells the home at a profit: a speedy ‘flip’ that cuts through the normally slow real estate system.
Outrage: RAAC and ruin
The RAAC crisis is not a question of bad design, but an inevitable symptom of political efforts to abandon public buildings and land One of the squat, orange buildings of Roding Valley High School (RVHS) in Essex, UK, closed suddenly in August 2023, leaving the school short of 18 classrooms, all catering facilities and some offices. By October, school management had installed some temporary buildings, but still had not decided what to do with the original.
Rowan Moore’s new book, Property, is a brilliant rallying cry
In the 1950s, the private US company Levitt & Sons could complete one house every six minutes. Levittown, New Jersey, grew into a ‘sociable and lively’ 12,000-home suburb, famed for its community spirit and sense of ‘family cohesion’. It was born of ‘a rare act of American socialism’, according to Observer architecture critic Rowan Moore, author of Property: The Myth That Built the World.
Outrage: proptech
VC investment in ‘proptech’ accelerates, rather than tackles, the problems of an ailing property sector Venture capitalists (VCs) like to make grandiose claims about changing the world. Twitter account ‘VCBrags’, for example, chronicles investors boasting of discovering public transport, revolutionising biotech straight out of college and inventing the colour purple. It reveals a braggadocio‑plagued and hyper‑competitive culture – one whose latest target is property.
Unlocking Funding for Good, Green Homes
Retrofitting our homes is one of the most effective ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve our health, and reduce energy bills. But under the current expensive and hostile housing system, people simply can’t afford to do it. We look at the deeper changes needed to attitudes, lending and funding models that would help restore a more dignified housing system and green our homes at the same time.
The risks and rewards of AI in the housing system
August 18, 2023 From Google Street View mortgage assessors to VR planning applications and open source renters’ rights tools, AI is changing the way we manage homes and buildings. There’s a very real opportunity for some of these technologies to improve our lives – but it could also accelerate the financialisation of our homes. The government urgently needs to take control of this situation to avoid AI worsening the UK’s housing crisis. The architecture world is ablaze with AI.
Explainer: what’s going on with housing?
August 1, 2023 The housing system has been in chaos over the last 6 months, as escalating rents, interest rate hikes and softening house prices upend an already-fragile system. We break down the latest data to explain what’s going on – and why tackling the financialisation of our homes would provide a more permanent route to a safer, more dignified and affordable housing system. House prices are softening and sales low What: house prices are dipping.
Cashing Out: English landlords selling up in 2023 are set to make thousands in capital gains
18 July 2023 New analysis reveals the value of privately rented homes in England jumped an average of 432% between 1990-2022 – winning landlords more wealth than the GDP of South Africa. This is the outcome of decades of broken housing policies designed to turn homes into financial assets. This year, rising interest rates have pushed the long-stretched English housing market into further woe.
Revisit: Straw Bale House in London, UK by Sarah Wigglesworth Architects
The retrofit of Sarah Wigglesworth and Jeremy Till’s London home demonstrates a light-handed, evolving approach to building with biofibre Number 9/10 Stock Orchard Street, colloquially known as the ‘Straw Bale House’, is ‘unusually transparent about its design procedures’, according to Adrian Forty, writing in the 2011 compilation about the building, Around & About Stock Orchard Street.
How does the housing crisis affect different ethnic groups in London?
In a new briefing, Positive Money looks at how the housing crisis is experienced by different ethnic groups in England and Wales, and sets out the urgent need for serious long term plans from policymakers to halt the invasion of our homes by financial interests, grow the social housing stock, and protect people from poor quality, unaffordable and overcrowded homes.
Death to the skyscraper
Skyscraper construction, and the financial system that underpins it, is not stopping any time soon, despite its detrimental impact on the environment For nearly as long as they have existed, people have forecast the ‘death of the skyscraper’. Completed in 1931 during the Great Depression, the Empire State Building lay dormant for ten years – its early moniker was the ‘Empty State Building’.
The housing wealth trap
February 23, 2023 New data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) has estimated that the value of our homes continued to boom during the second year of the pandemic. But despite this increase, COVID-19 still saw people fall into fuel poverty, homelessness and poor quality homes. We take a look at who gains when the price of our homes increases, and how we could build a system that does a better job of bringing this value back to our pockets and communities.
Algorithmic Gardens
Last month, artist Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg opened the first planting of Pollinator Pathmaker, a new artwork for pollinators. It’s Freezing in LA! went to see this intriguing new work, and spoke to the artist about knowledge, anthropocentric art and avoiding NFTs. Words by Martha Dillon and Nina Carter, illustrations by Nina Carter. The green movement’s favoured planting strategies imply that we shouldn’t get too involved with ecology.
A Primer for Ecosocialism
'The things we need to do [to avoid climate crisis] are very often things we need to do to improve our quality of life, to reduce inequality anyway… the debate comes down around tools, the emphasis on priorities, scale, pace.' Martha Dillon speaks to Laurie Laybourn-Langton and Mathew Lawrence about new book Planet on Fire: a manifesto for the age of environmental breakdown. ‘There are so many brilliant books about the scale of the crisis’ says Common Wealth director Mathew Lawrence.
an interview with John Boughton
In recent months we have seen steps forward in green housing policy in the UK, with a plethora of net zero guidelines and tentative indicators that the government and industry heavyweights might be willing to tighten rules on carbon requirements for buildings. But while momentum might be growing for genuinely greener buildings, the complexities of the housing system continue to extend far beyond a carbon calculation.
Book Review: Climate Justice - hope, resilience and the fight for a sustainable future
Mary Robinson with Catríona Palmer Originally published: 4 September 2018 In the companion piece to Mary Robinson's excellent Mothers of Invention podcast, IFLA! editor Martha Dillon finds a rich collection of stories about people worst affected by climate change - but questions Robinson's conclusions on what to do next.
How gender equality can help fix the construction industry
The government-commissioned Farmer Review warned in 2016 that the UK construction industry was “facing challenges that have not been seen before”. In no uncertain terms, it called for major industry-wide change. The “overwhelming risks” foreseen in the review sadly seem to have come to pass. Major contractor Carillion’s collapse comes shortly after an autumn in which UK construction activity fell at its fastest pace in five years.
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