please empty your brain below
Splendid, lateral and innovative thinking. But one must of course preserve the playing fields of Eton or where would our future leaders come from? Otherwise a splendid post.

J Rees Mogg | 09.11.21 - 7:07 a.m. | #

Now you've got rid of car parks you might as well build housing over the roads. If each road was one house wide, you could increase the available stock by 50%. Especially useful for people who don't like the people offer the road

Ian | 09.11.21 - 7:22 a.m. | #

There's plenty of sea - just build ships.

Still Anon | 09.11.21 - 7:30 a.m. | #

As long as you leave my allotment alone.

Running_Correspondent | 09.11.21 - 7:44 a.m. | #

David Essex was right: we should start all over again, underground. Lots of space below the surface. Dark, quiet, safe.

Andrew | 09.11.21 - 7:44 a.m. | #

and we might eat more babies

Tristan FORWARD | 09.11.21 - 7:46 a.m. | #

The London Borough of Croydon has already embraced your last point.

Pedantic of Purley | 09.11.21 - 7:46 a.m. | #

I like your suggestion about churches and places of worship. Amalgamate!
Car parks here generally have too low roofs to become apartments.

Andrew | Homepage | 09.11.21 - 7:56 a.m. | #

Hardly anybody goes to the moon. It's vacant for most of the time - a wasted resource.

Build houses on the moon. Simple !

Petras409 | 09.11.21 - 8:02 a.m. | #

So we are lured in with a perfectly rational first idea, and they gradually get more controversial, love it.

Colly | 09.11.21 - 8:17 a.m. | #

Either you are sleeping or awake. No need for a separate room for each phase. Abolish bedrooms, and every residence (except existing studio flats) can be half the size.

Malcolm of Kent | 09.11.21 - 8:48 a.m. | #

an exercise in how to offend absolutely everyone

Caroline | 09.11.21 - 8:52 a.m. | #

I'm sure the last part was in jest but I would like to see a council buy up a Metroland-style street and see how the density could be pushed up a bit. Not saying tower blocks but say 4-5 storeys, equivalent to Notting Hill townhouses for example.

CG | 09.11.21 - 8:58 a.m. | #

Railways: it's been seriously proposed by engineering consultants WSP, who claim that if 10% of available space over railways in London was used for 12 storey buildings, 280,000 homes could be created. See here.

Paul | 09.11.21 - 8:59 a.m. | #

Agree with most of these with the obvious exception of parks and schools. I'd like to see some suburban streets near to stations gradually increase in density and building height.

Alan | 09.11.21 - 9:24 a.m. | #

Of course the ultimate solution is that we spend all our physical lives in little coffin sized pods, fully hooked up to a virtual world. We won't need space to move, so the pods will be very space efficient. And because we'll live in a virtual world, space will be infinite. Plus our own bioelectric energy can be used to power the virtual reality system. Sorted.

Andrew Bowden | Homepage | 09.11.21 - 9:31 a.m. | #

As someone who is connected to efforts to keep a church building (and not even an old, listed church building) standing up, sometimes warm, and available for services and community use - I'd say your point about churches is close to what is already happening, and not really as satirical as the rest of the post!

mark addy | 09.11.21 - 9:33 a.m. | #

I appreciate there are elements of "tongue in cheek" in this excellent piece. But some has already happened.
A large new apartment block has been built over the DLR tracks adjacent to Royal Mint Street.
Near Mudchute DLR, a block of 8 flats with lots of parking (barely 20 years old) have been flattened and replaced by 32 flats (with only 4 parking spaces)

IslandDweller | 09.11.21 - 9:34 a.m. | #

I am hopeful that if we follow DG’s prescription, soon every corner of London could be as attractive as Nine Elms (though without floating swimming pools, and poor doors for all).

Philip | 09.11.21 - 9:36 a.m. | #

Why not go the whole hog ang return to Victorian times where rooms in the poorest areas were often sub-let with one or more persons occupying the beds on a shift pattern!

Cornish Cockney | 09.11.21 - 9:44 a.m. | #

Interesting piece, and on the day that the pioneering Japanese 'pod' apartment block is revealed to be set for demolition.

It's long been said that the mansion-flat is the most efficient yet human scale mode of housing and having lived in a couple i agree. Though (a) families with children do need some secure outside space (b) most people are too selfish to adapt their behaviour to communal living - they manage it better in Switzerland.

Building over rail tracks is already a thing; adaptation of offices to homes is too. Some places of worship are multi-denominational, but only up to a point. Open-air car parks can certainly be built-over. Some food for thought here.

David | 09.11.21 - 9:55 a.m. | #

One thing that does genuinely puzzle me is people who pay the extra for a house rather than a flat but clearly have no interest in or use for a garden, which is so overgrown it's clear no-one ever ventures into it even for a quick fag.

Andrew S | 09.11.21 - 10:37 a.m. | #

The only real solution is to build less people.

daveid76 | 09.11.21 - 10:40 a.m. | #

Hmm distinguishing between good things and bad things is difficult, but I’m sure we can manage somehow.

Theo | 09.11.21 - 10:44 a.m. | #

The problem of rail passengers having no view is easily solved by replacing the train windows with screens livestreaming the passing scenery.

Jonathan Wadman | 09.11.21 - 11:04 a.m. | #

In reply to Cornish Cockney it is still happening. When my wife was a practice nurse in Newham & we lived in the area so knew the size of the houses, she couldn't believe the number of patients registered to some addresses until she discovered that some rental properties had multiple beds to a room & they were shared with them being used during the day by night shift workers & at night by day shift workers.

Andy S | 09.11.21 - 11:28 a.m. | #

You'll have to be quick covering supermarket car parks with housing. In France they're starting to put up solar panels on top of parking spaces. Not only do they create electricity but they keep the cars cool underneath. Even Disneyland Paris is doing it.

ap | 09.11.21 - 1:27 p.m. | #

Ombrières photovoltaïques (solar panels mounted over car parks)? That could be a good idea, if there is no other use for the airspace. Here is a BRE document from 2016 which mentions examples in Exeter, Nottingham and Cambridge. Also Germany, and Kenya.

Andrew | 09.11.21 - 2:27 p.m. | #

All very Trantorian

Reg Thompson | 09.11.21 - 4:03 p.m. | #

A new Lidl near us has taken up some of your ideas. There's short term parking on the ground floor, a supermarket on the first, and several floors of flats above that. It looks ugly and out of place but...

Peter | 09.11.21 - 4:25 p.m. | #

I have always said that schools should be multipurpose community based facilities. Schools, Gyms, Community Centres & places of worship open every day of the week until 11pm. The current model of individual building mostly locked up is a terrible waste of land use.

Andrew Jarman | 09.11.21 - 4:54 p.m. | #

The trouble with making facilities multi use is that there would be competing demands on them that make it a challenge to share.

For example, near me the council is trying to redevelop several buildings on the edge of the park. There is a library, a Scout hut, police station, council offices, senior citizens centre and an NHS clinic. The plan was to try and bring everything together, add a gym and swimming pool, and replace lots of older, tattier facilities with new ones.

They have faced challenges. The Scouts withdrew first. The grand plan assumed they needed a big room a few times a week. But they currently have 3 Beaver groups, 3 cubs, two Scout groups and an older section. They have storage space and can and do use their hut during the day. What was on offer wouldn't have met their needs.

Then the Senior Citizens pulled out. Not sure why but they probably had similar thoughts. Especially as the space is used for community groups in the evening.

The grand plan began to unravel because trying to make spaces multi-purpose means that you have to make compromises and reduce the flexibility for the occupants. It would have been nicer if they'd been able to bring everyone together but it just isn't going to happen.

Andrew Bowden | Homepage | 09.11.21 - 5:05 p.m. | #

Andy S - Wow!

Cornish Cockney | 09.11.21 - 5:15 p.m. | #

This blog post is like the famous Martin Niemöller poem applied to housing development. "2000AD" Mega-city one, here we come.

MilesT | 10.11.21 - 1:28 a.m. | #

I am saddened that only one person made any comment pertaining to the only long-term sustainable answer - daveid76:

"The only real solution is to build less people."

We don't need redevelopment (hugely planet unfriendly in its own right): we need rethinking.

Blue Witch | Homepage | 10.11.21 - 6:34 a.m. | #

Blue Witch, indeed. The ‘Limits to Growth’ standard model, dating from I think 1972, shows global population peaking in 2030 and declining rapidly thereafter. I don’t think anything we have observed since 1972 requires a major revision of the model, on the contrary the model’s accuracy has been confirmed time and time again.
As I believe Woody Allen opined ‘I’m not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be around when it happens’.

RogerB | 10.11.21 - 11:49 a.m. | #

Collectively, we are already making fewer people. The UK fertility rate in 2019 was about 1.65. For the whole world it is 2.5, and falling in most places. For about half the world, it is below replacement.

Subject to a major pandemic, world war, or environmental or other catastrophe, the total population will continue to increase for a while from the current c.8 billion (not least because life expectancy has increased) but world population should top out in the next 50 to 100 years at around 10 to 11 billion and then gradually fall.

Much more important is that 11 billion people can't survive on this planet with a lifestyle like we currently enjoy in Europe, let alone the US.

Rethinking required, indeed.

Andrew | 10.11.21 - 12:40 p.m. | #

One problem in turning offices into homes, as heavily promoted by recent legislation, is that often the most lucrative schemes involve eviction of numerous one-person and small businesses, often housed in already re-purposed former light industrial buildings, rather than wholesale redevelopment of city office blocks. The main achievement seems to be to drive out a diverse mixed economy and replace it with expensive, not affordable, housing, making developers a fortune at the expense of the individual business-owners who formerly brought trade and often visitors and life into an area. If such schemes instead took over, say, Broadgate instead, and were compelled to include social housing, it might be possible to rebalance both local economies and quality of life in central London, but it’s never going to happen.

Labourer | 10.11.21 - 1:43 p.m. | #

Reducing car park space to build flats is also a thing. Morrisons Queensbury sold off a good chunk of its customer car park to a developer a few years ago. The lucky residents have a supermarket on their doorstep, literally.

Jag | 13.11.21 - 12:37 p.m. | #











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