Was rather diverted by a feature in the Sunday Times at the weekend about "infill" houses. Well! This is a most welcome arrival in the Sunday supplement mainstream. Some rather uplifting images were shown and, better still, comes the news that Boris has a gleam in his eye to build 30,000 new homes in the capital on GLA land (go, Boris!) while the HCA are looking at a scheme to deliver a (more modest) 1,250 homes across the UK.
The RIBA, joining in, have launched a competition to unearth places as hitherto not worthy of development, working on the principle that it is those who live and work locally who are best placed to know. How wonderful! And there are websites that inform more: urbfill.com or the RIBA site at architecture.com.
This reminds me that for some time I have been meaning to blog about the Steel House in Hart Street, Edinburgh, which I saw for the first time last autumn (when out for a stroll with the lovely June Barnes) and which is clearly very famous in architectural circles having won several awards.
Levered into a sort of "in-between space" (where there was a garage or a shed at the end of the back garden of a Georgian House) I was captivated by it architecturally but - more to the point - was far more arrested by the sheer resourcefulness of the thing.
Edinburgh's New Town is an uplifting place and is built to generous scale and nobody in their right mind would suggest that this generosity should be compromised, so the Steel House shows the way: if it can be managed in Edinburgh then don't tell me that many (most) of our town centres could sustain (absorb) extra units of housing, if sensitively and appropriately handled.
Those around the regeneration debate (certainly, the regular readers of this blog!) will be painfully aware that the regeneration sector continues to grapple with the perennial problem of what to do with our failing high streets and our depleted town centres, many of which have a trajectory of failing even in boom times.
For some time I have been asserting that there is potential for small-scale regeneration initiatives through consolidating high streets potentially, converting old Victorian or Edwardian stock back to its original use as residential (although a plea from the great Dr Peter Damesick, head of research at CBRE: planners, please allow the actual shop frontages to be replaced.
It's a sad sight, a home that was obviously once a shop with its need for yards of net curtains in the massive windows). Sensitive conversion of old retail stock back to residential would provide much-needed homes, of course, and this measure - coupled with a programme of infill developments could re-densify (I think I've just made that word up but I'm sticking to my guns) our town centres.
In areas that can demonstrate market failure coupled with buoyant housing demand, grants should be given either to landowners of shops suitable for conversion to residential, or to homeowners who could facilitate the divvy-up of a bit of interstitial toot at the end of their garden (or down the side of their house or whatever).
The Edinburgh Steel House only worked because of high land values; if this is to become a more widespread technique the government will need to intervene. But hey what a prize!
These ideas, if executed properly would need no new roads or refuse collections or schools. It is accreting development, the impact of which could be absorbed by existing infrastructure, not huge new urban settlements (which can't). You recycle land and make use of existing town-centre amenities.
This is regeneration by stealth. Not by massive injections of money, but by recognising and responding in a meaningful way to the local context. It's localism writ large in more-for-less Britain. Does it for me!
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