The Conservatives are right about making urban areas denser, but their proposed planning reform is an undemocratic mess
Yes, Britain’s housing market is in a mess. No, that does not mean 75 years of town planning should be torn up just to win the Tories a few more seats. Today’s speeches on housebuilding by the levelling up secretary, Michael Gove, and his boss, Rishi Sunak, are in part sensible, in part not.
They are right that there is no “need” for extensive new building over Britain’s countryside. Just because party-donor developers prefer lucrative rural sites, this does not constitute a necessity. A green urban policy is now concentrated – as Sunak and Gove accept – on densifying existing built-up areas and infrastructure, not least in Britain’s extensive suburban sprawl. Density is why the American urbanologist Edward Glaeser, in his 2011 book Triumph of the City, celebrated the unexpected green credentials of Manhattan.
