6 ms·

The inconveniencing of a property developer is fairly low priority compared to preserving our past, I'd say. You can't exactly make another one of these if it g

by rvense 5y ago

The inconveniencing of a property developer is fairly low priority compared to preserving our past, I'd say. You can't exactly make another one of these if it gets bulldozed.

mhb 5y ago
If preserving the past is so important, it shouldn't be hard to compensate the developer for the inconvenience of doing it.
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  They make a absolute fortune from that real estate and as others have said, if you have a plot of land in that location big enough to build on that has only ever had relatively shallow construction on it, you should 1) expect to find evidence of Roman occupation or evidence of plague burials and 2) expect to pay for the inconvenience. I have absolutely no problem with them being required to cope with this themselves. There's a lot of history there and with the density of development in that area, there is really only one chance, each time, to do something about it. For most developers this is priced in -- including when it's a state-sponsored project. All around the UK there are plots of land that developers have acquired at an attractive price through sketchy regional development corporations, then gone bust (only to reemerge without debt) and the sites left as great big holes in the ground. In the town where I live there is a site that has been like this for two decades; it's gone through several developers, more than a couple of which had rather beneficial terms. Major developers do not care when they walk out on a site if it is mildly inconvenient or not quite profitable enough; the least standard they should be held to is to pay for the costs of preserving our past when the site they have secured will ultimately make them a fortune as they lease off square footage to shady foreign investors!
  - mhb 5y ago
    It's a business - you don't know what their profit margin is. Presumably there are many who will advocate burdening developers with the cost of their own preservation aspirations while, at the same time, lamenting the lack of affordable housing due to the high cost of development.
    - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
      > It's a business - you don't know what their profit margin is. Except from their accounts, or their AGM, since many of them are PLCs. I'm struggling to think of a London-based property developer that has gone bust solely on the basis of their London portfolio. It would be quite unusual. The closest I can think of is Targetfollow, which went into (and emerged from) administration, but that happened because they were nationally overstretched; the impact was felt more the further you got from London. We might see this happen as a result of pandemic influences on property uses, but I doubt it. > Presumably there are many who will advocate burdening developers with the cost of their own preservation aspirations while, at the same time, lamenting the lack of affordable housing due to the high cost of development. You set this up like it's an either-or, but it's not. The high cost of development in London has basically nothing to do with the risk of finding a mosaic.
  - mhb 5y ago
    Major developers do not care when they walk out on a site if it is mildly inconvenient or not quite profitable enough Hmm. They make an absolute fortune but abandon sites that aren't profitable?
    - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
      Yes, they actually do. Especially with regional development corporation projects, because those setups privatise the profit but nationalise the risk. This happens again and again and again.
  - abecedarius 5y ago
    Pragmatically, if you don't want finds to get "overlooked", you shouldn't make them potentially very expensive to the finder. (I don't know the specifics of UK antiquities, but a general argument of "they should just suck it up and do the right thing" has this general flaw.)
    - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
      Not in a country that cares about its history. Which I concede you can make a strong argument the UK is doing its best to step away from. The building trade in the UK isn't that kind of corrupt anymore; it's gone meta.
    - AlotOfReading 5y ago
      I've done this work (CRM) in the past. Archaeologists are well aware of that flaw, but it's an inherent cost of preservation because the primary loss for the developer is time. There's an inherent trade-off between preservation and time that's already pushed very far towards the speed side. I suppose you could attempt to fix it by compensating the developer with government money, but it's not obvious to me how anyone would calculate that amount fairly and uncontroversially.
  - Chris2048 5y ago
    > expect to pay for the inconvenience Why isn't there a flat tax on all development (or the populace even) to cover this? like you said, it's "our past", why should only developers foot the bill?
    - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
      Errr, because only developers get to privatise the profits from building on the land? I'm always a bit surprised at people expressing incredulity that the state (which definitively controls the right to decide who gets to own land) hands out responsibilities with privileges. There are all sorts of burdens and responsibilities, financially and otherwise, that fall on land owners and developers. This is just one of them. It's unusual but it's not outrageous.
      - Chris2048 5y ago
        > because only developers.. so, why does that matter? What has that got to do with discovered artefacts? Developers would make a profit off the land if nothing was discovered there. Farmers also make profit off the land without any building required. > There are all sorts of.. I'm not sure where you are going with this, I wasn't questioning the role of the state or that it "hands out responsibilities with privileges" - so it's kind of weird that you'd argue in the abstract like this. I'm arguing that there's no privilege for developers - discovered items are national assets and cannot be owned in many places.
    - kwhitefoot 5y ago
      > why should only developers foot the bill? Perhaps because they are the ones who would make the profit from what is surely a national asset. It's not as if they create the land that they make a profit from.
      - Chris2048 5y ago
        Then just take/forbid profit that is derived from whatever is discovered; there is no guarantee that it will be greater than preservation cost which is the whole issue.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  It's a building legislation like any other. We don't compensate developers for having to follow building codes. It's a cost of doing business.
  - djbebs 5y ago
    You mean it's theft. You're depriving people of use of their property without compensation.
    - josefx 5y ago
      This is just one of thousands of things a land "owner" has to deal with. If you expect to buy a piece of land and own it like some South African dictator then you only have yourself to blame. In some countries you get to deal with fun things like the town threatening to tear down your grandparents house because it was no longer attached to a farm, long after everything else around it was converted to a residential area. No need for researchers to fuck you over.
cameronh90 5y ago
It's definitely worth preserving it, no question. But I think you can still appreciate how annoying it would be for the developer...

by rvense 5y ago

The inconveniencing of a property developer is fairly low priority compared to preserving our past, I'd say. You can't exactly make another one of these if it gets bulldozed.

mhb 5y ago

If preserving the past is so important, it shouldn't be hard to compensate the developer for the inconvenience of doing it.

unfocussed_mike 5y ago
They make a absolute fortune from that real estate and as others have said, if you have a plot of land in that location big enough to build on that has only ever had relatively shallow construction on it, you should 1) expect to find evidence of Roman occupation or evidence of plague burials and 2) expect to pay for the inconvenience. I have absolutely no problem with them being required to cope with this themselves. There's a lot of history there and with the density of development in that area, there is really only one chance, each time, to do something about it. For most developers this is priced in -- including when it's a state-sponsored project. All around the UK there are plots of land that developers have acquired at an attractive price through sketchy regional development corporations, then gone bust (only to reemerge without debt) and the sites left as great big holes in the ground. In the town where I live there is a site that has been like this for two decades; it's gone through several developers, more than a couple of which had rather beneficial terms. Major developers do not care when they walk out on a site if it is mildly inconvenient or not quite profitable enough; the least standard they should be held to is to pay for the costs of preserving our past when the site they have secured will ultimately make them a fortune as they lease off square footage to shady foreign investors!
- mhb 5y ago
  It's a business - you don't know what their profit margin is. Presumably there are many who will advocate burdening developers with the cost of their own preservation aspirations while, at the same time, lamenting the lack of affordable housing due to the high cost of development.
  - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
    > It's a business - you don't know what their profit margin is. Except from their accounts, or their AGM, since many of them are PLCs. I'm struggling to think of a London-based property developer that has gone bust solely on the basis of their London portfolio. It would be quite unusual. The closest I can think of is Targetfollow, which went into (and emerged from) administration, but that happened because they were nationally overstretched; the impact was felt more the further you got from London. We might see this happen as a result of pandemic influences on property uses, but I doubt it. > Presumably there are many who will advocate burdening developers with the cost of their own preservation aspirations while, at the same time, lamenting the lack of affordable housing due to the high cost of development. You set this up like it's an either-or, but it's not. The high cost of development in London has basically nothing to do with the risk of finding a mosaic.
- mhb 5y ago
  Major developers do not care when they walk out on a site if it is mildly inconvenient or not quite profitable enough Hmm. They make an absolute fortune but abandon sites that aren't profitable?
  - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
    Yes, they actually do. Especially with regional development corporation projects, because those setups privatise the profit but nationalise the risk. This happens again and again and again.
- abecedarius 5y ago
  Pragmatically, if you don't want finds to get "overlooked", you shouldn't make them potentially very expensive to the finder. (I don't know the specifics of UK antiquities, but a general argument of "they should just suck it up and do the right thing" has this general flaw.)
  - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
    Not in a country that cares about its history. Which I concede you can make a strong argument the UK is doing its best to step away from. The building trade in the UK isn't that kind of corrupt anymore; it's gone meta.
  - AlotOfReading 5y ago
    I've done this work (CRM) in the past. Archaeologists are well aware of that flaw, but it's an inherent cost of preservation because the primary loss for the developer is time. There's an inherent trade-off between preservation and time that's already pushed very far towards the speed side. I suppose you could attempt to fix it by compensating the developer with government money, but it's not obvious to me how anyone would calculate that amount fairly and uncontroversially.
- Chris2048 5y ago
  > expect to pay for the inconvenience Why isn't there a flat tax on all development (or the populace even) to cover this? like you said, it's "our past", why should only developers foot the bill?
  - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
    Errr, because only developers get to privatise the profits from building on the land? I'm always a bit surprised at people expressing incredulity that the state (which definitively controls the right to decide who gets to own land) hands out responsibilities with privileges. There are all sorts of burdens and responsibilities, financially and otherwise, that fall on land owners and developers. This is just one of them. It's unusual but it's not outrageous.
    - Chris2048 5y ago
      > because only developers.. so, why does that matter? What has that got to do with discovered artefacts? Developers would make a profit off the land if nothing was discovered there. Farmers also make profit off the land without any building required. > There are all sorts of.. I'm not sure where you are going with this, I wasn't questioning the role of the state or that it "hands out responsibilities with privileges" - so it's kind of weird that you'd argue in the abstract like this. I'm arguing that there's no privilege for developers - discovered items are national assets and cannot be owned in many places.
  - kwhitefoot 5y ago
    > why should only developers foot the bill? Perhaps because they are the ones who would make the profit from what is surely a national asset. It's not as if they create the land that they make a profit from.
    - Chris2048 5y ago
      Then just take/forbid profit that is derived from whatever is discovered; there is no guarantee that it will be greater than preservation cost which is the whole issue.
chrisseaton 5y ago
It's a building legislation like any other. We don't compensate developers for having to follow building codes. It's a cost of doing business.
- djbebs 5y ago
  You mean it's theft. You're depriving people of use of their property without compensation.
  - josefx 5y ago
    This is just one of thousands of things a land "owner" has to deal with. If you expect to buy a piece of land and own it like some South African dictator then you only have yourself to blame. In some countries you get to deal with fun things like the town threatening to tear down your grandparents house because it was no longer attached to a farm, long after everything else around it was converted to a residential area. No need for researchers to fuck you over.

cameronh90 5y ago

It's definitely worth preserving it, no question. But I think you can still appreciate how annoying it would be for the developer...