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> but politically suicidal for any government that tried to implement it Labour just got into government and literally the third bullet point in their manifest

> but politically suicidal for any government that tried to implement it Labour just got into government and literally the third bullet point in their manifesto is: * Reform our planning rules to build the railways, roads, labs and 1.5 million homes we need and develop a new 10-year infrastructure strategy. So i would hope it's not political suicide to follow through on that

tormeh 2y ago
We'll see. Taking away local control over land development is going to be controversial. A lot of rich and politically connected people are not going to like this. The last three decades in the west has been an endless series of victories for landowners. It's hard to imagine that this time really is different.
- immibis 2y ago
  New Zealand took away local control over land development, and then promptly elected a right-wing central government that hates land development. :/
speedbird 2y ago
1.5M new homes won’t even keep up with immigration. Not to mention schools and hospitals.
- bombcar 2y ago
  It'd be better than not having them. Major problems are rarely solved with one fell swoop, but instead thousands and thousands of small improvements.
  - GasVeteran 2y ago
    It would be better if we just change the immigration policy. Last time I checked there was 400,000 leaving the country each year and somewhere between a million and 1.4 million entering. I live in the countryside (I live in a small flat btw so I don't care about property prices) and I don't want everywhere in the country built over, which seems to be something here everyone wants for some bonkers reason. If you want to live in a concrete jungle that is fine, I and many others don't. I moved out of Manchester because I hated it there.
    - TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
      It's actually around 750,000, mostly third world, and around half of those are students. Importing cheap foreign labour from the third world was always one of the goals of Brexit. This game gets played over and over - import cheap labour to keep wages down, lament about how the country is being invaded, and then blame immigrants for lack of investment, corporate profiteering, and other structural policy problems.
      - GasVeteran 2y ago
        Whether it is part of the "goals of brexit" or not, is kinda irrelevant. The point is that we cannot build more homes easily, even if we could that has issues with other infrastructure and utilities. The easiest way is to at least maybe try to decrease demand and reducing immigration would be an obvious way to help with that.
        ben_w 2y ago
        Given whose muscle actually builds the houses (before I left the UK, the meme was all the builders were Polish), and what happened to the exchange rate (initially; it's harder to separate the increasing number of influences the more time passes), the UK could have build a lot more homes more easily in the EU than it can now it's out of the EU.
        GasVeteran 2y ago
        Again, the utilities cannot be scaled as easily. There are problems with building houses right now because there just isn't enough supply in some areas of the nation grid. That isn't something being in the EU would magically fix.
        ben_w 2y ago
        It's not magic, it's qualified workers already familiar with the necessary standards because the standards were (somewhat) unified by the EU specifically so that labour had an easier time moving. That does also make utilities easier, but it's not magic… well, you could say it is but only in the sense of Penn and Teller: lots of effort that most people don't ever think of that already happened before the audience started watching.
bombcar 2y ago
The problem always ends up being that it's extremely local (read: NIMBY). Everyone wants more Z, Y, X. Nobody wants to change where they are to support it. This is why even areas that redevelop in places that are friendly to it, take decades. The "old" solution was to just build a whole new factory town elsewhere, but that doesn't work as well, and especially doesn't work when you're not building megafactories that employ entire cities.
- epanchin 2y ago
  Fast internet, communal office space, and a fast cheap train to London is just as good as a factory. Build new towns. Get a grip of bat and heritage protections which slow everything down by months or years.
  - nprateem 2y ago
    LOL. HS2
winter_blue 2y ago
> Reform our planning rules to build the railways, roads, labs and 1.5 million homes we need and develop a new 10-year infrastructure strategy. They could do this is one fell swoop with a single bill by the Parliament that dissolves these local councils, and land owners the right (and freedom) to build whatever they want on land they own. Building safety codes would still apply; but zoning permitting could be erased in one fell swoop with a single bill.
- pikrzyszto 2y ago
  zoning is still necessary, you don't want a pig farm (or anything equally stinky) next to people's houses.
  - mikhailfranco 2y ago
    No, individual assessment can fix that. Just change default NO to default YES, BUT..
  - winter_blue 2y ago
    I wouldn’t mind an indoor farm, if they come up with some system to control the smell. I don’t think there should be any restriction on what people can build. You could have a rule on bad smell, that applies to equally to everyone, so a farm would be legal, if they can control the smell. Egg-laying chicken farm in between two multi-family units would be perfectly legal. I see this as a good thing.
    - ChoGGi 2y ago
      >Egg-laying chicken farm in between two multi-family units would be perfectly legal. I see this as a good thing. Noise pollution? Chickens don't have much of a reputation for being quiet. Also various farming can have quite different hours compared to residential living.
- m_fayer 2y ago
  A younger me would see this as too radical. After seeing some of this up close, now I tend to support this course of action. It would be a shame, but I think we’ve all collectively proven ourselves to be shortsighted and cheap with the great privileges we’ve been afforded.
FuckButtons 2y ago
Sure, let’s check in on this in 4 years time and see if they’ve made any significant progress on that. Many, if not most of our problems have obvious solutions, it’s actually executing on them that’s the problem.

tormeh 2y ago

We'll see. Taking away local control over land development is going to be controversial. A lot of rich and politically connected people are not going to like this. The last three decades in the west has been an endless series of victories for landowners. It's hard to imagine that this time really is different.

immibis 2y ago
New Zealand took away local control over land development, and then promptly elected a right-wing central government that hates land development. :/

speedbird 2y ago

1.5M new homes won’t even keep up with immigration. Not to mention schools and hospitals.

bombcar 2y ago
It'd be better than not having them. Major problems are rarely solved with one fell swoop, but instead thousands and thousands of small improvements.
- GasVeteran 2y ago
  It would be better if we just change the immigration policy. Last time I checked there was 400,000 leaving the country each year and somewhere between a million and 1.4 million entering. I live in the countryside (I live in a small flat btw so I don't care about property prices) and I don't want everywhere in the country built over, which seems to be something here everyone wants for some bonkers reason. If you want to live in a concrete jungle that is fine, I and many others don't. I moved out of Manchester because I hated it there.
  - TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
    It's actually around 750,000, mostly third world, and around half of those are students. Importing cheap foreign labour from the third world was always one of the goals of Brexit. This game gets played over and over - import cheap labour to keep wages down, lament about how the country is being invaded, and then blame immigrants for lack of investment, corporate profiteering, and other structural policy problems.
    - GasVeteran 2y ago
      Whether it is part of the "goals of brexit" or not, is kinda irrelevant. The point is that we cannot build more homes easily, even if we could that has issues with other infrastructure and utilities. The easiest way is to at least maybe try to decrease demand and reducing immigration would be an obvious way to help with that.
      - ben_w 2y ago
        Given whose muscle actually builds the houses (before I left the UK, the meme was all the builders were Polish), and what happened to the exchange rate (initially; it's harder to separate the increasing number of influences the more time passes), the UK could have build a lot more homes more easily in the EU than it can now it's out of the EU.
        GasVeteran 2y ago
        Again, the utilities cannot be scaled as easily. There are problems with building houses right now because there just isn't enough supply in some areas of the nation grid. That isn't something being in the EU would magically fix.
        ben_w 2y ago
        It's not magic, it's qualified workers already familiar with the necessary standards because the standards were (somewhat) unified by the EU specifically so that labour had an easier time moving. That does also make utilities easier, but it's not magic… well, you could say it is but only in the sense of Penn and Teller: lots of effort that most people don't ever think of that already happened before the audience started watching.

bombcar 2y ago

The problem always ends up being that it's extremely local (read: NIMBY). Everyone wants more Z, Y, X. Nobody wants to change where they are to support it. This is why even areas that redevelop in places that are friendly to it, take decades. The "old" solution was to just build a whole new factory town elsewhere, but that doesn't work as well, and especially doesn't work when you're not building megafactories that employ entire cities.

epanchin 2y ago
Fast internet, communal office space, and a fast cheap train to London is just as good as a factory. Build new towns. Get a grip of bat and heritage protections which slow everything down by months or years.
- nprateem 2y ago
  LOL. HS2

winter_blue 2y ago

> Reform our planning rules to build the railways, roads, labs and 1.5 million homes we need and develop a new 10-year infrastructure strategy. They could do this is one fell swoop with a single bill by the Parliament that dissolves these local councils, and land owners the right (and freedom) to build whatever they want on land they own. Building safety codes would still apply; but zoning permitting could be erased in one fell swoop with a single bill.

pikrzyszto 2y ago
zoning is still necessary, you don't want a pig farm (or anything equally stinky) next to people's houses.
- mikhailfranco 2y ago
  No, individual assessment can fix that. Just change default NO to default YES, BUT..
- winter_blue 2y ago
  I wouldn’t mind an indoor farm, if they come up with some system to control the smell. I don’t think there should be any restriction on what people can build. You could have a rule on bad smell, that applies to equally to everyone, so a farm would be legal, if they can control the smell. Egg-laying chicken farm in between two multi-family units would be perfectly legal. I see this as a good thing.
  - ChoGGi 2y ago
    >Egg-laying chicken farm in between two multi-family units would be perfectly legal. I see this as a good thing. Noise pollution? Chickens don't have much of a reputation for being quiet. Also various farming can have quite different hours compared to residential living.
m_fayer 2y ago
A younger me would see this as too radical. After seeing some of this up close, now I tend to support this course of action. It would be a shame, but I think we’ve all collectively proven ourselves to be shortsighted and cheap with the great privileges we’ve been afforded.

FuckButtons 2y ago

Sure, let’s check in on this in 4 years time and see if they’ve made any significant progress on that. Many, if not most of our problems have obvious solutions, it’s actually executing on them that’s the problem.