From the Dublin conference

Last week planning academics from across the world met at the joint congress organised by UCD in a very sunny Dublin  for the European and North American associations of planning schools: http://aesop-acspdublin2013.com/. Around a thousand people attended so difficult to summarise the discussions or even the main themes! There was plenty of continuing evidence that market-led development often failed to deliver for local communities and, further, that it was running into problems as a strategy in current economic climates. But there were also a couple of interesting papers that linked very directly to the arguments and proposals in The Future of Planning.
A fascinating paper by David Adams, of Glasgow University, discussed urban land reform in Scotland - where he is advising the Scottish Government - and proposed a Community Right to Sell. This would be a measure whereby a community could force a plot of vacant or derelict land in their area to go to auction and be sold. The idea is that the auction process would result in the land being sold for a beneficial use even if this was a price below that desired by the current landowner. David's view is that often this lower price would enable communities to buy the land; even if they were outbid, land would be brought into use rather than being blocked by landowners.
Another interesting analysis was put forward by Peter Phibbs of the University of Sydney. His paper outlined the ACT Land Rent Scheme under which households are able to rent land and then buy a building to put on it, purchasing the land at a later stage to unify the two elements. There is an annual land rent fixed at 2% of the land value for lower income households and 4% for others. This seems an innovative idea which Peter describes as a government CLT and as having some significant success. He also points though to the opposition that it faced at the outset, a reminder of the need to build wide coalitions of support to challenge the existing growth-dependent paradigm.
Two ideas to watch....

Energy efficiency and house prices

One of the issues I explore in the forthcoming book 'The Future of Planning' is whether it is possible to improve properties and areas without triggering gentrification and the associated increase in property values. The key idea is that the stock of low priced housing and the local environment of low priced neighbourhoods often needs upgrading to improve the quality of life of residents; but the tendency for the market place to capture these new benefits in higher property values, while benefiting property owners, can often be disadvantageous for tenants and existing SMEs, who may face competition from people and businesses with deeper pockets. So the question is what kind of improvements enhance local people's quality of life without leading to upward property price moves and the wholesale shift in local communities (business and residential) associated with gentrification? It did seem that energy efficiency improvements were one answer to this question. Investment in such efficiency measures reduces energy bills and combats fuel poverty and, so it seemed, did not lead to much in the way of price movements. Recent research conducted for DECC suggests this may be changing:
www.gov.uk/government/publications/an-investigation-of-the-effect-of-epc-ratings-on-house-prices.
On average there seems to be an impact of £16,000 additional value from raising the EPC rating by two 'levels'; this equates to an average increase of 14% but the impact is much higher in low priced areas. The study has been done by real experts in this kind of analysis (McAllister, Fuerst, Nands and Wyatt) but as ever there are caveats: the analysis could not control of the condition of the properties or home improvements between sales. But taking the general finding as sounds, this raises important questions. This is good news for home owners and should encourage retrofitting. What how will this impact on tenants? Is there a differential take-up on efficiency measures that means that lower income households, includng home owners, are not getting the benefit of this price shift? An analysis of the social distribution of these price impacts and the take-up of public subsidies for retrofit would be very timely.

Social Impact Bonds

In my last post, I suggested that resources would be needed to support community action and that thought needed to be given to innovative ways of doing this. Social Impact Bonds are an interesting idea here. They are a means of raising investment finance for a new initiative, which could be promoted by community groups. Investors get a return from the government as the initiative produces certain desired outcomes. The idea is that these outcomes in some way save the government money and so they can use the money save to pay for the return on the initial investment (which may be from the public or private sectors). The Social Outcomes Fund currently contains £20 million for this purpose. So how might this work in a way that delivers just sustainability on the ground? First a community initiative that  benefits a lower income or otherwise disadvantaged group of households and contributes to social and environmental sustainability needs to be identified. Then a clear argument needs to be made about the costs that will not be incurred in the future by public services because of these benefits. Hopefully the future financial savings will then be sufficient to provide the desired return on the initial investment in the initiative. Food gardens promoting better nutrition and physical activity, childcare facilities providing 'green play', training activities in environmental services, community-based flood prevention landscaping would all seem potentially to be possible areas for SIBs. Whether they would fall foul of current 'rules and regulations' remains to be seen. At present the commissioning process looks quite onerous and would require support. But in principle this could be a way of resourcing community action that contributes to sustainability and benefits key social groups because - at the same time - it avoids future government bills.