Birmingham at the centre of future housing needs argument

A NEW report is warning that the Government’s garden city policy will leave the country with a shortfall of half a million homes.

It says that instead housebuilding should be centred on cities such as Birmingham.

The report from the body Future Spaces Foundation (FSF) – Vital Cities not Garden Cities: the answer to the nation’s housing shortage? – suggests that investment in new homes required for Birmingham up to 2035 will be worth £11.6bn to the local economy and support 10,000 permanent direct construction jobs in the area over the period.

The report concludes that the Government’s plan to build 250,000 new homes in garden cities would leave a shortfall of around half a million homes between now and 2020.

It suggests London and the Home Counties alone would need 67 garden cities in the next 25 years to address the housing shortage.

The Future Spaces Foundation applied an economic model to test what the value could be of applying a higher-density model to two case study towns facing housing shortages: Birmingham and Guildford.

In both cases, higher-density settlements were found to foster better transport infrastructure, industry clusters and greater economic activity, and the construction of more appropriate homes to match the housing need.

Birmingham-born Ken Shuttleworth, founder of Make Architects and chair of the Future Spaces Foundation said: “As a nation, we are in danger of sleepwalking into policies that will exacerbate the current crisis of housing availability, suitability and affordability, not to mention the irreversible environmental impact that will have dangerous and damaging consequences for generations to come.

“Our cities, and I include London in this, are, by global standards, sparsely populated, and as our report shows, still have ample possibilities for intensification. Before we even consider bulldozing greenfield sites we must explore every option possible to densify what we’ve already got.

“Far from being the dystopia that they are sometimes perceived as, dense, or vital cities, are efficient environmentally and economically and by incorporating smart design, can enable communities to thrive in a sustainable way.”