OK, the previous pic was a bit extreme, but maybe like this..?

So why not something live-able like this..?

Sir Terry Farrell (Architect-Planner-Landscaper) BBC Hardtalk 12/08

“London’s sprawling suburbs ‘must be densified’ in order to make big energy savings.”

“Starchitect” Lord Norman Foster

“The biggest challenge today is to provide for increasing density, at the same time as improving the quality of urban life.    This proposition is not as contradictory as it might first appear, as the most affluent areas of London are several times denser than the most deprived parts.”   

“There is a direct relationship between density and consumption of energy.   The compact city, whether low or high rise, consumes significantly less energy than the sprawling metropolis.”  

Norman Foster (Sunday Times 23/01/05)

Although it is very gratifying to know that Britain’s most famous Starchitect agrees with me on the detrimental effects of sprawl, what precisely did he have in mind when he said…

“The biggest challenge today is to provide for increasing density, at the same time as improving the quality of urban life”?  

Does he propose converting (sub-dividing) more single family homes into flats?

What could the government do to accelerate a process which has been going on for decades already?  Sub-division transforms formerly pleasant and peaceful suburban streets into ugly LINEAR CAR PARKS and untidy streetscapes of concreted-over front gardens, scruffy cars parked head-to-tail, a proliferation of over-flowing WHEELIE-BINS, builders rubbish skips, and other kerbside junk.  At night or at weekends when most people are at home, cars are parked inconsiderately and haphazardly on both sides, and even on the verges.  Such streets become slalom-like obstacle courses, difficult to navigate when met with oncoming vehicles.  Since the most appropriate sub-dividable properties – the big Victorian and Edwardian townhouses – have long since been converted into flats, the potential additional density increases are quite modest.  Unless we are proposing more grotty HMO’s (houses in multiple occupation) or “Beds in Sheds”, which is what “densification” amounts to in “ethnic” areas of London.   Sub-dividing old houses is an uninspiring idea that does not “improve the quality of urban life”, but creates the slums of the future.    

Or would he suggest the wholesale demolition of vast swathes of "inter-war" low-density housing and replace them with medium/high-density developments?

In theory this approach could easily triple the density of many suburbs, but it is politically and economically impossible due to the reality that most of London’s housing is owned piecemeal by individuals, every one of whom expects to profit when they sell.   In Britain property-ownership is the one big investment that everyone is urged to climb onto because, as the old saying goes, “you can’t lose by investing in bricks and mortar”.   The only thing which might thankfully end the British obsession with the “property-ladder” is a long price slide lasting a decade or more, as has happened in Japan.  But Japan (sensibly) doesn’t welcome non-Japanese immigration and thus it has a declining population whereas Britain has massive immigrant-fuelled population growth.   So it would be politically and financially impossible to compulsorily purchase sufficient private property enabling densification of even a small area of London’s vast sprawl.  Furthermore, large scale re-development would be a slow process (like sub-division) and would take many decades to achieve any significant densification. And how would it “improve the quality of urban life”?   If large-scale urban clearances are to be the “densification” solution, it would be unimaginatively short-sighted to build conventional blocks of boring flats, especially given the huge cost of compulsory purchase and demolition.   But – although it would take a political miracle to happen – surely it would be so much better to build beautiful sustainable OA-Cities on those cleared sites?   

“Densification” is a good soundbite, but the truth is that neither Foster or anyone else knows how to “densify London” to any significant degree

 

Britain cannot afford to buy out city property owners at inflated market prices.

 

The FUNDAMENTAL FLAW with OβeCities is that PRIVATELY-OWNED PROPERTY has created a VAST LOW-DENSITY SUBURBAN SPRAWL

Except in a few locations or in piecemeal ways, any significant DENSIFICATION OF LONDON (or any OβeCity) could only be achieved by CCP-style totalitarian methods involving the compulsory purchase and/or confiscation of all privately-owned land and buildings at well below “market value”.

1980’s medium-density flats in Brighton – pretty they are not..!