A critical look at the UK’s interest in the ‘smart growth’ evident in European exemplar developments

This paper applies a critical perspective to the current focus given by UK urban design interests to ‘exemplar’ practices for new urban planning and development on the continent. It looks at the prominence given to such contemporary developments as those taking shape in Malmo and Amsterdam and Freiburg and Verban, and at the manner in which UK study visits, academic journals and professional advice are disseminating ‘lessons’ from these areas across home-based professional networks, such as via the Sustainable Urban Neighbourhoods Network (SUNN). The paper, however, questions whether the structural equalities manifest in the UK’s development and housebuilding sectors will render it unwilling to utilise the values that this wider European practice promotes. In particular it questions the extent to which the increasing consolidation and control of UK housebuilding practices into a smaller and smaller set of large-scale land-development agencies will be unwilling to set in motion the localised and ‘organic’ nature of neighbourhood development that is held up as being so successful on the continent. The argument is put forward that current government fascination with its ‘market-driven’ policies is resulting in an increasing element of public resources and expectation being handed over uncritically to the private ‘housebuilding’ sector. The result is likely to be increasingly poor returns for both UK taxpayers and UK households, due to a lack of genuine competition to obtain land resources (e.g. as seen in the exclusion of the ‘custom build’ sector many transactions) and the artificial constraints on housing supply from the limited number of large housing suppliers that is keeping housing costs at unsustainably inflated levels (with further knock-on effects in the wider economy when inflated costs use up peoples’ disposable income). The view is put forward that interest from UK urban design and housing supply bodies is more appropriately interpreted as a means to make the housing ‘commodity’ more attractive to sell at superior prices, rather than to create vibrant new places that offer a new combination of living and working environments. Some suggestions are therefore provided on how UK should address structural issues endemic in its urban design and development sectors in order to shape how public-private sector relationships could replicate the best of continental exemplars