How to recognise a Green housing scheme

We see lots of planning applications, and less formal proposals, to build homes in Enfield. Many of them (eg the Cat Hill and Fairview school schemes) raise environmental issues.

Given that we don't have enough homes in Enfield and that the population will keep rising we need to build a lot more homes. So how should we judge new schemes?

Housing
We need more homes, especially for those who can't afford decent homes. Developments are supposed to provide 40% 'affordable' homes but this is a distraction because developers generally find ways to avoid providing so many and more because most so-called affordable homes are not affordable by people on average pay.

In my view this problem is insoluble if numbers continue to rise. It is certainly not soluble without some serious creativity about the interplay between population, housing, finance and benefits. And that probably needs a new national policy - or several!

So, while we work on the broader issue, we can ask for 50% affordable homes. It won't solve the problem but at least those 50% won't be luxury flats for offshore investors!

Sustainability
High environmental standards, especially low energy use. Our policy is that all new buildings should meet passivhaus standards for energy. (Of course, the surest way to do that is to follow the passivhaus method but we don't insist on that.) We've pressed this on various council officials and departments over the last few years but all we ever get back is "too expensive". Well, that hasn't stopped other councils, such as Camden and Wolverhampton, from building to those standards so it's obviously possible.

Community
Larger schemes should provide more than housing. They should provide local shops and community facilities. How many and which shops and facilities will obviously depend on what's already available but, as we saw in the case of the Ritz Parade, they might include a GP surgery, meeting rooms, a school, a theatre or a cinema. Green space would be good too.

And I'd add one thing that is often forgotten - space for politics and community action. Many 'public' shopping centres are actually private. On various occasions I have been told by security staff to stop distributing election leaflets in Edmonton Green shopping centre, filming for the BBC in Palace Gardens and collecting for the RNLI in Palace Exchange.

There ought to be outdoor space that can be used for politics and community action, provided that it doesn't cause a nuisance. And there should be indoor rooms for hire.

Travel 
As a Green I give priority to active travel - walking and cycling - since it is healthier and more sociable. So, specifically, I want to see:

1. Green space within walking distance.
2. Good walking and cycling routes to shops, entertainment, etc.
3. Accessible routes for people with nobility problems.

But that's clearly not enough. Many people have to travel much further than they can walk or cycle for work, shipping or entertainment. So a scheme should provide good public transport connections. Specifically there should be bus stops within walking distance and a tube or train station accessible by one bus ride (or walking, of course).

Now its only in the largest schemes that the developer can address all of this. He won't be able to move a tube station or even a bus route. So the responsibility must shared between the developer and the Council. We need both parties to recognise their responsibilities.

Green Pioneer: Who Was Fritz Schumacher?

Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher (1911–1977) was an influential economic thinker, statistician and economist. He was Chief Economic Advisor to the UK National Coal Board for two decades, wrote “Small is Beautiful” and founded the development charity Practical Action.

 

 

Schumacher was born in Bonn in 1911 and educated in Bonn and Berlin and at the universities of Oxford and Columbia. He then worked in business, farming and journalism in Germany. He moved back to England in 1937 to escape fascism but was interned on an isolated farm as an ‘enemy alien’. 

Despite this he wrote a notable economic paper which attracted the attention of John Maynard Keynes. Keynes recognised his ability and enabled him to contribute to Britain’s economic and financial organisation during the war. Later, Keynes found him a position at Oxford University.

From 1950 to 1970 he was Chief Economic Advisor to the UK National Coal Board (ie the nationalised coal industry) from which position he advocated the use of coal rather than oil or nuclear power. He also advised the governments of Burma, Germany, India and Zambia on development issues and wrote widely.

His time in Burma led him to a critique of mainstream economics in the name of “Buddhist economics”.  In 1966 Schumacher and others founded the Intermediate Technology Development Group (now Practical Action). In this context “Intermediate” meant technologies that were more effective than traditional ones but less complex and capital intensive than those used in the West. ITDG insisted that anything it installed should be able to be installed and maintained with skills available locally.

His most famous book – Small Is Beautiful – was published in 1973.

Schumacher’s ideas are not easy to summarise and changed over his lifetime but I would pick out these four:

• The main purpose of economic activity should be to meet human needs not to create profit.
• Human needs include the need for meaningful work
• New and more ‘efficient’ technologies are not always better than old technologies. Each should be judged on its merits.
• Most needs can best be met by work that is locally organised to meet the needs of the local community.

A number of organisations apart from Practical Action have been inspired by Schumacher’s work. They include the Schumacher College, Resurgence & Ecologist, Green Books, the New Economics Foundation, the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, the Soil Association and the Centre for Alternative Technology.

He also had an intense interest in religion which led him from atheism through Buddhism and meditation to, eventually, Catholicism.

For more information

• Schumacher, Diane, 2008: Who was Fritz Schumacher? Gandhi Foundation. http://gandhifoundation.org/2011/11/25/who-was-fritz-schumacher-by-diana-schumacher/
• Schumacher, E F, 1973:  Small is Beautiful: a study of economics as if people mattered.