Barry Goodchild

Social Balance and Mixed Neighbourhoods in Britain since 1979: A Review of Discourse and Practice in Social Housing

In Britain, current interest in social balance has arisen partly as a response to increased management difficulties in social housing and partly in response to the concepts of the underclass and social exclusion. Social balance is now endorsed in some, but not all, the relevant urban policy statements of the New Labour government elected in 1997. A modified form of poststructural discourse analysis offers the best way of understanding the term and its implications. The approach focuses on different levels of social reality—the level of a national policy, the level of management and estate upgrading, and the level of the social experience of residents. In doing this, the approach reveals the varied and occasionally contradictory meanings of the term ‘social balance’; it highlights the increasingly common attempts by social housing agencies to control the characteristics of their tenants; and it enables a sceptical assessment of the practical significance of mixed housing estates for poor individuals and households.

Towards Zero Carbon Homes in England? From Inception to Partial Implementation

In 2007, the UK Government announced an ambitious zero-carbon target for all new housing in England. This paper shows how the definition and its associated policies emerged from discourses of environmental policy innovation; how the problem subsequently became framed as one of mainstreaming, consequent upon the apparent success of experimental schemes and defined in more detail through the interaction between pressure group politics and the technical analyses that accompanied the governments consultation exercises. Finally, it shows how regional and local variations in housing and property markets are likely to influence the ease of zero carbon development. The analysis uses concepts drawn from both the science and technology literature and the literature on policy implementation.

From Tenure to Rights: Conceptualizing the Changing Focus of Housing Law in England

This paper suggests a new way of conceptualizing tenure as a series of discourses that comprise respectively: (a) property law; (b) housing policy; and (c) housing status. Housing research has generally focused on housing policy discourse in a way that obscures legal relationships. In contrast, a focus on property and housing status has greater potential to make explicit the rights and obligations that arise in different situations. The ?bundle of rights? view provides the most acceptable statement of tenure relations in housing. It is the only view that covers both property and housing status and that can also make sense of tendencies towards juridification. The implication for research is to focus on the exact terms of rights, their changing distribution between different parties and their scope for enforcement. If research extends to a review of the origins and continuing rationale of rights, some form of narrative analysis is usually necessary.

Method and methodology in housing user research

Abstract In a context of growing housing shortage and decay pressure is mounting for a renewed programme of low‐cost housing for rent. Such a programme would raise again the question of appropriate design standards and the issue of user participation in new housing provision. The argument in this article is that the social survey method, despite its past use in positivist and architecturally functionalist (and therefore deficient) housing satisfaction studies and in the Department of the Environments Housing Appraisal Kit, does not necessarily entail positivism or a narrow functionalism and should be reconsidered as an option within the participatory design approach of ‘community architecture’ or as complementary to this approach.

Inside the eco-home: using video to understand the implications of innovative housing

Abstract As a method of qualitative research, video offers a means of looking into the world of a respondent and a means of stimulating a dialogue, both with the respondent and others. Video requires, however, the application of additional ethical procedures and may also increase refusal rates, if it is publicly disseminated. Applied to the home, the use of video reveals both practice and identity. Video records practice, showing how the spaces within a home are used at a particular time. For this reason, video is well adapted to understanding the implications of living in a home with an innovative design and technology, with all the complexities that this commonly involves. Equally, video communicates the appearance of the home and of its occupants to whoever is watching. Video is, therefore, intimately connected to identity and the home as a place.

Applying Theories of Social Communication to Housing Law: Towards a Workable Framework

Discussions of housing policy generally either ignore housing law or treat it as a passive instrument for policy implementation. More attention needs to be paid to a theoretical analysis of housing law, especially in the light of growing legal regulation. Critical instrumentalism and discourse analysis offer possible alternatives to the usual pragmatic instrumental approach. Critical instrumentalism provides a historical understanding of legal rights and enables a reflection on the role of the law in promoting democratic accountability. Discourse analysis enables a reflection on the use of power and the conditions for the enforcement of the law. Critical instrumentalism and discourse analysis possess internal theoretical debates and also involve contrasting views of society. They may, however, be related to one another in a pragmatic search for a workable analytical framework.

Standards in housing design: A review of the main changes since the Parker Morris report (1961)

Summary This paper reviews trends in the standards of design of new dwellings in Britain, using the Parker Morris report as a benchmark against which to assess subsequent change. In the public sector the main priority now is for a broader set of standards than has often been employed in the past. Parker Morris floorspace standards, while no longer mandatory, still provide a guide to good practice. The need is to integrate this concern with floorspace within a broad approach which pays more attention to the external environment, which specifies full rather than partial central heating and which enables an increased choice of accommodation. In the private sector, the policy of successive governments of attempting to reduce the costs of entry into owner occupation has led to lower standards. The recent experience of starter homes reveals that private developers are unlikely to build sufficiently downmarket to replace a lack of public investment and that, if they try, they are likely to provide accommodation ...

Homes, cities and neighbourhoods : planning and the residential landscapes of modern Britain

Given current projections of population and household numbers, housing has become arguably the most important issue in planning. Likewise, planning raises arguably the most important long term issues in housing, given the environmental consequences of urban development and the use of the home. Homes, Cities and Neighbourhoods documents the evolution of typical urban landscapes from 1900 to the present with an emphasis on contemporary issues and practice.

Land allocation for housing: A review of practice and possibilities in England

Abstract The typical conception of housing land release in England is of a non‐social, technical exercise which balance the various, often conflicting claims of rural conservation, of global housing needs and of non‐residential land uses. A rural housing needs policy, introduced in 1989, marks a potentially significant breach in the conventional wisdom that planning controls should only be concerned with the physical characteristics of buildings and of land. But the rural needs policy is unsuited to general application in its present form. If the intention is to use town planning to reduce the land cost of social housing, more consideration should be given to new forms of land taxation and public land ownership.

Impact fees and the financial structure of development

There is increasing pressure to shift the financial burden of the provision of off‐site infrastructure and services from government to building producers and consumers. Some measures to achieve this end have already been introduced on a piecemeal basis. Examines the financial implications of impact fees for development. The amount of the fee levied on a particular development is determined by the fee system. Its effects on the economics of property development are determined by the financial structure of the development. There is no necessary equivalence between impact fees and the ability of schemes to bear them. The same dichotomy exists, by extension, in the property market as a whole. Any fee system based on actual infrastructure impact will produce charges whose pattern differs from that of market strength. Weak markets would be faced with much greater adjustment problems than strong markets. As a result, impact fees threaten to disrupt existing property market structures. Developers should be aware of the fundamental change in their operational environment which would ensue.