I was interested by a comment made by Julia Thrift in last week’s profile (“Space saver”, 12 September, page 24).
She was talking about green spaces in the housing market renewal pathfinder areas and said “public spaces may be down the list of priorities, but are key to creating a desirable place to live”. Well, she’s dead right.

I recently left a council that is part of the North Staffordshire pathfinder. While I worked there, I and my senior and principal officers looked the state of old terraced properties in low-demand areas. We looked at one area in particular that had a few rows of terraced properties and, to the rear, an area of open land that was a real mess – abandoned cars, piles of rubbish and an exposed mains sewage pipe. The homes were generally OK, but we were very much of the opinion that the open space was precisely the sort of thing that should be tackled in the pathfinders.

However, the opinion that seems to be dominating the scheme in our particular area is that it is all about houses: knocking them down and refurbishing them. Yet the pathfinder is about renewing the demand for housing. Generally it is areas that become stigmatised and blighted, not houses.

Create attractive areas and environments and people will want to live there. People will buy houses – even those in need of renovation.

Some serious thought is going to be needed, or else we are going to get things drastically wrong and hundreds of millions of pounds will have been wasted. Julia Thrift is going to have a very big job on her hands.

Source

Housing Today

Postscript

Dave Proudlove, Staying Put technical officer Beth Johnson Housing Association, Stoke-on-Trent