Upfront: Why developers just don’t get it

According to the International Panel on Climate Change, it is now inevitable that global average temperatures will increase by at least 2°C and possibly as much as 6.4°C as a consequence of greenhouse gas emissions produced through human activity. The elephant in the room has grown restless and furniture is being wrecked.

Meanwhile picture a scene, if you will, in which a landowner meeting his consultants is contemplating the development potential of his land. Three cherries appear in his eyes at the thought of the uplift in land value, but perplexity invades when the sustainability consultant chimes in. What strange, arcane language he spouts – low carbon this and that, new kinds of pipes and wires, SUDS, brown roofs, super-insulation, recycling facilities and ubiquitous bicycle parking… It all sounds a little experimental. Doesn’t that mean risk? The cost consultant triumphantly announces that “sustainability” costs, on average, 10% more than… more than what, exactly? Unsustainability?

The discomfort grows as the expert explains that sustainability is about integration not trade-offs. This means that any additional expense incurred in achieving environmental sustainability can’t be paid for by reducing commitments to something called “social sustainability”. The planner in the room helpfully explains that this means “affordable housing”.

Enter the master of this particular universe the commercial agent. Not a highly evolved species in terms of aspirational urbanism, design or sustainability, the agent declaims that the client now has a choice to make: the “sustainable option” or the “commercial option”.

Developers are prone to take the shortest and easiest route to the maximum profit

I wish this account was a gross exaggeration. I wish the sustainable/commercial dichotomy was seen to be the crass oversimplification it undoubtedly is. I wish, in the era of potentially catastrophic climate change, that people didn’t feel they have a “choice” between a route that, while unsustainable in ecological terms, is seen to be less risky and more profitable. I wish commercial agents with their lack of enterprise, imagination and innovation weren’t in such a dominant position. But they are. With a few notable exceptions such as Igloo, Urban Splash, the Places for People Group, Red Tree, Argent and First Base, developers are prone to take the shortest and easiest route to the maximum profit; they will do the minimum possible to get through the planning door. So, why does the regulatory regime still let them?

The new spatial planning system and planning policy statements are a terrific start; the primary purpose of planning is the promotion of sustainable development. What else is there? The now abandoned planning gain supplement would not have supported sustainable development. Anyway, is tax a commodity we desperately need more of? No, we need better incentives and regulations.

We need to stimulate innovation, transform professional cultures, develop huge incentives and penalties for development angels and devils respectively and establish the conditions in which humane, sustainable places and spaces are the norm not the exception. Regulators must move the goalposts. And then move them again.