Aspirations for housing, it has to be said, are not particularly sustainable. We don’t want to be overlooked. A big house, somewhere in the country. I recently did a project interviewing a wide range of members of the public about their ideal homes and it did seem to be the case that the more drastically remote people long to be, the more personal problems they tend to have experienced in their lives. Crofts in remote Scotland seem a particularly strong desire amongst ex drug addicts or foster care leavers. I’m not sure about the psychology of this but I do know that if everyone got what they wanted housewise, we’d need about a hundred planets to accommodate everyone. It does seem to be one of the cruel ironies of modern life that the more apparently countrified a house is, the less likely it is to be sustainable in terms of land use or fuel consumption.
If you frame the question in a different way, and say well, you can’t have your absolutely dream home, but you could improve things where you are, what would you change?
Parking, is the answer. More parking. There is nothing that makes me want to slit my wrists more than these conversations.
“Any family worth their salt has three, four or five cars” was one memorable verbatim from a villager in rural Cambridgeshire complaining about low parking allocations for new build properties.
“They should make people pave over their front gardens” was one woman’s thought from Croydon.
One thing I have noticed however is that people are becoming more tolerant of smaller spaces. Through my work interviewing people I’ve visited a lot of people in smallish homes and mostly people are refreshingly uncomplaining about it. Children share rooms and families are more creative with how space is used. Increasing numbers of people live in unconventional households of extended family members. Yes, people do want more space, but once they are living in a small space, they just seem to stop noticing it. I don’t think we are looking at Tokyo style living just yet, just that having a room entirely dedicated to the ironing may be a thing of the past for most families.
A recent report by CPRE argues that close proximity living does not have to mean urban high rises. Cosy villages with walkable centres and a close knit community are about as sustainable as you can get, and there are scores of them up and down the country. They argue that refurbishing existing properties and developing within communities should be prioritised above dispersed new build developments. Certainly there is lots of evidence to suggest that people who know their neighbours and who walk more are happier and healthier than those who don’t.
It may be that the key to sustainable housing is less about the house itself and more about our attitudes to the communities they are situated in. A couple of years ago I interviewed a man in Essex who had recently installed a wind turbine. He had received 33 objections – before it was even built. I visited him at his house, in the middle of a field, and I don’t think he even had 33 neighbours. One suspects that these neighbours were not objecting so much for themselves, but because they were worried it would affect the price of their property. Perhaps in a new climate where property is regarded more as somewhere to live rather than an asset with which to make money - sustainability initiatives such as shared facilities, energy efficiency and car-pools will receive greater support. Living in sustainable communities will help us all sleep easy in our homes, no matter what size they are.
