Town & Country Planning, October 2008
I used to have a friend who was an aspiring astrologer. He used to do your astrological chart if you bought him lunch.
I watched him pore over mine as I ate my ham omelette. Then he said, with great seriousness: “Yes, I see this in the charts of a lot of Liberal Democrats. I think it means unreasonable optimism.”
That is my excuse for writing an overwhelmingly optimistic column about the financial crisis which is erupting all around me as I write.
Yes, it is a disaster for global security, it’s appalling for the price of food, it’s a nightmare for the bank balances of self-employed people like me. But, hey, let’s leave that on one side for a moment. It is ever so good for humane planning, and of course cycling.
No more hideous towers: it means some respite from seeing the psychological hang-ups of Norman Foster and his friends transformed into glass and concrete, because no financier in his right mind is going to lend them money to build skyscrapers – which means we can retain a human-scale townscape for a little longer.
It’s a major set-back for the regeneration industry: among the industries the credit crunch is crunching is those sharp-suited types who pedal identikit regeneration schemes around the world, including the ubiquitous luxury flats, the usual retail monsters, the identical marinas and ‘leisure’ developments. We know they don’t work, they must know by now that they don’t work – at least for the people being regenerated – but it takes a real nightmare on Wall Street actually to hold them back for a year or so.
It’s tough for Tesco: and all those other semi-monopolistic retail conglomerates that rely on cheap energy to import American apples while our orchards are grubbed up after years of disuse. The fuel crisis, if it continues, is good for diversity, good for local shopping, good for social capital, good for high streets. It’s also, rather bizarrely, good for democracy: a new study in the USA shows that voter turn-out goes down when they build a local Wal-mart.
Lower house prices: I know the prime minister is dedicated to jump-starting the same old excess, but let’s face it. High house prices which force both partners to work full-time whether they want to or not, at dull lucrative jobs when they would prefer to be artists or writers, mean we are many of us condemned to indentured semi-servitude for a quarter of a century. We also live in smaller, duller, more cramped little boxes than we would otherwise have to – which has convinced many of us, quite wrongly, that our children are hyperactive and need to be force-fed Ritalin. Why do you think the incidence of Asperger’s Syndrome went up 62,000 per cent in Illinois over the past decade?
At last! A bit more understanding about what makes local economies work: it takes a real financial collapse to force our doziest local authorities to work out what actually makes a local enterprise economy work, rather than relying on building a large shopping centre and watching all the local businesses flag. It means keeping the money circulating locally, encouraging diversity, contracting locally and employing locally. It isn’t rocket science, and they do seem to have had a eureka moment about it in the north west – which I’ll write about in a future column. But, heavens! – why does it take so long?
A bonanza of local innovation: it takes a real downturn to get local business and the local voluntary sector to start innovating. It is no coincidence not only that Lewes in West Sussex has launched its own currency, but that they got wall-to-wall media coverage when they did so. In fact, the interest has been so overwhelming that, last time I heard, Lewes pound notes are appearing for sale on eBay at prices some way ahead of what they cost in Lewes. This is uncomfortable for the organisers – who are trying to keep the economic lifeblood circulating a little – but it is a sign that something is in the air.
I will admit, of course, that by the time you read this, our whole economy might have disappeared in a puff of smoke, while Gordon and Mervyn agonise about what to do. But in which case this column probably won’t reach you anyway, so I have nothing to fear.
Job losses always seem tragic at the time. But don’t tell me there isn’t anything enjoyable about seeing the remains of Wall Street’s mighty investment banks existing on the equivalent of welfare hand-outs from the Federal Reserve.
Yes, I am a hopeless optimist. But at least as far as planning is concerned, and the places where we live, I reckon that it’s an ill wind that makes absolutely nobody richer – even if we mean ‘richer’ in rather a broader sense.
David Boyle is a fellow of the new economics foundation and the author of Toward the Setting Sun (Walker & Co). See these columns online at www.david-boyle.co.uk