Situating Rural Areas in Contemporary Housing Access Debates in England – A Comment

Levels of housing access in rural areas are determined by economic drivers, including local earnings, constraints on new housing supply, and by levels of market intrusion. This review article briefly examines these drivers before situating rural areas in contemporary housing access (and housing crisis) debates in England. It examines different options for reshaping housing outcomes, noting a longstanding preference for incremental change over the sorts of fundamental shifts that could radically alter the distribution of housing wealth, but with potentially deep political and economic repercussions

Re-connecting 'people and planning': Parish plans and the English localism agenda

This article examines the influence that community groups are able to exert over planning policy, framing a local analysis of engagement between parish councils and local planning authorities in England within a broader view of collaborative rationality and communication through formal and informal networks. The article focuses on how the ‘neighbourhood’-based networks of community action reach out and connect to formal policy actors, arguing that the connectivity achieved by parish planning groups and local government prior to the enactment of the Localism Act 2011 gives a strong indication of how future neighbourhood planning in England will function

Self-build communities: the rationale and experiences of group-build (Baugruppen) housing development in Germany

© 2015 Taylor & Francis Group-build housing developments can bring together the cost and customisation benefits regularly attributed to self-build housing with a communitarian ethos associated with ‘intentional’ communities. This paper presents an initial examination of the rationale, motivations and social experiences of group-build housing from Germany, where over half of all new homes are produced independently from volume-build developers. The paper aims, firstly, to test the hypothesis that group-build delivers general ‘community’ benefits; secondly, to contribute to an understanding of the processes leading to successful schemes; and lastly, to demonstrate that by making individual home building dependent on the success of a larger group, collective interests can prevail over personal pursuit. This research draws attention to the motivations, the social experiences through the development process and the social legacy – aspects of particular interest for policy-makers as well as prospective builders – of group-build housing projects

Second homes, amenity-led change and consumption-driven rural restructuring: the case of Xingfu village, China

This paper explores the linkages established by second home developers and owners with local residents in host communities, and further discusses how these extra-local linkages stimulate amenity-led change and rural restructuring. Research, comprising a mix of semi-structured interviews and site visits, was conducted in Xingfu village, China. That research focused on the increasing importance of extra-local economic and social capital to consumption-driven rural restructuring. Urban incursion not only drives change in the rural economy, but also brings important landscape and community impacts: a once homogenous and stable community is now characterized by dynamism and heterogeneity. The research draws attention to interactions between extra-local and local actors over time, as the second home industry in the area grows, and aims to contribute greater understanding of the exogenous drivers of rural restructuring, especially in the Chinese and developing country context

Housing supply, investment demand and money creation: A comment on the drivers of London’s housing crisis

This commentary examines the current emphasis on supply-side solutions to the housing crisis in England – building more homes to increase accessibility – against a backdrop of intensifying demand-side pressures, the financialisation of housing, and the impact of credit liberalisation and money creation on housing demand and prices. It reflects on the need to balance additional housing supply, where needed, with gradual ‘demand management’ responses that at last acknowledge the centrality of spatially unbounded investment demand and the flow of money created by deregulated banks into housing as fundamental to the current crisis of housing affordability and access

Swimming against a Cornish tide?

Nick Gallent, John Kelsey and Iqbal Hamiduddin reflect on the outcome of the recent referendum on the St Ives Neighbourhood Development Plan, the requirement that all new build housing is occupied by ‘full time residents’, and the risks – and possible consequences – of this type of planning restrictio