How to be a Super Yimby – and help fix Britain’s housing crisis
Labour has announced exciting new plans for 1.5m desperately needed new homes, but some are determined to get in the way. Here’s CityAM’s guide to how to be a Super Yimby and get Britain building again
It’s a renter’s worst nightmare. First, the fences go up around an unassuming plot of vacant land in an area ripe for new development. Almost within seconds, someone on Nextdoor has noticed. The placards start appearing. A local meeting to launch a petition is called. John from Guildford, who inherited his home and works in oil, develops a sudden and intense interest in the local flora and fauna. “The lizards are under threat!” he insists.
That’s right, the Nimbys are here.
How do you counter this insanity? By metamorphosing from a casual pro-housing advocate into a Super Yimby (for the unfamiliar, that stands for super yes in my backyard) by taking the following steps.
Get real about the ‘green belt‘
Leafy, lovely and beloved by Lib Dems, the green belt is the Super Yimby’s ultimate foe. Denounce it at every opportunity. The special status denoted by the area currently makes approximately 13 per cent of English land essentially off limits for significant development, and 22 per cent within the Outer London boundary. Designed to act against ‘urban sprawl’, the green belt itself is rooted in a nonsensical belief: that people don’t want London to be bigger.
For the purest of Super Yimbys, for whom grass is something to be tolerated not celebrated, bulldozing over the whole of the green belt is a no brainer. However, we understand that for some this may feel severe. For that contingent, it’s important to remember that much of the green belt is not green at all, with only 59 per cent of London’s green belt actually agricultural land. The 2016 Draft London Plan for the Green Belt itself conceded that parts of the protected area had become “derelict and unsightly” and did “not provide significant benefits to Londoners”, but maintained they must nevertheless be preserved.
So get used to talking about the grey belt (brownfield sites and low quality areas in the green belt) and reminding Nimbys of the derelict petrol stations and disused car parks that furnish the luscious pastures they’re so adverse to part ways with.
Make building sexy again
It’s time to send those wolf whistles straight back to construction workers and promote the sex appeal of new development. Thanks to the amount of spare time and spirit for local activism held by Britain’s healthy Nimby population, an anti-development bias seems to have rooted itself in the national psyche. Just two per cent of British people trust developers to make existing places better, while only seven per cent trust planners. And while many will agree in principle that Britain desperately needs more homes, the notion of actually doing anything to fix that problem fills them with intense dread. So let’s change construction’s public image and embrace high-vis orange as the hottest colour of the season.
Further to this point, consider reexamining your conception of beauty. What do you find beautiful and why? There’s nothing inherently aesthetically pleasing about fields of browning grass stuffed with flies and insects. Buildings can be beautiful too. Pylons are works of art if you look at them in the right way, and do you know what else is beautiful? A well-connected National Grid. Let’s revive the spirit of 2015’s Milifandom and get behind the energy secretary’s plans to expand onshore wind. Let’s overthrow our social conditioning and embrace the pleasure of function. If you want to take this to the next level, why not get a tattoo of a crane like this ultra-devoted CityAM staffer?
Read CityAM
Western Europe’s only newspaper with a verified S-YIMBY certification. Our recent Build, Baby, Build campaign is a treasure trove for common sense arguments for how new developments can drive UK growth and visions for what a Yimby future can look like. Plus, it’s full of deliciously citable stats and case studies for you to drop into conversation whenever you suspect a Nimby might be nearby.
Did you know, for example, that Mick Jagger has objected to a project that could add 142 new homes, 45 of which would be affordable, to Wandsworth on the grounds that it would ruin his and other Chelsea residents’ view from the other side of the bridge? Or that while London’s population has grown by almost half since the 1980s, the number of homes has only risen by a third? Or that renters in the 1980s spent only 10 per cent of their income on housing, but today that figure’s at 30 per cent (or 40 per cent for Londoners)? Add those and plenty more to your conversational armoury by keeping up with CityAM’s Build Baby Build series.
DON’T own a home
This way, you will never object to a planning proposal purely on the grounds that it will drive down your own house price. If you’re a Londoner, this shouldn’t be hard seeing as only 36 per cent of city dwellers are homeowners and the average cost of a property over the last year was £695,594. Naturally, as a Super Yimby, you should ideally also not have your own backyard; those are for developments, that you have welcomed with enthusiasm. If you must have outdoor space, why not enjoy a front yard or failing that a stoop?
But if you MUST…
You can still be a Yimby even if you do have a mortgage to pay (but perhaps not a Super Yimby). ‘Densification’ of existing neighbourhoods is just as important as new development, especially in London. So consider a snazzy mansard roof extension, which could double your floorspace with very little visual impact on the streetscape, giving Nimbys nothing to complain about.
Or join your parish council and come up with a Neighbourhood Development Order. These are a little-known planning tool that enables communities to agree on their own design code and permit development.
Street votes are another way to create more living space in your community. Under proposals being considered, individual streets will be able to ballot to upzone themselves – for example turning a Victorian terrace into a street of Chelsea-style mansion blocks – unlocking new houses and adding value for the current property-owners.
And if that doesn’t convince you, remember that in some areas new developments are set to actually boost house prices due to the fact that upgraded infrastructure and better amenities are generally considered to make areas more desirable and increase the value of your house – who knew!
Be like South Tottenham
Residents of South Tottenham are setting an example to Super Yimbys everywhere. There, home-owners were given permission to extend their Victorian terraced houses upwards by 1.5 storeys, provided they stuck to a specific design code that meant their houses would harmonise with those around them. Take-up has been high, with more than 200 such extensions going up over the last 10 years – proving that communities will accept new development provided it’s chic.
Repeat after us: Housing > golf
The next time anyone dares to mention golf, remind them that it’s a silly little game enjoyed by villains such as Auric Goldfinger and Donald J Trump that takes up a disproportionate amount of space to the joy it inspires. In London alone there are nearly 100 golf courses, together taking up more land than the boroughs of Tower Hamlets and Hackney combined. And let’s be honest: golf is boring anyway. Why not take up padel – and support planning applications for the millions of new courts popping up across the country?