Why Our Cities Are So Expensive

[Music] if you've walked through any city lately you've probably seen something like this a makeshift wall around a construction site that paints a picture of a bright new future underway here in london they're everywhere some of these developments come with big visions and even bigger price tags famous architects are signed up to design shiny new buildings complete with a suite of luxury amenities local governments say they'll revitalize things with economic developments and thousands of construction jobs but for the people who already live in these areas developments like these are a sign that things are about to get expensive all around the world it's getting harder and harder to find an affordable place to rent let alone buy london's in the middle of a high-rise building boom that's reshaping the city just last year some 587 new skyscrapers were in the pipeline it's not like there's no new housing being built it's just that a lot of it isn't really affordable 40 years ago the average home in london cost just 24 000 pounds by 2018 that price had reached nearly half a million the city's latest makeover is right here at a formerly abandoned power station that's been transformed into a new development just across the street is a load of affordable housing that highlights a rapidly changing neighborhood when you boil this all down there's a simple story of how a city saved a piece of its history and built loads of new housing shops and parks the question is at what costs what we really want is a thriving community here we want people to wake up in the morning and say you know what should we do today let's go down to balsa power station keep the history of battersea power station alive it's a good thing for londoners this is a big deal for this area 20 000 homes are being built jobs are being created it's always had the soul but the soul is definitely coming back and it's just so wonderful it's not for anyone really who is indigenous to this area it was never designed for them it's just for built for people who've got sheer access to wealth and money so we've got to build genuinely affordable homes for londoners there is a scramble for people to try and become asset owners unless you can buy your own place you're just totally screwed by the system the world's housing market is hurting it isn't a crisis anymore it is a disaster the housing system in this system is not designed to meet the needs of ordinary londoners it's not [Music] looking like a giant table with its legs in the air battersea power station is one of those unlovely landmarks which are often held in deeper regard than the finest architectural masterpieces before battersea power station was london's newest luxury neighborhood it was funnily enough an actual power station you might recognize it from pink floyd's animals album or doctor who sherlock batman the list goes on at its peak battersea was supplying a fifth of london's electricity but it was shut down in the 80s due to air pollution and then sat abandoned for decades during that time it was granted grade 2 listed status meaning that it's formally protected as a heritage site as the years rolled by ideas for how to repurpose the massive building came and went well sadly it's smoke belching days where actually it's heyday it's all been downhill since then pretty depressing waste really of one of the most iconic most unique buildings in london proposals ranged from an indoor theme park to hotels a shopping mall football stadium and everything in between asked whether she enjoyed fun fairs mrs thatcher replied i quite liked i used to when i was very young in the meantime it cropped up in movies and was intermittently used for gigs and events i even ran through the derelict heart of it as part of a men's health assault course it wasn't until 2013 when a group of malaysian developers successfully began a 9 billion pound project to transform the 42 acre site creating a brand new neighborhood full of bars restaurants shops offices and luxury housing now if this story seems familiar to you it's because there are a lot of new mixed-use developments like this cropping up all over the world there's hudson yards in new york commercial and residential wonderland the one in toronto the city of the future the tun razak exchange in kuala lumpur with the right execution the economic multiplier effect will be immense south bank by beulah in melbourne australia's tallest tower apartment prices ranging from half a million to 35 million and that's just aiming a few but if you're looking for property in a city with global connections there's pretty much no better place on earth than london when it comes to renovating iconic landmarks there's a lot of pressure to get things right for years uk governments tried to figure out what to do with balancing power station and how to pay for such a project in the end it took a development like this to save it the same things happened with historic sites elsewhere in london like at king's cross and it's a bit of a running theme in cities worldwide carnegie library in washington dc is now an apple store cape town's iconic grain silo is now a luxury hotel and this historic gas plant in madrid is finding new life as a private office development the team at battersea power station pulled out all the stops to transform the site into something new while preserving some of its history they brought in high-profile architects to design new towers complete with one of london's largest roof gardens and over 19 acres of public space apple is planning to make the power station its london campus there's a brand new us embassy nearby and there's not one but two new tube stations in the neighborhood our vision and the vision of our shareholders is going to be a new town centre for once work and also for london so we want people to come here we want people to shop to live to spend time so we really want it to be that draw for the local community in the wider area [Music] balaci power stations being developed in no fewer than eight main phases with the first four laid out so far first was building a new apartment complex which was complete in 2017 next was converting the old power station into new shops apartments offices restaurants and an event space that sets open to the public in autumn 2022 the third phase is to construct a brand new high street along with a frank gehry designed building and the fourth will be the construction of new affordable housing there are already more than eighteen hundred people living in the new homes built in phase one rent in the new developments ranges from around two thousand pounds to more than seven thousand pounds a month if you're in the market to buy that'll be anywhere from more than 550 000 pounds for a studio to 7 million for one of the ultra luxury sky villas yes there are now 18 sky villas on top of an old power station complete with private terraces 360 degree views of london and a communal roof garden [Music] now it's difficult to overstate just how big battersea power station really is the entirety of saint paul's cathedral could fit inside the main boiler house as you might imagine converting this enormous building from a coal plant into a new mixed-use development wasn't exactly a stroll along the river fundamentally we are using the building in a different way and we were often finding that foundations weren't quite the shape and size that they were on the original drawings as i say you can you can do lots of surveying but until you actually dig it all up trial hole that you did wasn't quite in the right place and then inevitably you discover things so that's a you know challenge the first pair of the power station's iconic chimneys were built in the 1930s and the second two followed later in the 1950s having channeled decades of co2 by the time this new development began construction they were all in bad shape and needed to be completely demolished and rebuilt almost 25 000 wheelbarrows of concrete were poured into these 51 meter tall structures using the same jump form technique as when they were first built the concrete was hoisted up to the top of the chimney transferred into wheelbarrows and then hand poured into the structures the hoist carrying workers was moved up after each section dried until they reached the top the same materials were used to construct the new chimneys the only thing that's new are the more modern steel reinforcements hidden inside the original chimneys were reinforced with a helix-like metal cage within the concrete whereas the new chimneys use a modern grid work everything else down to the exact paint colour was meticulously matched to replicate the originals one of the chimneys has even been fitted with a glass elevator drawing visitors to the site with the promise of 360 views of london and it's not just the chimneys that got a makeover much of the outside of the power station was also taken apart and rebuilt the restoration team was so meticulous with the brickwork that they actually tracked down the original manufacturers to create 1.7 million handmade bricks to replace originals when needed even the control room was restored to its original state and is said to be used as a pretty cool events venue i think it's not just me but there's a lot of people in the team that feel a bit of responsibility and an obligation and to get this right you know it's a historic building there's a huge amount of passion in the team to respectfully restore and the historic elements of it now the renovation of the power station isn't a standalone project it's actually part of one of europe's biggest regeneration schemes that's out to transform this whole area of london from the power station down here at battersea right up to where those new skyscrapers are rising at vauxhall way back in 2012 when boris johnson was mayor of london he introduced a plan for something called the vauxhall nine elms battersea opportunity area catchy name right i think there is no going back now i think all the doubters all the cynics are going to be blown away this is going to happen and it's quite extraordinary okay we get it we know this sounds incredibly dull but this document right here is essentially a master plan to take this area of london and transform it into a bustling new neighborhood filled with new apartments and businesses while this is one of the biggest it's not london's only plan to reshape a neighborhood these so-called opportunity areas play a big role in where new developments pop up there are 47 of them now identified across the city the idea is that by strategically putting resources into new construction the government can help introduce new homes jobs and investment into an area and that's not just a london thing city planners around the world have long used zoning rules and redevelopment programs to direct resources to certain regions san francisco publishes its development pipeline new york city has a map of urban renewal areas and melbourne has a digital model of all its new developments of course every site is unique but if you want to get an idea of which neighborhoods might soon be described as up and coming then maps like these are a really good place to start in theory new homes more businesses public parks and better infrastructure like train lines are all good things and so far all the effort that's gone into transforming battersea is starting to pay off the neighborhood's been topping lists of places to live high profile buyers like sting and bear grylls have snapped up properties here and despite slow sales at the start of the pandemic the developers told us they've sold 94 of all residential properties house prices right across battersea have more than tripled in the last 20 years now the average is three-quarters of a million pounds if you're a real estate developer local council or homeowner looking to sell some of your property to raise money that's good news but if you're a londoner looking for an affordable place to live [Music] not so much [Music] battersea is still very much an area in transition you can see the stark contrast just by crossing the road this is a good shot right through there look yeah look at that yeah it's a beautiful shot right through there the development two cities two worlds neil pinder grew up in patmore state a council housing development just across the street from the power station now he works as a professor of architecture trying to make the industry more accessible and decode some of the language used by architects and developers and so this is where i grew up here right number two this is where we used to we used to play football so we used to have massive football matches you know you know 15 aside [Laughter] literally the theory is that it's only a matter of time until these council estates that now find themselves on high value sites in the centre of the city are either demolished or prices go up by so much that the current tenants can't afford to stay to be very clear there are no current plans to demolish patmore estates but such a move wouldn't be unprecedented it may have once been home to 3 000 people but now it's coming down bit by bit another south london neighborhood called elephant and castle recently went through a similar regeneration to make way for a new private development on a prime site a massive public housing building was infamously demolished residents were uprooted from their homes and relocated there's almost like there's so much development happening around here now yeah it places like this under threat yes definitely because they're selling these off i mean one of these three bedrooms i think is about four three four hundred thousand once they've bought it he said they bought it what for you know x number percent discount savings i mean so they're making money which you don't begrudge anyone but who's going to be able to buy it for three four hundred thousand wandsworth the london borough that batsy power station sits in has a higher level of homelessness than london on average despite a surge in new housing in the last decade the number of people on the years-long public housing waitlist hasn't gone down in fact it's gone up still there are more than 87 thousand empty homes across london properties largely out of reach from the people that need them i think in time it will become it will change because the more people that sell and the more people that buy in there's the total change of uh uh i sort of demographics that's gonna actually live in here so in 20 30 years time if a lot more of it is sold and it's rented they're not going to be the same indigenous people that were here to begin with they will move out and go somewhere else where they can get a cheaper property but this property will be their own and so that's how the whole neighborhood will actually change so you want to probably recognize it in 20 30 years time battersea's affordable housing is being built across the street from the power station near patmore state the developers told us the affordable housing residents will all have a private balcony and access to 24-hour concierge service and communal green spaces other new developments across london have mixed social and luxury housing in the same building down the road in nine elms the affordable housing units in embassy gardens are managed by a different company and residents reportedly have to use back doors to enter the building they aren't given access to luxury amenities like the gym or open-air skype all over near tower bridge another luxury development with social housing units has warned the tenants not to let their kids play in the shared spaces because the rooftop garden is for quiet enjoyment and developments like that around around the world are the same you know it's the developers want to make the maximum amount of money and we all know that when they develop it and they start crying that no we can't you know make enough money we've got to cut back on the social hazard that's some long story which they always give but it's always the same it's not for the people of the area i guess i would first ask these people if they've ever visited in person people that i speak to that's not their impression when they come here when they leave i think a lot of people see things like the public realm for example it's not a gated community that anyone can come here they see everything that we're offering for the public as well as people who have invested here you know you can come to balazi and not spend a single pound you can enjoy the park you can enjoy the river to be clear battersea power station isn't just new private housing the public can visit the spaces like the park and new shops and restaurants across the site battersea's developers told us that they've made a lot of investments into the local community through things like creating a community choir holding a local jobs fair donating more than 2 000 refurbished laptops to people in wandsworth launching a community forum to discuss the new development and contributing over 300 million pounds to building a new tube station it is open for business but not only is it open for business it is unlocking opportunities for the people of wandsworth at this point you may be thinking gentrification gentrification is forcing residents out of neighborhoods this is a mark of gentrification as i see it and gentrification has come in we used to have to change our address to get a job now we have to change our job to sustain that address it's a word that's tossed around a lot but it's not always clear what it means it's a reinvestment in the built environment but also then it's just changing the social uses of the environment in the sense that it goes up market if you like think less low-cost markets more high-end shops or less low-income renters and more high-income homeowners of course this doesn't just happen in london neighborhoods all around the world go through transitions like this it's not everyone benefiting from the rebirth of an area just some people normally those with money and that's not great for building a community gentrification can occur for a whole variety of reasons but when we think about regeneration that's so much a process which is driven by the state you've already got gentrification going on in london what what those regeneration schemes have done is that they've added they fueled the sort of gentrification effects to make it even worse countries all around the world are struggling with housing right now urban populations are growing there's a shortage of land materials and construction workers and prices for everything are going up that's led us here for housing crisis housing housing crisis housing prices millions of americans are priced out of buying a home la is the least affordable city in the entire country it's getting so bad in some areas that local families are being forced to move into caravan parts challenge facing first-time buyers today is bigger than anything we've seen the average berlin rent has doubled over the last decade building homes is what is important it is not to be a star performer for the speculative sector internationally or anything else in some of the most expensive cities like hong kong munich singapore or los angeles the average home price is now nearly 1 million us dollars for a whole generation of people home ownership has become a distant dream so why aren't our governments just building more affordable housing well to put it simply they don't really have the money to do it local councils in london have been facing funding cuts for years and their budgets are tight meanwhile the demand for housing has grown into a crisis and they need to build a lot more homes they also find themselves in the possession of what are now extremely high value areas of land in the heart of one of the world's most desirable cities land that developers will happily pay big money for so throw in the uk central government not giving them enough cash to build all the homes they need to and councils have a high motive to turn elsewhere and specifically to private developers bluntly they can build more homes by selling land to private developers than if they were to try and build them using their own resources in theory a big new development will include some affordable housing and would contribute the overall wider economic development of a borough but in reality that's all proved a lot more difficult it's in those glimmers that our side sees what could have been identical is a councillor in wandsworth he's a cabinet member sits on the housing council and has been an outspoken critic of the vauxhall nine elms battersea regeneration scheme it's a watered down vision of what any kind of like municipal project of building socialism would look like it's the the only kind of like crumbs that we're getting at the moment is like this bit that we get from private development now london boroughs typically require 30 to 50 percent of new developments to be classed as affordable housing but those rules aren't written in stone and the definition of affordable in london isn't as straightforward as you may think for a while it just meant social housing but the government has changed the definition to include homes up to eighty percent of the market rent battery power station's affordable units are available for people to buy through a shared ownership scheme that's designed to make owning a home more affordable they'll also be rental units available at a subsidised rate and the first residents are set to move in this year to buy a stake in the smallest studio at new mansion square you'll need a household income of at least sixty five thousand pounds nearly thirteen thousand pounds for a deposit and you'll pay around sixteen hundred pounds a month the battery power station developments promise to build some 600 affordable homes or 15 percent of the total new units being constructed but in 2017 that number was nearly cut in half to just 386 homes or nine percent of the total units a move the developers put down to technical issues you have to look at it in the wider context because what we're delivering at badazi is so much more than just affordable housing as our community offering we work very closely with our local stakeholders once we council and when we looked at everything that we were putting forward affordable housing the public realm the new infrastructure that we delivered with the tube all of those commitments we said if you look at everything holistically we're delivering so much more than i would say the average developer and you know in recognition of that our affordable housing obligation you know was was scaled back proportionately but we do have an upside such that if we're able to deliver more in the future we will now scaling back promises on affordable housing once the scheme has started isn't unique to battersea it's not uncommon for developers to secure the approvals needed to build and actually start construction then cut some of the affordable housing for one reason or another it may be a breach of what was agreed but most councils wouldn't want to scupper the whole thing because of it they're often in a weaker position of influence than the developers these organizations are sharks they fundamentally their interest is to their shareholders and they will take councils to court in new york billionaires row developers got around an affordable housing requirement by building units miles away in the bronx though technically still contributing new affordable housing within the city limits even in rural england there are reports of developers breaking their promise to build affordable housing people often say well you know the developers are being greedy they're not being greedy they're just doing what private developers do they're not it's not the job of private developers to provide social housing that's not their job their job is to provide income for their shareholders that's that's that's what their job is private developers are not in the business of providing social housing because there's no profits in it [Music] the need for affordable housing isn't going away and new construction can be part of the solution the best cities thrive on diversity and we've got to house everyone that wants to live in them not just the wealthy we need new homes and we have a whole industry of amazing people who can build them but how to ensure these projects are helping solve the housing crisis rather than just making it worse proposals in london include city authority plans to build new affordable housing changing the definition of what affordable really means restricting rent increases giving public housing tenants more protection and working with existing communities to upgrade the estates they already live in rather than just letting them deteriorate i believe that people like me people like you people who live in london and who invest in london should be the people that are designing the cities around london in london they deserve it they deserve to design their own environments not somebody else coming in and posing what their ideas of architecture should be the mayor of london has funded the construction of more than 11 000 new council homes that have begun construction in the last few years and is proposed raising the affordable housing requirement to 50 of new homes but there's still a long way to go to address the quarter of a million londoners waiting for public housing the london mayor's office didn't respond to our requests for comments on the impact of its regeneration schemes of course this issue is much bigger than battersea or even london the cost of housing globally has skyrocketed over the last two decades the un says the world now needs to build 96 000 new affordable homes every day to house the billions who are going to need access to them by 2030 while there's no silver bullet there are examples we can learn from and some countries are trying out new building materials and practices but this crisis can't be solved by construction techniques alone and it's not really construction costs that are the issue since the pandemic began the number of households at risk of eviction in canada has grown to a quarter million it is a battle over affordable housing in west philadelphia protesters setting up camp outside university city townhomes at 40th and market streets which residents say is one of the only remaining affordable housing units in the neighborhood governments need to see the critical importance of affordable housing in cities and actually make investments in it or create the conditions for external investments in genuine widespread affordable housing to happen in vienna the city owns about a quarter of the housing stock and is spending money on new public housing with green spaces nearly four in five people in singapore live in public housing and are able to purchase their properties below market value in certain communities over in germany there's been a big push on tenants rights and a move to reclaim housing from private developers there are plenty of ideas out there but none of them can work on their own the real challenge is finding the political will to get this done to truly fix the affordable housing crisis cities will need to lower inequality in their societies as a whole [Music] we find ourselves at an extraordinary moment in history our societies suffer from huge wealth inequality there's unprecedented demand for affordable housing lots of new construction is happening large areas are being irreversibly transformed and many apartments are sitting empty the result is a sort of hollowing out about inner cities that our current systems seem unable to stop london's tube map splits this massive urban area into radial zones living in zone one is a joke zone two is extremely expensive and most people now shoot for a place in zones three or four at best in time that outward march will continue what's left in the middle as london populations grow and grow and housing becomes more of a rarity or scarcity these should have been at least not their term as affordable housing or affordable rent it should be a rent that they could afford everybody could afford and then they feel part of the community they feel part of london again balancing power station has added a lot of new jobs and economic benefits by building something for the public out of essentially nothing now anyone can go to the park eat drink or shop by the river on a site that used to be wasteland making that possible is no small feat and testament to the power of this industry [Music] for someone who loves construction getting up to projects like this is an amazing experience this incredibly ambitious scheme has saved arguably one of the world's most famous heritage buildings and brought enormous amounts of new housing to a former derelict site of london to an area of london that sat abandoned for decades but i can't help but feel that the type of housing that's been created here wasn't really what the city needed right now and that's a problem that's not unique to battersea or even london it's a global issue if we want our urban areas to thrive we're going to have to build in a way that caters to everybody [Music] you

Channel: The B1M

Views: 1,707,656

Keywords: B1M, TheB1M, Construction, architecture, engineering, The B1M, Fred Mills, building, battersea power station, nine elms, london, london mayor, sadiq khan, regeneration, apartment hunting, luxury housing, luxury development, luxury flats, vauxhall, UK, Heritage, battersea, embassy gardens, patmore estate, wandsworth, BPSDC, Mace, affordable home, sky pool, billionaires row, millionaire homes, real estate, billionaires, why new york's billionaires row is half empty

Id: 6nzzUmhs2rc

Length: 31min 28sec (1888 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 31 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/You_Paid_For_This]

TL;DW

Gentrification.

No one is building affordable housing.

A specific example of a building project in London. Renters are being evicted to build new housing that is extremely expensive, and the property developers are breaking/skirting the rules on affordable housing.

[u/Daltesse]

give the Councils the ability to build new houses and rent them out. Impose a ban on councils selling land to private developers.

Zone some mid-level 5 or 6 over 1s and green spaces in areas with rail access to nearer "big" cities. And if there's no rail access... lay more fucking track

[u/Bill_Badbody]

Watched it last night, great video.

[u/vimefer]

Here's another vid on the topic, also from a Brit-centric PoV (most of the problems of British housing are also present in Irish housing):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZxzBcxB7Zc

The root of the issue comes from treating housing as investment instead of the critically-important long-term consumable it really is.

The special inertia on the real estate market, and the fact housing is pretty much the single most important priority spending slot for mostly everyone, mean it acts as the last funnel for mal-investment (misallocated capital excess). Meaning it acts as the ultimate financial refuge of bailout-ees and bankrupted states. There's a simple solution to that: raising interest rates, but the obvious conflict of interest makes it near-impossible to use. All those super-luxury housing developments should turn into losses to all those involved. The high-end projects should crash and burn, the banks leveraging those should go bankrupt, if there was any decency and justice in this world.

I've also proposed a buildable-land preemption mechanism for owner-occupiers who want to build their own home, and some form of assistance or streamlining with the conception, planning and preparation of sites, but that's a lot more complex to pull off than most polities are willing to invest efforts in.

The tragedy is that damage has already accumulated over decades, so we will have to pull through most of it regardless of what measures are taken now ("no easy way out").