1)Pave over golf courses
Why does London have so many golf courses, and what useful function do they serve? Every day a small number of relatively well-off souls walk around acres of green space occasionally tapping a ball with a stick. In a capital city of limited extent, this is a luxury we cannot afford. There are in fact over 100 golf courses in London covering approximately 3% of the capital by area, a ridiculously wasteful proportion. A lot of fairways are also very close to existing railway stations so could swiftly become a key part of a new 21st century commuter belt. Let's take back our golf courses, perhaps not all in one go but nine holes out of every eighteen. This would leave perfectly sufficient space to play... and if we ever chose to go the whole hog, players could easily drive to an unsullied course in the Home Counties instead.
2)Rebuild Pinner
It doesn't have to be Pinner, it could be Carshalton or Sidcup or Woodford or anywhere else that's low-density suburbia. In such a place we find innumerable avenues lined by semi-detached houses, the very essence of desirable Metroland living. But what a waste! All those properties occupied by a single household when the residential footprint could support so many more. And all those gardens, front and back, where nobody lives bar a host of wildlife and the occasional gnome. We should bulldoze the entire suburb and start anew, reallocating the land to a series of multi-storey blocks and stacked apartments, increasing the population density to its full potential. Sure, we'd give those displaced by demolition first choice in the new development so nobody need ultimately miss out. But imagine the boost to housing stock that the wholesale rebuilding of Pinner and/or Carshalton and/or Sidcup and/or Woodford could achieve.
3)Build moderately high
Skyscrapers aren't the solution, they're widely unpopular because any new residential building over 20 storeys high is essentially lifestyle posturing. Flats in such developments sell for exorbitant amounts as portfolio investments, not as somewhere to live, as luxury marketing campaigns make clear. Why should we pander to foreign speculators by building inexorably upwards, as what should be essential capacity in the sky ultimately goes to waste? Instead let's slap a ban on any property above a certain height whilst simultaneously insisting that every new development reaches at least the eighth floor. By adopting the building policy of our European neighbours and creating a medium-height default for all residential structures, our capital could be transformed into an apartment-friendly meritocracy in which all are equal.
4)Student accommodation
When you were at university you probably lived in a single room with shared facilities down the hall. These weren't the best living conditions of your life but you coped, indeed you probably enjoyed communal living immensely. So let's make student accommodation the new default for the under 30s. Move our young people into tiny apartments - let's not call them cells - and stack them high. Provide a bed and a sink and a wardrobe, add wi-fi and a big screen on one wall, and most indebted youth will think they're in heaven. There'd be privacy so the set-up's a big step up from flatshare, but also all the fun of standing around in the kitchen and bonding over pasta. And yes it'd mean lowering the housing aspirations of a generation, but when they were never going to own their own home anyway let's at least provide their very own box to rent.
5)Choose innovative solutions
How about a monthly lottery every Londoner would want to participate in, where five winners each get a free house of their own and the proceeds pay for those five but also fifty more? How about covering half the football pitches in London with cul-de-sacs, because the ratio of home matches to away matches suggests only 50% of them are really needed? How about adding a new stop to HS2, somewhere beyond Ruislip, and building a massive new town called Harefield Quarter? How about forcing everyone who's built a luxury basement to move into it and then donate all their upstairs rooms to the homeless? How about polling Londoners to find the ten drabbest parks in the capital and then covering them with homes instead? Innovative thinking is what's needed, not the blinkered nimbyism of politicians worried about being re-elected.
6)Develop the 'Grey Belt'
About 22% of Greater London is Green Belt, including over half of the boroughs of Havering and Bromley. But not all of it is attractive wildlife-rich buffer zone, some of it is scrappy paddock, featureless field or derelict waste and could safely be converted to acres of much needed housing. This so-called Grey Belt is the key to unlocking the potential of land adjacent to dozens of underused transport nodes and creating a string of 21st century neighbourhoods, all far less damaging than the original expansion of London which gobbled up vast tracts of prime agricultural land. Let's start with that big field on Fairlop Plain, 1ΒΌ square miles of inaccessible furrows which could take twenty thousand homes no trouble, and bring hope to miserable families who've been crammed into inadequate accommodation for years. Most of those who'd complain don't live anywhere close by anyway.
7)Compulsory flatshare
Single people are one of the biggest drains on our housing stock. They swan around in properties that could easily hold two, as married couples repeatedly prove, and are solely responsible for the length of housing waiting lists in London. As the capital's population swells we can no longer afford the luxury of bathrooms used only by one and kitchens used solely to generate single servings. It's therefore essential that every Londoner living alone should be compelled to double up, if not with a soulmate then in a marriage of convenience, instantly releasing hundreds of thousands of properties to the market. Not only would the price of property stabilise as supply meets demand, but single people would find their rent or mortgage payments halved, and maybe even a new partner. It's win win win.
8)Extend London
At present Greater London covers 33 boroughs across six hundred square miles. But why stop there? The economic influence of our capital extends far beyond its 1965 boundary, so let's embrace peripheral districts and swallow them whole. Watford belongs in London, and Dartford and Epsom too. Hell let's take Slough and Brentwood, and the Gatwick conurbation, even Hatfield and Harlow, and make Greater London greater still. At a stroke we could double its size and vastly increase its housing stock, and all this without a single extra penny being spent. Better still, those priced out of Outer London could then easily find an affordable home in New London, leaving room for those in Inner London to escape the property bubble at its heart. It makes sense to embrace the extended future our capital deserves for the benefit of all.
9)Build above things
Londoners are well used to living above things, like shops, supermarkets, even rebuilt churches, so let's go the whole hog and build above things not normally considered to be residential land. TfL can lead the way with homes above stations, or better still linear apartments covering the open-air railway lines inbetween. Nobody in the trains needs to see daylight, plus they've all got 5G down there now, and the resulting flats would all have the benefit of being exceptionally close to good transport connections. A lot of major roads would look prettier if they were hidden by housing, that's a given. And for the ultimate in elevated living why don't we build a raft of flats across the Thames estuary, somewhere down near Thamesmead where nobody will complain, because all that airspace is currently being wasted.
10)Blue sky thinking
We could perhaps build more affordable housing - and that's properly affordable, not mortgaged beyond the reach of the average non-banker. We should stop listening to greedy developers who claim construction won't be profitable unless they can build what they want, rather than what the community needs. We ought to stop green-lighting developments whose sole purpose is the accumulation of cash for faceless investors, if only our leaders had the resolve. We should consider funding accommodation from the public purse, an admittedly radical departure, rather than insisting taxes mustn't rise because society's better off that way. We might even come to the conclusion that housing is a basic need and a human right, rather than a nest egg asset to be preserved at all costs. But you're right, this would be mere blue sky thinking, and the other nine solutions are far more likely.
