Pyschotropicgeography

Full confession. For a long time I had a professional involvement as well, on the sidelines of the housebuilding and regeneration business. 

This is a country in which property ownership is an addiction. One result is that we have some of the world's highest land values and more of the price you pay goes into paying for the site and less into the building itself. (Dry economics. I will unpack it in a postscript). A result is that most of the buildings are small and unattractive so a dark art must be used to persuade people that they are worth the price. I call it pyschotropicgeography.

Psychogeography is about how places affect our emotions and behaviour. You will find my view of it here: Psychogeography - Without Enthusiasm   It suggests that you build an image of a place to please yourself, with arcane and hidden histories, ley lines, ghosts or whatever. 

Psychotropic drugs have the same aim. 

Psychotropicgeography marries the two in the interest of selling property, building images of a cool urban or chilled rustic lifestyle in a stimulating (and of course sustainable) environment. In Baum's 'The Wizard of Oz', the Emerald City is not green; they simply require you to wear green tinted glasses. It is fairly harmless humbug. 

In contrast, here it is the difference between the user and the dealer, kidding yourself or being kidded. You want a drink, the pyschotropicgeographer wants to spike it. But in what follows I won’t use that label very much, because while it made a good title, it is a ponderous handle with a spurious etymology and upsets my spell-checker.

What I want to do here, is to explore those dark arts and to invite you to join me in exploring  some of the dealer’s deceitful ways.

The cast of characters includes the developers and their agents, architects and planners. Their motivations vary. Developers are profit maximisers. They usually have to be because if you compete to buy land, you will usually overpay for it. The agents want to make lots of quick sales at fat prices. You might be surprised to know that they often care more about the former than the latter. Architects get a pre-determined fee but also want to be employed on future projects and have a personal interest in seeing their name in design mags. Planners have a desperate job in trying to play a poor hand to avoid stuff getting built that simply defecates on its surroundings.

Take for instance the masterplan for a big new inner city urban renewal scheme. Sip from the glass.

Barking Riverside Masterplan

Usually, the promotional material will be short on binding promises and long on adjectives. Artist's impressions and ‘lifestyle’ photos aim to convince you that your dream of a spacious, bright but cosy apartment (not a flat!) set in verdant greenery, is within your grasp. The extra hours of indentured labour that you and your family will endure to pay for it both now and through extortionate future service charges, will only be a fleeting inconvenience. A small price to pay.

The choice of perspective for the illustrations and doctored photos is never accidental. Have you noticed that older buildings often look better looking up, while many modern buildings seem to be designed to be best viewed from a helicopter, which is the view that architects choose to give you an idea of the layout of what the realised masterplan might look like. This shrinks the apparent bulk of the buildings and, with a bit of use of colour, emphasises the little dots of green and blue that are the communal and open spaces. In the pic below, you can see how they have increased the amount of apparent green space by adding grass to the roof of a building in the middle of a lot of concrete. Good trick.

Scheme for Trafford, Manchester

The helicopter view also hides the paucity of anything interesting at street level. The little that there is will be highlighted in a few focused artist's impressions which often use the limited open spaces as foreground, thus relegating the tower blocks to the backdrop. They might hint at the possibility of some useful shops and facilities. You want a butcher, baker and a candle stick maker but in practice the line up will more likely be hairdressers, estate agents, vape vendors and the suppliers of victuals to folks who discovered too late that fitting out a kitchen in a one-bed flat in the eyrie involves fixing a fridge over the cooker and blocking the window. All hail Fred van der Weij, inventor of the air fryer.

Those towering towers are just that. Long, upended rectangular blocks of concrete, glass and steel, distinguishable above ground level only by the pattern of balconies, supportive girdling or the tint of the glazing. You can see the sun, but not usually. 

Tottenham Hale proposal

This is Marie Kondo architecture; neat, bland, soulless and often beige or grey, thumbing its nose at the variegated skylines and lavish detail of the classical or gothic confections, or even the sparkly glazed gymnastics of some budget-blind post-modernist statements. And don’t think of going around the back.

Wembley Park

The accompanying 'artist's impressions' will depict this urban arcadia on a sunny day, inhabited by casually dressed thirty-somethings (even the token ‘senior’ loses the wrinkles!) strolling around a water feature in the middle of some neatly mown grass with perhaps some lump of iron or granite posing as ‘art’. You can assume that they are discussing film noir or the price of crypto and sipping lattes or matcha teas outside funky cafes which are certainly not Starbucks, Costa or any other vendors of insipid beige mud. It is always sunny there, even though the towering blocks do a better job than suntan lotion of cutting your risk of skin cancer. And if in practice the sun might prove a little shy, you can add it with photoshop. 

Water Gardens, White City

They are all presumably keen users of rental bikes and you are asked to suspend disbelief that they will be found neatly lined up on a stand in the background rather than dumped on the pavements or, heaven forbid, in the water feature.

The flats and houses themselves are expanded by wide-angle photography and deceptively small furniture in show suites where bright colours lighten dark rooms and the ceilings are raised in photos shot from a low level. Don’t ask where the storage space is and, if you are buying a flat, keep in mind that the candle stick maker is important when the power is cut and you have the choice between staying put or walking down and up forty flights of unlit stairs.

The Duke of Westminster owns the Grosvenor 'Estate'. But the place in the brochure is not an estate. Rather, it is called a ‘Quarter’, to reinforce the feeling that you are buying into a community with the colourful but chummy and creative seediness of a low-rise Paris Arrondissement while enjoying the facilities of a Palm Beach mansion. This doesn't always work.

Peel Park Quarter, Salford

In all this, I have some new-ish London schemes in mind, but it is the same elsewhere, albeit probably with a lower budget and a bit more of a ‘stack-a-pleb’ vibe as you can see above. But pyschotropicgeography is also used to embellish the quotidian reality of new developments in the hinterland, most visibly in the urban extensions that Governments are keen on. 

Cambourne, Cambridge

These are mostly covered in small houses. Here, the aerial perspective can be counterproductive, showing just how much of the land is covered by roads too narrow to park on. So you get the website, brochure and a laughable video in the sales suite.

The new houses – there are lots and little else - are usually plucked from the housebuilders style menu because standardisation saves money. In case that gets rumbled by buyers who want to be individualistic, just like everyone else, they will often add a few local touches to give the place the thinnest patina of local authenticity imaginable and to mollify the design junkies in the planning department. Pantiles in Kent, ersatz slate the the South West, weatherboard in Sussex and limestone anywhere near the Cotswolds.

Cotswold Vernacular

In the least appealing corners of the scheme, you will find the affordable housing, set in less open space to reduce the amount of land needed to meet a planning requirement minimised by persistent bleating and built to a lower budget. Forget the porch and bay windows. I recall once being challenged by a major developer to distinguish the affordable from the market housing in a Thameside scheme. Even in a block of flats, it was easy, even before the occupants had hung their iffy curtains. 

The masterplan shows houses spread out on a background that emphasises the type of greenery that looks good on a masterplan. It isn’t clear what you can do with it. No one has paved the front patch yet. And it doesn’t lend itself to football let alone maypole dancing. There might well be a water feature, probably because there is a need for a balancing pond for floodwater. In time it might be surrounded by a fence to protect anyone from getting sued when the kid drowns while the child minder is doom-scrolling. 

Balancing Pond

On the plus side, the retail offer might be a bit more practical. The estate agents might want to sell the place, but they don’t want to buy it or work in it. The depiction will show a friendly neighbourhood grocer, carefully unnamed to avoid the perspicacious imagining that it will be a Nisa or Spar.

It will have a vibrant hub. Obviously. Urban Planners of all stripes drool over them. Why? Because it genuflects to their romantic notion idea that the estate could become a genuine (fractious and inbred?) community. Who will run and maintain it? Good question. No idea. Experience suggests that they are rarely vibrant or a hub even if they do provide a home for very old and very young toddlers or, heaven forbid, the local Operatic Society.

In my book, vibrant hubs are the Queen Vic, The Rovers Return or the Bull in Ambridge. 

'Community' in the Queen Vic

Even with all this, when new, the houses can look neat. But then once upon a time, so did the seas of semis in the suburbs, and at least they started as usually larger and better-detailed buildings. Believe it or not, the original aesthetic was modelled on the country cottage aesthetic. That is hard to believe now when a century of ‘improvement’ and personalisation has rid them of much of the aura of totalitarian regimentation, but not in a good way. Will the new estates survive the same process with any more dignity? The omens are not good.

The origins of the  suburban semi

Finally, this is culled from a current agent’s pitch for a nondescript flat on a newish, ironically named estate in the northern Home Counties. Interestingly, the developer’s own spiel on the scheme focuses on the local market town and countryside rather than the estate itself and in fairness, they do have some attractions. I have done some homeopathic redacting, not wishing to offend the Gods of England by the ultimate sin of undermining house prices.

“Discover the epitome of modern living at Arcadia Park, an enchanting residential haven…..The allure of (the small flat) awaits you with open arms, promising a lifestyle of contemporary elegance and unparalleled comfort. As you step into this wonderful abode, a symphony of sophistication unfolds. 

 Imagine a kitchen adorned with sleek, soft-close units, seamlessly integrated appliances, and a touch of avant-garde flair. The bathroom becomes a sanctuary of luxury, featuring Roca sanitary ware with gleaming chrome fittings and Porcelanosa ceramic wall tiles, creating an atmosphere of refined opulence.

But the true gem of (the small flat) lies beyond, as it welcomes you to an oasis of tranquillity – a South-facing patio bathed in the warm hues of the afternoon and evening sun. Picture yourself sipping your favourite beverage, basking in the glow of a spectacular sunset, and relishing the beauty that surrounds you. ….your every need is not only met but exceeded. 

Arcadia Park isn't just a collection of homes; it's a testament to a visionary approach to modern living. This isn't just a home; it's a gateway to a vibrant and dynamic community”.

Reality : The flats at Arcadia Park

Enough said on that: Here is some dry stuff, background on my initial comment on house sizes and land values. You can find data on the average size of homes here but keep in mind that this (I think) covers all homes, not just new ones: Home sizes worldwide  I did check a variety of other sources of data and my conclusion was that while the exact figures vary, the pattern is clear. 

House prices vary a lot between countries but also, crucially, within them. Again, the data is muddled but the pattern generally suggests that the UK is expensive. 

Why? 

England is a densely populated country. That doesn't help. But when you buy a place outside a city centre, a hefty chunk of the price you pay is going to the original vendor of the land. It is not unusual for or farmland worth (say) £10,000 acre to be sold for 20-200 times that. (Generally, the priciest land is within easy reach of a city offering well paid jobs). Often, the land owners did absolutely nothing to earn that windfall. They didn't pay for the roads, utilities, schools and whatnot that made development a practical proposition. This point was eloquently made by Winston Churchill (not a known lefty) in 1909. You can read his speech here: Churchill on Land

At those prices, in order to build houses at prices people are willing to pay, developers cram as much onto a site as the market and the Town Planners will tolerate. Hence our our houses and flats are so small. But in many more sensible countries the vendor would be paid something nearer what the land was worth for what it was being used for rather that what will be built - at someone else's expense - in the future. You might then get more and /or better and /or cheaper housing

We worship property rights and have done for centuries. In England, it used to be that only property owners had a right to vote! In short, you are being impaled on the long legacy of the British fetish of property ownership. Hard luck.