Isolationist tendancies and the UK housing market

Sorting through some old files I discovered something I started writing when I was researching suburbs and transport at university about 7 years ago. I couldn't decide what to do with it, so thought I'd post it here. Then I'll have an empty folder....


The cliché has it that "An Englishman's house is his castle" and in many ways that phrase still seems to ring true today. Research into residential preferences indicates that the Brits still want to be able to "pull up the drawbridge" and keep the ills of society out. House buyers aspire to detached houses spaced out from one another in socially exclusive areas with as few people passing by as possible. Most people prefer to be located away from facilities such as shops, pubs and public transport.

Achieving this ideal could have drastic consequences for the sustainability and social inclusion agendas. The land take involved in constructing detached houses to meet market demand would be enormous and car dependency would almost certainly escalate. In social terms, polarisation would intensify, with those not able to afford this detached utopia having to accept living in ghettos i the rejected areas.

This may all seem unrealistically improbable, and indeed in terms of rapid short term change it is. However if we examine trends in living patterns it becomes clear that these changes have been taking place steadily for many years.

So what are the causes of these trends? Most important in them must be the increase in teh middle classes. As more and more people see incrased income levels, location choices are opened up to people who previously had no choice over where they lived. Given the choice of isolating themselves and their families from perceived or real crime, noise and other social ills, many will exercise that choice. Secondly, in the UK we have an investment culture, with high property ownership levels and an expectation of increases in the value of our property. This means property buyers always have one eye on teh future, and aim for "safe" investment buys. Thirdly, rising car ownership has given people the opportunity to choose isolation, with proximity to facilities becoming unimportant, and increasing the need for space to permit a high level of car use.

In a market society we could argue that people should be allowed to choose freely how and where to live, however the impacts on society and the environment would be great, especially in such a small densely populated island. What has still not been explored in the UK is using new forms of development which allow people to retain a degree of isolation whilst also retaining a high focus on sustainable development and social inclusion. Perhaps it is time to look beyond the "suburban" and investigate the "semi-urban".