Wednesday 28 March 2012

"Sustainable development"

From the BBC:

What is 'sustainable development'?

That's part of the problem - critics of the draft plans said the phrase was too vague. It had been defined it as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" to be "interpreted and applied locally". The Commons environmental audit committee said the lack of a definition in draft plans opened the door to legal challenges.


That seems crystal clear to me.

If somebody wants to build something now it's because they need it now, so that meets the need of "the present". They're not depriving owners of other houses of their houses, they're not depriving them of anything. This is not a zero sum game, the sum total of human wealth increases when more houses are built in response to demand. For sure, owners of existing houses might lose the nice view or some of their privacy, but it was never 'their' view or 'their' privacy, was it? The view or privacy is just there in the negative, they just means an absence of other buildings, i.e. they are a measure of the amount by which the sum total of human wealth has been reduced.

The chances are that "future generations" will be glad that what we've built is already there when they arrive on the scene, in the same way as people who live in a house must be glad that the house exists; and they must have been glad that the house existed when they bought it (or else they wouldn't have bought it). It makes no difference how much somebody else may have objected to that house being built decades or centuries ago, relative to the past, we are the future etc. I've never met a NIMBY yet who agrees that his own house should never have been built, pays to have it demolished and moves into a tent.

Sorted.

6 comments:

Bayard said...

"If somebody wants to build something now it's because they need it now"

Not really. Most houses are built by developers on the gamble that someone might need them when they are built, i.e. in the future. This gamble doesn't always pay off - viz the houses now standing empty because the demand for them evaporated at the end of the housing boom. And anyway, we are not talking about building houses here, we are talking about getting permission to build houses. Then the actual need for a house is even further in the future. Not only that, but the person seeking permission to build often doesn't want to build anything, they just want to be able to sell on the land for considerably more than they paid for it.

"It makes no difference how much somebody else may have objected to that house being built decades or centuries ago"

NIMBYism is pretty new. You only have to go back a few decades before houses were built with almost noone objecting. Go back a century and new houses were almost universally seen as a Good Thing.

"I've never met a NIMBY yet who agrees that his own house should never have been built,"

yet it's always the offcomers, who moved into the new estate built five years previously, who shout loudest about the field next to them being turned into yet another estate.

neil craig said...

"Sustainable building" is a big thing in architecture these days. It means that the architect has schmoozed (etc.) the local councillor and donated to the approved party.

The meaning, in the English language, of sustainable is that the building will not fall down but this does not seem to be a consideration.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, yes, the planning gains are skimmed off by developers, that's all they care about, and that's why they half-finish houses and don't bother completing them because they are waiting for prices to go back up.

(LVT will sort all this out, in fact, once we have LVT we'll realise that there is plenty enough housing etc.)

Nonetheless, even the most unscrupulous developer knows that there's only a point building a house if somebody is going to want to buy it in the next couple of years, the demand is there, and the sum total of human wealth goes up (provided all houses are actually occupied, which clearly they aren't, but that's not the developers fault is it?)

Agreed on NIMBYism, it became the dominant force back in the 1970s or so, once owner-occupation levels crossed the magic 50% threshold.

Mark Wadsworth said...

NC "sustainable" is one of the most overused and hence meaningless words of all. I like your interpretation better.

Anonymous said...

"I've never met a NIMBY yet who agrees that his own house should never have been built, pays to have it demolished and moves into a tent."

Ahhh...the quotable Wandsworth!

Chuck said...

M, I spent 7 years asking my employers Environmental Manager that question. Never ever got an answer.
Our slavish approval of and adherence to it was trumpeted all over the annual report every year tho'.