Planning
Housing viability is the calculation that decides what gets built
Whether a scheme includes affordable homes is usually settled by a spreadsheet rather than by policy.
Planning
Zoning, permits, density and the paperwork that decides a skyline.
21 articles · updated August 11, 2026 · page 1 of 2
Planning
Zoning decides skylines more than architects do
The shape of a city is largely a legal document. Reading it explains buildings that otherwise look arbitrary.
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Planning
Density is measured in the wrong units almost everywhere
Dwellings per hectare tells you nothing about how many people are there, how much floorspace exists, or what the place feels like.
Planning
Growth boundaries move development rather than stopping it
A line drawn around a city constrains where building happens. Whether it constrains how much depends entirely on what is inside the…
Planning
Permitting time is a cost that ends up in the rent
Every month a scheme spends in the consent process is a month of financing charges on land that is producing nothing.
Planning
Fragmented land ownership keeps city plots empty for decades
Some of the best-located sites in a city sit vacant because assembling them requires agreement from too many people at once.
Planning
Conservation rules preserve the fabric and freeze the use
Protecting how a building looks is straightforward. Protecting what it can be used for, without meaning to, is the part that causes…
Planning
Who turns up to a planning meeting decides what gets built
Consultation responses are not a sample of anybody. They are a self-selected group with the time, information and confidence to…
Planning
Transit raises land value and cities rarely collect any of it
A new station makes surrounding land worth more overnight. The public paid for the station and the uplift lands in private hands.
Planning
Phase one is always the good phase
Masterplans front-load the park, the square and the good architecture. The later phases arrive under different owners and a worse…
Planning
Ground-floor retail is required by policy and often unlettable
Active frontage rules produce shopfronts on streets with no shoppers, which then sit empty and deaden the block they were meant to…
Planning
Brownfield land is expensive before anything is built on it
Reusing industrial land is the right answer environmentally and it starts with a bill for everything that happened there before.