Care for the community

Lord Rogers’ report, Towards an urban Renaissance, is an intelligent and weighty volume. It is, however, likely to have less effect on the regeneration of the cities than market forces.

The price of London residential property, for instance, is now at an all-time high. It is this pressure that is forcing those who cannot afford the now fashionable areas to extend their search for accommodation to types of buildings and districts that would never before have been worth consideration.

As a result, the renaissance of urban London is now well under way, driven by the expectation that yesterday’s industrial or commercial liability, smartened up as residential accommodation, will yield tomorrow’s tax-free capital gain as a primary residence.

A city more dramatically different from London than Venice – in scale and content – would be hard to find. In the past 10 years, Venice has undergone a revival. Buildings that had been allowed to deteriorate have been restored. Buildings that had no use are finding new purpose – things are going slowly perhaps but the city is coming back to life.

The cause of this change is, again, market forces. It is hard to persuade owners of financially worthless properties, however aesthetically and socially valuable, to shell out money on them. Less hard, however, is persuading them to spend money restoring those buildings when they know they are worth millions.

Lord Rogers’ taskforce calls for government action to force owners to look after their property. His committee thinks owners of poorly maintained, empty residential properties should be forced to pay more council tax. But people do not respond well to higher taxes as an incentive. Far better to offer them a subsidy to restore these properties and let the market do the rest.

The report wants to remove VAT from renovation work on residential property. However, Europe will not stand for that; the European way is to subsidise renovation rather than to reduce taxation. For the enlightened individual who moves to a neglected district and wishes to restore a derelict property, finding financial backing is often a problem – particularly if imagination is needed to see value in a derelict property situated in a “bad” area.

Government would do well to play a role in helping funds reach the right place at the right time. Lord Rogers puts a great deal of faith in local authorities, which some commentators have compared with the Thatcher approach to local government; chiefly based on the belief that Labour authorities wasted tax-payers’ money, whereas Conservative-controlled authorities saved it.

It is people who create an environment congenial to themselves, and it is the job of government to help

But if there is one piece of legislation that can help realise the aims of the Rogers report, it is that which allows dwellers to buy their own council housing. Whatever you may feel about the merits of local government, there is no doubt that local authorities’ powers can make or break the idea of urban regeneration.

However, despite the fact that planning laws for those wishing to work at home were eased in the 1980s, the “home above the shop” is still a rarity. Continental cities benefit enormously from having a lot of people living near their work. But British cities tend to be made up of those who cannot afford to leave for suburbia or the countryside, and those who nest in the city during the working week.

Resident communities in Britain’s cities are largely made up of one-level wealth, each particular level of wealth finding a district to suit it. This cannot lead to the creation of a satisfactory community.

In European cities, particularly those around the Mediterranean and Adriatic, districts are mostly made up of people who have disparate levels of wealth. The cause of this is the [civil law] Code Napoleon, which makes property hard to dispose of without moving an entire family, keeping families together and providing a great variety of age and prosperity in one district.

The Rogers report is of considerable importance because it addresses far more than merely the planning of our inner cities. It is an essential start to a change in direction, a change in thought that is long overdue. It is people who create an environment that is congenial to themselves, and it is the job of government at all levels to make this process as easy as possible.

When government fails to help, it is obvious. The people who can afford to do so simply move elsewhere, depriving the community of its most inventive and active members.

During the Italian Renaissance, at least three masterpieces were painted of the perfect city.