You’re a bit mixed up, Gordon

Perhaps that’s what Bruce Katz of New York think tank the Brookings Institution did. He shared a platform with the chancellor at an event to celebrate the centenary of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in July this year. Whatever the reason, Brown went away from Katz’s talk on the American approach to “new urbanism” deeply impressed.

One aspect he particularly liked concerned the Hope VI project, which, as we report on page 8, intervenes in failing communities by effectively starting again from scratch, with a complete refurbishment, and then ensures new residents are a mix of unemployed people, low-income earners and the better-off. As a result of Katz’s speech, one of his colleagues, Alan Berube, was seconded to the Treasury to work on how a similar approach may be used in the UK. The culmination of this work was two seemingly insignificant lines in last Thursday’s pre-budget report where the Treasury said the ODPM would shortly pilot an approach for “transforming deprived estates into mixed communities”. A throwaway line almost, but the Treasury is pretty excited about what it sees as social engineering.

The sector could be forgiven for feeling like it’s heard all this before, however. The provision of social housing is itself a form of social engineering – and housing officers have long recognised that the best way to turn round a failing estate is to mix up tenures. There are projects from Castlemilk to Clapham that stand as evidence to this. One need only visit John Prescott’s constituency in Hull (as we do on page 22) to see plans for massive government intervention that are intended to engineer the rebirth of an entire city.

A new pilot project that does something similar seems unnecessary. What would make more sense would be to turn the idea on its head and implement a similar “mixed communities” plan for some of the country’s sprawling private sector estates. Although this happens to a certain degree through the planning gain process, local authorities don’t always stipulate social housing as part of a section 106 agreement.

It would be more sensible to turn Brown's idea on its head and bring in mixed tenure in the private sector

Why not build on the idea expressed in these pages a few weeks ago by the Greater London Authority and pilot an approach whereby new developments have a far more prescriptive lettings policy that ensures a mix of social rented, affordable and private rent or sale properties?

This might not sit quite so well with Gordon Brown’s stated agenda to help the most deprived in the country – however welcome this is – or indeed with private housebuilders, but it could be a much more constructive step.