A Plan for York

Aims …

• To reduce inequality
• To promote environmental living
• To increase neighbourliness
• To plan good local services
• To make York an example for the world

Reducing inequality

In much of the world, inequality is increasing. According to economist Gary Stevenson, the 70 years since World War II have been an anomaly: in most eras, across most advanced civilisations, a small proportion of society has been very rich while the majority has been poor. High taxation on the wealthy after WW2 helped make societies less unequal.

Stevenson argues that rising inequality has driven the surge in house prices. As the rich accumulate more wealth, they invest heavily in assets—particularly housing—bidding up the prices that everyone else must pay in rents and home purchases.

However, it is important to note that a large proportion of property value reflects the right to have a building on a plot of land, rather than the value of the structure itself (the “bricks and mortar”) or the land’s value for any alternative use. In the UK, these property-location rights are created through planning permission, issued mostly by local councils. In many areas, large landholdings mean that these rights are concentrated among a small number of landowners, who can then demand monopoly prices for any development.

If the value of property-location rights could be reduced, the cost of housing could fall. This will happen if more such rights are created (i.e., more planning permissions are issued), and if monopoly positions are challenged through the threat or use of compulsory purchase. While this would make housing cheaper, it would also reduce the asset values of existing property owners. Inequality would fall as a result.

A political danger

Economist Henry Fudge describes the many historical conjunctions of high property prices and the development of more extreme politics – both left and right. As a first example cites the time when the Roman Empire was failing. Land prices soared as a rich few acquired large holdings evicting small farmers, who moved to the cities to become the urban poor. We are similarly creating an under-employed underclass.

Promoting environmental living

In 2019, York Council adopted a policy of net-zero emissions by 2030. The motion specified that emissions should be measured on a consumption basis. Now the policy is to measure emissions on a territorial basis.

Based on York’s estimated population of 209,301 residents and the latest local inventory data, a citizen of York has an estimated annual territorial footprint of 3.62 tonnes of CO2e, and an estimated annual consumption footprint of 11.04 tonnes of CO2e.

York Council does not disclose when the change from consumption emissions to territorial emissions was made. Microsoft’s Copilot AI notes:

“York’s climate policy effectively switched from consumption-based emissions accounting to territorial emissions between 2019 and 2022, with the decisive break occurring during the development of the York Climate Change Strategy 2022–2032.

“However — and this is crucial — no publicly available source explicitly states the moment of the switch. The shift must be inferred from the documentary record.“

By choosing a measure of emissions that happen in the vicinity of York citizens rather than a measure of the emissions they cause, York Council is aware of the optics of climate change mitigation but does not want to confront the reality.

Promoting neighbourliness

There is a tendency for people to form friendships with those whom they encounter often. This was studied by Leon Festinger, Stanley Schachter and Kurt Beck in the 1950s in prefab estates that housed mature student families at MIT. It helped explain the the development of neighbourliness in different housing types.

Frequent informal encounters between neighbours can promote friendships and neighbourliness but privacy is also a consideration. In The impact of design on privacy and social interaction between neighbours …, Morag Linsay writes:

“Reduced levels of privacy have been shown to have a detrimental effect on a person’s mental health: levels of social withdrawal increase as people avoid social interaction, engage more in solitary pursuits and use more cues of withdrawal such as reduced levels of eye contact.”

Neighbours standing just outside just outside your kitchen window are invading your privacy but when they are, say, 15 metres distant, they are a neighbourly wave and a smile away. There are, of course, difficulties when neighbours are not the kind of people you want to know. The choice of good neighbours may be outside the scope of planners but can be affected by other actions of the local authority.

Neighbourliness is affected by housing type. As noted above, the propensity for neighbourliness varies from sparse for multi-storey flats to a close sense of community in traditional prefab estates.

Providing good local services

Local services are in decline – a trend pushed along by the rise in car ownership. (Local shops close as cars move in.) When residents get in their cars and drive to regional shopping centres, rather than walking to local facilities, traffic is generated and the informal meetings between locals at local services is reduced. Localities become traffic bound and community spirit declines.

York Council should explore ways to support local services. For example by rewarding the social work some local shops do e.g. replacing light bulbs for elderly neighbours.