On the block

Adapted for The Little Globe we print an extract from the forthcoming pamphlet by Carlton Hill resident Adrian Hart in which he charts how the campaign to influence development of the old Amex site led to bitter encounters with city planning and hard lessons on the reality of today’s globalised politics of  housing.  As the campaign evolved there was, however, an unexpected  silver lining ….read on…

This is the story of a gaggle of middle class, home-owning local residents – NIMBYs we might call them – who tried to stop a planning proposal to build 168       desperately needed new homes and 2000 sq feet of    urgently required office space for expanding businesses.  So selfish!  Doubtless their concern to preserve their lovely loft-conversion views and keep a hold of their jealously guarded parking spots is imagined to be more important than housing or employing people.   Can you believe it?

Actually don’t believe it.  It’s true that the story of the fight over what was to be built in the place of the old, recently demolished ‘Amex House’ site gets told this way but let me tell you how it really went down.  My story – the true story – is about a diverse bunch of residents – owners and renters, young couples, families with kids, students in houses – people on middle or low incomes, some struggling, some doing ok.  It’s about a motley crew who live in the old         terraces alongside the site and who were just about the exact opposite of NIMBYs.  In fact, this ramshackle  alliance (of which I’m proud to count myself ) were not only pro-development they actually (audaciously)    produced their own alternative plans and submitted them to the council (you can view them on the planning portal for BH2018/00340). 

Our radical re-balancing of the site placed tall buildings away from where people live and repositioned them in the north-west corner of the site where the nearest neighbours are the Amex office block and the Police Station.  Oh, and we exceeded all the city targets on new homes and offices.  We also respectfully pointed out that few, if any, of the officially proposed 168 new ‘units’, so gleefully endorsed by the Council as having something to do with Brighton’s ‘housing crisis’, were likely to be within reach of average earners. 

 The council’s ‘vision’ for the pretentiously named       Edward Street Quarter happily absorbed the leap in scale despite the planning brief they had put forward in 2013 (but hey, there’s a crying shortage of luxury   apartments so…)  But if you look at the plan you notice a strange air-corridor running from the Amex   Office across the roof of a surprisingly low building (building ‘B’) and on southwards to Edward Street and the sea.  A bit odd? – surely that was the spot to build high? 

 And then there’s the equally strange re-instatement of the tiny dead-end Mighell Street as a thru-route.  Mighell Street had been a street of old terraced houses up until 1965 running southward from Carlton Hill and connecting up with Edward Street.  You could be forgiven for regarding the re-instatement of old Mighell Street as a sweet idea until you realise its essentially daft.  It would be one thing if those houses built in the place of slums (following the 1890 Housing of the Working Classes Act) were to be reinstated (and according to the 1890 Act) but the new Mighell ‘street’ will be a corridor-like path flanked either side by buildings eight stories high (offices to the west, luxury flats – sorry ‘apartments’  – to the east).  The result will be an area hoping to tick the box for ‘public realm’ but which offers  next to no direct sunlight.  Oh dear, the ‘hell’ in Mighell has been let loose.

From the ocean will regularly come that familiar Brighton weather swirling up the hill and creating what architects call wind-funnelling.   So what? (you might think) inhabitants of these new flats and offices and perhaps a few lost members of the public may get blasted now and then as they scurry down this shadowy pathway;  they’ll  manage.  But it gets worse.  This nostalgic ‘reinstatement’ of the old terraced street (now a path) has to trace a north/south line extending  from the current Mighell Street.  This means the area available for the developer to place its luxury apartment blocks is too small.  In a perfect world architects would no sooner go ahead and cram the buildings in than you or I would cram an Ikea-sized double into a room where there’ll be almost no floor and the bloody door is going to slam into the bedside table (ok, I must admit I’ve done this but you get my point).

Its not a perfect world.  Its a world ruled by the market and, in this case, by land-value.  The developer needs to hit its minimum profit targets and only acts according to the parameters laid down by council planners (and in this case the parameter laid down by a private legal covenant ensuring the skyline view of the Amex office).   And so buildings have been jammed into this space and will stand there forever like supermarket delivery-vans gridlocked into the tiny streets of Hanover.    This urban-packing style of development results in buildings far closer to White Street’s west-side row of backyards than they should ever be.  At the hearing the council’s case officer admitted as much.  The overshadowing and total loss of sunlight for four homes in particular was, he said, ‘unacceptable’.  It was a surreal moment given that his recommendation to committee was to accept the proposal (but sacrifices have to me made I suppose – those     luxury apartments urgently needed by global investors aren’t going to build themselves!)

Sensitive as I am to the origins of the term ‘Nimby’, Not-In-My-Backyard seems a reasonable position if you’re living off a pension (like White Street resident 85 year old Queenie Saunders) and the postage stamp of backyard you call the garden of your small rented house will never see the sun after the construction of 8 stories of luxury apartments.   I don’t know about you but ‘Nimby’ seems a reasonable term to describe well-to-do village dwellers or socially unconscious suburbanites seldom stirred into protest action unless a planning proposal threatens their view of bluebell wood or the cricket green.    But that aside, for White Street residents, not in my F*@x!ING back yard!  seems, under the circumstances, an apt response.  

The NIMBY taunt sits in a different political context when it’s directed at ordinary people, powerless to stop the supply of dizzyingly expensive homes to buyers who are unlikely to ever include your kids or your grandkids or anyone you’ll ever know.  I’m being a bit unfair of course.  Decent, likeable people will come and live in these blocks.  Some will have nightmarish mortgages.  Some will tell you they’re renting from an overseas investor who bought a dozen in one swoop.  And when you hear they’re using 40% of their income to pay their rent or mortgage (and then the bills and then the service charge) maybe the nimbys of White Street won’t  begrudge them the sunlight their apartment block has sky-grabbed. In Big Capital, Who is London For? Anna Minton exposes the money, the power and the duplicitous politics transforming     London and cities across the globe into investment holdings and playgrounds for ‘alpha elites’.          Both the inhabitants of old working class estates and the middle class beneficiaries of  gentrification and ‘property ladders’ (that last luckier group includes me by the way) find themselves with more in common than they thought as both get swept aside by a     machine driven by the world’s oligarchs, billionaires and super-rich.  In Britain this new wave of global capital flow is attracted by a favourable tax environment and extremely favourable rates of return on both land and property.  If, over the last decade since the 2008 crisis, you ever wondered why that housing bubble never bursts, well, this is a clue. 

Does Anna Minton mention Brighton? Oh yes.  Her focus is London of course and the examples she gives of whole communities of working class  council housing dwellers forced out in order to build chic urban villages take your breath away.  And government, hand-in-hand with ‘heads of    regeneration’ in local councils, may as well      complete their gift to the investor elite by providing a red carpet and a Fortnum & Masons hamper for each smart-set buyer moving in. The same circuits of global capital are transforming San Francisco, New York and Vancouver in North America’ says Minton, and ‘European cities from Berlin to Barcelona and towns and cities in the UK, from Bristol to Manchester and Margate to Hastings.’ 

This isn’t gentrification, it’s another phenomenon  entirely.  Big Capital is a study of the global finance steamroller. And you don’t want to get in its way.  Anna Minton points to the dirty tactics of PR firms, lobbying companies and event organisers hired by developers to find ways of disrupting or discrediting local opposition.  She cites the 2008 plans to demolish the King Alfred sports centre on Hove seafront.  This ‘vision’ put forward by Frank Gehry for 750 luxury apartments generated sufficient controversy to warrant a surprisingly corny but no less shocking tactic.  Minton describes how an events company was hired to approach local drama students and, according to one student, offered ‘cash in brown  envelopes to attend a planning meeting and pose  as a supporter.’ 

The student told Minton that they were each paid to go there ‘and shout down the local opposition.’ 

Evidently one very helpful phrase to shout is ‘bloody NIMBYS!’ Big Capital describes how powerful      developers (and in many cases councils too)      cynically weaponise ‘NIMBY’ to infer that opposition must be middle class and hostile to the interests of working class people.  Skilfully linked to that other weaponised phrase ‘affordable housing’ (a buzz-phrase that no longer  refers to housing anyone on low or middle incomes can ever afford) developers set up a selfish middle class nimbys versus the  common people schism.  Shameless and duplicitous certainly, but it’s a hell of a magic trick; a ‘class war’ narrative spun around to further the interests of the global alpha elite!  In the case of the old Amex site development it is at least some consolation that the developer, First Base, wants to positively engage with the neighbourhood.  Before planning permission was granted its ‘community’ engagement was awful.     In the spring of 2018 a PR company was appointed to canvass the public and, apparently, encourage live ‘support’ comments submitted direct to the council’s planning ‘portal.’  Smiling young PR       operatives clutching Ipads decided to canvas art college students at the University’s Edward Street building opposite the site.  When told of the cafe’s, trees, green spaces, new homes and new sources of employment  intended for the vacant site,        students happily confirmed their support.  Several students (also neighbours) later registered their   dismay at having seeing their names, addresses and comments posted on the council portal.

In fairness to the developer I should say that they absolutely refute any suggestion that students were tricked.  But as news of the students experience spread around the neighbourhood it simply added to the anger already invoked by another incident.  Here the deveoper had got involved with a charity Sunday Roast event at Brighton Youth Club (just a stones throw from the Amex site). 

Intended for elderly and socially isolated members of the local community it was strange that residents of White Street (like Queenie Saunders for instance) or any nearby streets weren’t invited.  Again, in fairness, there may be a reasonable explanation.    Some of my neighbours, whilst similarly perplexed by the developers clutzy ‘PR’ strategy, urge that we put it all behind us now.  

I think they’re right.  It’s possible that the PR      company appointed back in the spring got a right bollocking.  As of November 2018 First Base have deployed their own recently appointed Stakeholder and External Relations officer.  To their credit First Base appear to have understood that if they’re to benefit from good ‘external relations’ existing    grievances need taking into account.  In the spirit of forging a renewed (this time) positive developer/neighbourhood relationship, First Base have agreed in-principle to fund a set of resident-led initiatives.   These include rejuvenating green space at the end of White/Blaker Street into a community garden, and a Sunday Roast event where the likes of Queenie are invited. And so if you’re reading this article on the pages of something called ’The Little Globe’ it means this  resident-led initiative also sprang to life thanks to a donation from First Base. This fresh approach to PR bodes well for the future given their stated aim is long term involvement with the community.

So how does this story end?   For developer and  investors it ends very well of course; their application granted despite an array of serious misgivings voiced by members of the planning committee.  Overnight the land-value of the site soared as it always does.   For planning chiefs and the council overall it ends very well too.   The council can now boast of another ‘victory’ in the battle to solve the cities ’housing crisis’ (an outrageous claim) and another employment-led boost to the local economy.  

If you’re a citizen of Brighton and Hove it ends badly. The only ‘housing’ crisis tackled is the one facing buyers of luxury apartments (often overseas buyers snapping up whole floors at a time) who just can’t find enough places to park their millions.  It ends badly because the lifeless architecture will deliver, as always, little or no genuinely affordable housing. And the much vaunted ‘high quality public realm’ will be—in my opinion—a bit crap (unless sun-starved wind tunnels are your thing).  For residents along White Street it is genuinely heartbreaking – two years of noise and dust ending in a cliff-face of seven storey boxes looming high above them where the sky used to be.