Getting It Wrong In Housing?

The media and the current political debate about housing is one of the central features of domestic politics with the parties trying to outbid each other in persuading the electorate they are the ones to provide for the future.

So when I drive past some of the housing estates being built on the edges of our town, like many other places, the builders are busy and putting up the kind of houses we have known for many decades, but smaller.

Are they the right kind of houses and properties?  The demographics of the present, lifestyles and sources of current demand may mean that the kind of routine building of the past does not fit any more.

We are not alone in this, the same might apply in other states and in the USA.  This brief and perceptive article from the Boston Globe sets out the nature of the problem and points to a critical failure of understanding about what is needed in the 21st Century.

It will take a radical shift in planning, building and financing to bring what is needed into balance with what is being built.

Should we invite our Boston neighbours round for tea?