Does the Coalition鈥檚 attempts to breathe life into the idea of creating new settlements have the ability to save the housebuilding and development industry? This is the question I鈥檝e been asking over the last week, after digging in to the little-noticed surprise inclusion of a section on 鈥淟arge Scale Development鈥� in last autumn鈥檚 housing strategy.
The government is planning to publish a prospectus in the next couple of months for councils and developers that, working in partnership, want to bring forward plans for major urban extensions or new communities to express their interest.
Certainly it sounds encouraging. It鈥檚 nice to know that the localism agenda and government spending cuts, haven鈥檛 together completely ruled out the idea of strategic planning for a generation.
Done properly, planned new communities, such as the garden cities, can enable the construction of places with the whole gamut of services and infrastructure, built to a standard impossible to achieve with the limited resources available to in-fill developments.
But forgive me for being sceptical. The industry has long experience of government initiative following government initiative in this area 鈥� only for little concrete action to result. The communities department thinks it can avoid the pitfalls of Gordon Brown鈥檚 eco-towns programme with this initiative, by making sure the schemes have local council support.
That is indeed helpful, but it doesn鈥檛 mean by any sense that these schemes, even when identified, will be able to go ahead. Council support doesn鈥檛 mean there won鈥檛 be strong objection from the development鈥檚 more immediate neighbourhood. And it doesn鈥檛 tackle the primary problem with these schemes in the current economic climate 鈥� that of short-term viability.
Yes these schemes have the potential to make both great places and enormous pots of cash for either public or private investors 鈥� like the new towns did - but the returns only come in the long term. Most need a hefty subsidy in the early years, in order to pay for the up-front infrastructure costs. In the current environment those investors are hard to come by.
So, if I was a housebuilder I wouldn鈥檛 be betting much on this strategy right now. Welcome as the initiative is, it鈥檒l need real high-level focus to make it actually fly, and make a real contribution to the housing crisis we鈥檙e all facing.
And hands up who expects senior ministers to associate themselves with this push, after seeing what happened with Gordon Brown and his eco-towns. We could be waiting a while.
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