it's grim down south

It’s grim down south. On Surrey stockbrokers’ gravel drives Chelsea tractors are unloved and dusty after the school run. Sunday mornings stretch interminably for Essex girls and boys, their gti’s unwashed. Retired colonels in Folkestone keep stiff upper lips as their compulsory water meters are installed. They know that their rainfall is less than much of the Middle East. Supergrasses patrol Kent suburbs and shop their neighbours for illicit nocturnal watering. 13 million people are already banned from using hosepipes and sprinklers. This summer’s drought down south may be as serious as anything in living memory.

Water is the new energy, shriek the London media. Unions criticise water companies for selling reservoirs for development. There is talk of towing icebergs from the Arctic. Consumers are warned that they use far more water than their European neighbours and it’s time they stopped flushing one third of it down the pan. Engineers dream of building gigantic reservoirs. And the newts on the reserves at Rainham Marshes muse on their future. What will become of them, they wonder, when the Thames Gateway – forty-three miles by twenty miles -engulfs them? It’s a flood plain, isn’t it? How will the huge demands for drinking water be met?

That’s not all. With climate change, sea levels are rising. And Britain is tilting as well. The southeast is sinking. What a vision! Bowler hatted Sir Humphreys take to the boats, their red tape unfurling chaotically in the abandoned Whitehall corridors. Meanwhile, Wigan Investment Centre rises majestically to its rightful height.

Oop Northwest, our rivers are cleaner than before the industrial revolution. The Manchester Ship Canal no longer catches fire. Salmon are returning to the Mersey. Beaches sparkle. Our tap water tastes better and is a hundredth of the rip-off price of bottled water trucked across Europe. Development has turned to face the rivers and canals. Water is a catalyst for regeneration. Think of Salford Quays or New East Manchester or Mersey Waterfront or Preston Docks.

So, should we revel uncharitably at the fate of our friends in the south? Not quite. Water quality: there has been spectacular improvement here since privatisation and the investment must continue. Good for our environment and regeneration, certainly, but it has to be paid for. Water bills must increase. Waterside dereliction: The Northwest has an area of dereliction about the size of Preston. At the present rate it will take centuries to reclaim. The way we live: we don’t have as many arid golf courses or three car households as Surrey. But there is great potential for us to waste less water and the energy that’s needed to supply it. Some of the solutions are complicated and need innovation or behaviour change. Others, like water saving devices in cisterns, are cheap, simple and immediate.
Climate change: the prospect of palm trees in Blackpool and Mediterranean café society in Manchester may be alluring. But our weather is becoming extreme with more frequent storms and floods. We have a very long coastline and building stronger sea defences is expensive.

Official estimates suggest that floods in the Thames Gateway could damage a staggering £80bn of property. The government recently claimed that it had invested £6bn in transport, health and education projects in the area. There are acute housing and environmental problems in London and the southeast. Private housebuilding and the market alone will not solve these. Massive public expenditure is needed to avoid increasingly grim prospects for our friends in the south.

There will be competition for this money. It is grim down south but their pain is not necessarily our gain. And do we really want to live like them? Is down south the height of our ambition and imagination? Could the Northern Way be a better way? Could we regenerate our cities in ways that are sustainable? Could we adapt intelligently to climate change? Are we content with Sir Humphrey’s unforgettable remark that “our responsibility is not to do things, it is to explain why nothing can be done”?

Skelmersdale is not Dubai. Wilmslow is not Chipping Sodbury. Storm clouds are gathering. As we happily power jetwash our whippets, we might just like to remind ourselves that this great region of ours, the Northwest, is not an island.

published (in a slightly edited version) in the first issue of Norh West Enquirer April 27th 2006

bedding plants it must be spring

bedding plants at Bollington War Memorial grounds...it must be spring...do municipal parks departments anywhere in the world achieve such...erm...contrasts?

new morning, new manchester, new castlefield

castlefield in manchester early yesterday morning...canals and bridges and engineering and heritage and the familiar mix of houses and bars...more people hurrying purposefully through castlefield to their offices in the city centre from the latest flat developments spreading out towards salford. But the really big and dramatic change is Ian simpson's elegant 47 story Beetham Tower on Deansgate - a striking but not intimidating presence - castlefield can take it

what macclesfield...

"what bollington does today, macclesfield does tomorrow' is a well known truth...but when you zoom in it is not easy to be inspired by the experience of macclesfield town centre...for one of the most affuent towns in cheshire / britain, the public realm is mediocre...perhaps macclesfield will do something tomorrow...perhaps!

calculating the value of greening

Evaluation lessons - in Regeneration and Renewal Magazine 24th March 2006

Title: Bold Colliery and Power station site
Name of project under evaluation: Bold Colliery Regeneration Project, St. Helens
Period of Evaluation: 1985-2004
Lead evaluator’s name: T. Bell and S.M.Brydon
Evaluating organisation: District Valuer North West, Liverpool
Evaluation commissioned by: Forestry Commission England, Northwest Conservancy
Reviewer’s name and job title: Walter Menzies Chief Executive of Mersey Basin Campaign and a board member of RENEW NW. He writes here in a personal capacity.

Suggested caption:

Scope of evaluation report: This is a post-scheme review of the economic effect of the creation of community woodlands on residential property values in the vicinity of this 130 hectare site.

Aims and outlines of project / policy: The Northwest has more derelict land than any other English region and the lowest woodland cover in England. The Northwest Regional Development Agency with the Forestry Commission and others are tackling this by investing in the Newlands programme of community woodland creation on derelict land. An impartial review of the impact of a successful Groundwork regeneration project on this former colliery site provides compelling evidence of the economic value of community woodlands.

Key lessons;

Walter Menzies writes:
This evaluation concludes that the enhancement value of the existing housing stock attributable to the greening of Bold Moss tip is £15million and a further £75million of newbuild housing. The report does not include figures on the amount of money Groundwork and others have invested in the site but we can be confidently guess that the regeneration of the tip has provided a very good return on the public investment.

The District Valuer designed the model for the evaluation and has succeeded in providing very clear results by focusing on the increase on house values in specific “beacon” locations. He has succeeded in disentangling the added value of the regeneration from general trends in the local property market.

So this evaluation shows that it is perfectly possible, at least retrospectively, to put a value on greening. Bold Moss is in an area with relatively low housing values. It is relatively uncluttered with other regeneration “initiatives’. It does not follow from this evaluation that investment in greening anywhere will impact so positively on a depressed housing market. It does not follow that the use of this model as a predictive tool can be foolproof.

However, commissioning this evaluation from the District Valuer was a masterstroke. District Valuers are independent, impartial and work with hard evidence. The status of these results are in a completely different league from the stuff churned out by “economic development” consultants whose conclusions can easily be accused of playing back to the client whatever was wanted in the first place.

Advocates of investing serious public money in environmental improvement such as land reclamation and greening know that executed in the right way, in the right place and at the right time, there can be real economic benefits. But they have not been effective in finding ways of proving this. The roadbuilding / crinkly shed / inward investment economic development mainstream have been far more successful in exploiting numbers to argue their case.

This evaluation is a nationally – perhaps internationally – significant demonstration of the application of rigorous analysis to the greening question. Its conclusions – in terms of the positive impact on the housing market – should be a huge encouragement to the world of community forestry and environmental improvement generally. Its methodology and the clarity of its conclusions should stimulate other attempts to measure the economic impact of environmental improvement.

granada and the alhambra

The Alhambra in the city of Granada is often claimed to be the most beautiful palace in the World. These brands have been devalued to our generation through association with seedy dancehalls and cinemas and a television company that had dumbed itself depressingly down. The Alhambra - a city on a hill including the palace - is beautiful. Sillhouetted against the snow covered Sierra Nevada Mountains, it is dramatic at night. The night time visit to the Alhambra is unforgettable. It is theatrically lit and evocative. The struggle betwen the Muslims and the Christians was over in 1492 when the last sultan - Abu Abdallah Muhammud XXI sailed into exile in North Africa. Amongst the witnesses was Christopher Columbus. What a legacy though...and Granada the City tody is redolent of Africa in its townscape and its exoticism: Albaicin is the rambling Moorish Quarter across the Valley from the Alhambra. And, despite the warnings of the Rough Guide, we were not robbed!