Deu no The Guardian
17-09-2014, por Oliver Wainwright
The truth about property developers: how they are exploiting planning authorities and ruining our cities
Battersea Power Station
Across the country – and especially in superheated London, where stratospheric land values beget accordingly bloated developments – authorities are allowing planning policies to be continually flouted, affordable housing quotas to be waived, height limits breached, the interests of residents endlessly trampled. Places are becoming ever meaner and more divided, as public assets are relentlessly sold off, entire council estates flattened to make room for silos of luxument units, to be sold overseas and never inhabited, substituting community for vacancy. The more we build, the more our citry safe-deposit boxes in the sky. We are replacing homes with investies are emptied, producing dead swathes of zombie town where the lights might never even be switched on.
(..) Councils just don’t have the expertise to challenge viability reports,” says one senior planning officer. “We can’t argue back.” Instead, they can commission viability assessments, produced by the same consultants that work for developers, to determine whether the report is accurate – but not to propose an alternative. The figures may well stack up, but it doesn’t mean the scheme could not be designed in a different way, which would still guarantee the developer’s 20% profit margin. (Continua)
2014-09-20
