Soft Cities

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Council housing is not a dirty word, says Labour as it pledges social housing drive

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First published the The Architects Journal, 27/09/22. The Labour Party has vowed to roll out a massive council house-building programme if it is voted in at the next election. Speaking in Liverpool at the party’s annual conference, shadow communities secretary Lisa Nandy set out policies to boost housebuilding by local authorities. In Labour’s 2019 election manifesto, …

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Housing desperately needs long term strategy

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First published in Housing Today, 14/07/22 – Housing desperately needs long term strategy | Comment | Housing Today. As the housing development sector backs Housing Today’s ‘A Fair Deal for Housing’ project, Colm Lacey argues for a new strategy to make the delivery of affordable housing more certain and commercially attractive. There is not much …

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Podcast: Tracks of my tyres

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Colm Lacey (Soft Cities) talks to David Taylor and Toby Fox of Velocity Magazine (https://velocitymagazine.co.uk) about housing, bikes, and taking things apart and trying to put them back together again. Oh and he eventually chooses some of his favourite songs to play too. Colm Lacey – Tracks Of My Tyres | Podcast on Spotify

We’ll look back and spot the monuments to this terrible time

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First published in BD Online, 05/10/20 – https://www.bdonline.co.uk/news/well-look-back-and-spot-the-monuments-to-this-terrible-time/5108135.article. Six more months of working from home will leave an ugly mark on our towns, warns development chief. The pandemic will leave a lasting legacy on the design of our towns and cities in the form of joyless “lockdown schemes”, a leading developer has warned. In a …

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Adapting to life under lockdown

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First published in Housing Today, 29/04/20 – https://www.housingtoday.co.uk/comment/how-brick-by-brick-is-adapting-to-life-under-lockdown/5105765.article. Well to put it mildly, these are challenging times for housing. No sooner had had the Gordian knot of Brexit started to unravel a little than a new international conundrum of epic proportions arrived. While everyone in the housing sector has had to rapidly adapt to this …

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Cross-subsidy may be dead, but simply calling for more grant is not the answer – here’s what we should do

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First published in Housing Today, 15/11/19 – https://www.housingtoday.co.uk/comment/cross-subsidy-may-be-dead-but-simply-calling-for-more-grant-is-not-the-answer-heres-what-we-should-do/5102745.article So. Farewell then, the cross-subsidy model. A perfect storm of rising costs, increased regulation and slower sales has apparently killed the goose that laid the golden egg of genuinely affordable housing for all. But did it ever exist, really? It is certainly true that social housing delivery …

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London’s borough-led development is serving the city well

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First published in OnLondon 29/09/19 – https://www.onlondon.co.uk/colm-lacey-londons-borough-led-development-is-increasingly-serving-the-city-well. It’s an interesting time for reviewing the progress of local authority led development. There has been much debate about the potential of the public sector as a development actor and the emergence of a “new municipalism”. For some, this was a giant leap towards a more egalitarian and …

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Interview: ‘There’ll always be those who feel sites shouldn’t be developed’

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First published in The Architects Journal, 11/07/19 – https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/brick-by-bricks-colm-lacey-therell-always-be-those-who-feel-sites-shouldnt-be-developed. Brick by Brick’s Colm Lacey talks about the challenges of the developer’s council-backed house-building programme and its latest batch of architect appointments. It has been three years since Brick by Brick set to work. What have you managed to achieve?So far we’ve won planning consent on around 40 …

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Developers, we have an image problem

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First published in The Developer, 28/02/19 – https://www.thedeveloper.live/opinion/opinion/developers-we-have-an-image-problem. The public don’t trust, or indeed respect, developers and this is negatively impacting urban discourse, writes Colm Lacey, chief executive of Brick by Brick The development industry has a problem with people. In the most recent Ipsos MORI Veracity Index, those surveyed ranked almost all of the …

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