Redefining urban prosperity
“London is a prosperous city, but that wealth is shared unequally.”
Tom Copley’s words get to the root of the debate on 17th March: ‘How to build a prosperous city’.
Hosted by the Key Worker Homes Fund and UCL’s Institute for Global Prosperity (‘IGP’), publishers of Rise Up, the panel featured:
— Tom Copley, Deputy Mayor for Housing and Residential Development
— Cllr Georgia Gould, Leader, London Borough of Camden
— Professor Dame Henrietta Moore, Founding Director of the IGP (Chair)
— Arthur Kay, CEO of Skyroom and Chair of the Key Worker Homes Fund.
Hot on the heels of the Mayor’s announcement to prioritise new homes in London to key workers, the speakers arrived at four ways to redefine urban prosperity with this demographic in mind:
Make prosperity about public value, not profit
Professor Moore broke down the conventional definition of prosperity and argued in favour of an alternative, fit for our times, which “recognises the vital role that key workers play” and prioritises “the value of belonging, care and community resilience.”
Tom Copley addressed how the Mayor’s Affordable Homes programme has embraced public-private collaboration to increase the number of new home-starts to its highest level since the 1980s. The impetus make up the current housing shortfall has been led by London’s local governments and supported by developers with specialist resources and innovative business models.
Enable key workers to near where they work
The ability to walk or cycle to work is currently a luxury not afforded to the 1 million or more key workers in London. Arthur shared the story of Elysia, a midwife, and the first Ambassador of the Key Worker Homes Fund: she travels up to two hours every day, twice a day, into Hackney to provide 10 hours of care.
She is one of the 60% of key workers who have been pushed out of the city. The cost and fatigue of their long commutes weakens public services, and by consequence, the health and security of the city as a whole.
Tom Copley reflected that “after a decade of austerity, it’s right we look at what we can do for the workers that serve the city.” He shared a case study — St Ann’s Hospital in Haringey —where the Mayor’s Land Fund bought the site and now plans to make 60% of all homes affordable. The scheme predated the Mayor’s new planning policy, which calls on Housing Associations and Local Authorities to give key workers exclusive access to new intermediate affordable homes so that they can put down roots in the communities they serve.
Read the case for delivering homes for key workers in the airspace above existing buildings, made by Skyroom in 2018.
“Key workers are priced out of communities that they gave their lives to support.” — Arthur Kay, CEO of Skyroom and Chair of the Key Worker Homes Fund
Empower grass-roots growth with a network of citizen-scientists
COVID-19 exacerbated existing inequalities in London, but it also prompted, as Georgia Gould put it, “a blossoming of solidarity… as our communities have stepped up to support each other.” Camden Council and the IGP have partnered to launch The Euston Prosperity Index. It sees ‘citizen scientists’ trained to undertake research in their local community to inform decision-making about their area's future.
“People are the best designers of their own prosperity.” — Professor Dame Henrietta Moore, Director of the Institute of Global Prosperity, UCL
Driving the transition, said Henrietta Moore, is “a new type of radical entrepreneur, disrupting the old vision of prosperity and redefining value so it’s not just about extracting value.”
Skyroom launched the Key Worker Homes Fund to accelerate the delivery of affordable, sustainable, beautiful homes for London’s key workers, near to where they work. It offers Local Authorities and Housing Associations access to £100 million to:
— Unlock airspace to deliver more homes
— Innovate with Modern Methods of Construction
— Accelerate construction and minimise disruption
— Pioneer housing models which grow local resilience
Applications are open from 16 March until Friday 16 April 2021 at 12 noon.
If you are a local authority or housing association looking to redefine urban prosperity in your borough and put key workers at the heart of your community, take 5 minutes to make an Expression of Interest or get in touch at fund@skyroom.london.
