From transport to housing: Why Transport for London is looking to partner with startups to build affordable homes
This is a guest post by Waqas Hussain, Commercial Innovation Strategist at Transport for London (TfL). TfL is leading two challenges in the Mayor of London’s Civic Innovation Challenge.
London’s transport network has been delivering new technology and innovations ever since the first underground railway opened in 1863. Since the creation of Transport for London (TfL) in 2000 we have continued to lead the way with a number of innovations, such smart card payments with Oyster, and making much of our travel data available for free, which powers nearly 700 apps, used by 42% of Londoners, generating annual economic benefits and savings of up to £130m a year for London.
Technology is developing at a faster rate now than ever before and we know it is as important as ever to embrace the startup and SME ecosystem. That’s why we’re partnering with the Mayor of London’s Civic Innovation Challenge. We are looking to work with startups and SMEs to deliver new solutions to some of London’s most pressing problems.
We are supporting two key challenges in the Civic Innovation Challenge. In this first blog I’ll cover the first challenge, which is the pressing need for affordable housing.
Delivering affordable homes
London’s growth is a sign of its success as a city at the heart of the world economy and global culture. But it also comes at a cost. Londoners are being priced out of their city by an increasingly unaffordable housing market. Many Londoners are trapped paying rents that they can barely afford for homes that do not meet their needs or aspirations. If this situation continues to worsen, London could suffer.
More people than ever want to live and work in London. You may not realise, that as well as being responsible for over 30 million journeys every day, Transport for London (TfL) is also one of London’s largest landowners. We own a 5,700 acre estate including buildings, land attached to Tube stations, railways and highways. This includes land and properties with huge potential for creating the homes and jobs, and as a result it is important we play our role in delivering new homes on this land, 50% of which are to be affordable. By providing quality homes for all Londoners in an environmentally sustainable way, TfL seeks to become a leading London developer.
We have the team, sites and programme in place to provide a long-term development pipeline, looking to deliver 10,000 homes across 300 acres. In 2017/18 we brought sites to market which will deliver more than 3800 homes, half of which will be affordable.
We maintain a comprehensive database covering the whole of London, including more than 300 data sets on transport, environmental, and socio-economic factors. This provides one of the richest data sources in the UK, which sits ready for analysis, but due to the size of our estate, this data has yet to be mobilised in the context of property development.
The data sets have varying levels of complexity, granularity, completeness and relatability (to complimentary data sets) — examples of data sets available include; walking, buses, cycling, freight, demographic, air quality, traffic, safety, land use, property developed, TfL assets and London Underground.
We want to work with startups and SMEs to create a new digital tool — one that effectively leverages and visualises this data — to deliver insights into how we can best deliver more affordable homes across London, in line with the London Plan.
Apply here by July 8th for the Mayor of London’s Civic Innovation Challenge.
Tomorrow I’ll be posting a blog on the second Civic Innovation Challenge that we’re supporting, which is about reducing pollution by encouraging active travel and cutting down on unnecessary car journeys.
