Housing co-ops should be unbeatable: lower rents, better buildings and residents in control. So why does Britain barely have any? Levent's answer: volunteer management, tiny scale, rents too low to build capital. His fix? Collective Ownership: a co-op of co-ops that pools the professionals, the scale and the money, but leaves residents running their homes. If it works, every renter in Britain will want in.
Heathrow is the best-connected land in Britain: three rail lines, two motorways, fifteen miles from Hyde Park Corner. We park aeroplanes on it. A third runway means flattening villages and noise for half a million neighbours. Reuben's fix: expand Stansted; close Heathrow entirely; make it London's 33rd borough, 200,000 strong. Quiet for today's West Londoners, homes for tomorrow's, growth for Britain?
Everyone knows the story: planning permission for homes turns cheap farmland into gold, and someone walks away rich. Anna spent years watching the people who take that gamble: land promoters. Parasites, say their critics. She tells a different story: the gold is thinning, and if the arithmetic drives promoters out, the homes they'd have unlocked won't announce their absence.
The tools New York used to transform Times Square: orange traffic cones, 376 beach chairs, six months. The tool London built for a similar job: an ambient benefits calculator. Archer tells the story of how Paris, Barcelona and New York reimagined their streets for this century, and what London can learn from their mistakes as much as their successes.
Social housing was supposed to loosen the grip of background on destiny. But local eligibility rules mean a tenant who moves loses their place in the queue, and a tenancy is worth far more in productive London than anywhere else in Britain. Zach quantifies the state-made chokehold, then asks what would have to change for social housing to actually improve social mobility.
A community food project searching for forgotten common land to cultivate. A housing campaigner counting how much social housing their borough really owns. Both need the same map and until recently, neither could afford it. Kate introduces Land Explorer, the free solidarity-funded tool that finally opens Britain's land data to everyone, and tells the stories of the people already using it to change things.
Chat with your fellow groundbreakers as long as you like!
Whether you’re an analyst, policy wonk, programmer, policymaker, activist, or simply passionate about a brighter, more abundant future, join us at the seventh Land Talks to make Britain’s land system work harder for everyone’s benefit. In the meantime, find out more at landtalks.org.
