This article was taken from the January issue of Wired UK magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online
For decades we have been stuck on the absurd idea that higher home-ownership is good for society, even though it increases inequality and social segregation and has adverse effects on the economy, including lower labour mobility. This idea should be chucked away along with many other aspects of the unsustainable, atomising individualism of the consumer age. Private renting is the way forward - not in single buy-to-let flats or houses dotted around neighborhoods, the main form of growth over the last few years - but in new forms of collective living.
The way has been pointed by the growth of apartment living in town and city centres, plus a newly vibrant student sector with compact purpose-built flats in blocks with shared facilities such as high-speed broadband, laundry and gyms. But this should be just the start.
Allotments have become much sought after, with long waiting-lists in many parts of the country. So let's start building estates of rental properties not just with communal gardens and growing areas but with urban farms. With high-quality shared services people can live in smaller properties which are easier to maintain, cheaper and less energy-intensive. Facilities include hotel rooms that can be rented by guests and family members coming to stay.
Instead of assuming that property development should be aimed at one type of householder, these developments would be designed to attract a range of tenants, from singletons and families with young children, to pensioners keen to be at the heart of things and with the time to give to make these new communities work. Using bartering systems like Timebank, thriving sub-economies could develop, with people swapping services like baby-sitting, home improvement and car repairs. We can reverse the baleful trend towards generational segregation and help to counter one of the social epidemics of our age: loneliness.
Matthew Taylor is chief executive of the RSA and blogs at matthewtaylorsblog.com
Read other articles from the Rebooting Britain series - Tax people back into the cities - Teach kids to see in four dimensions - Exercise a green foreign policy - Live life as a lottery - Pull the plug on broadcast regulation - Enact beta versions of new laws - Make carbon emissions hurt - Slash the universities and go virtual - Make policy using prediction markets - Transform cities into green jungles - Promote another crash - Ditch Twitter: it's dangerous for democracy - Encourage failure - Make education more flexible - Set government data (radically) free
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
