None of this is to deny there are housing problems — too few in the places people want them (which is why we need a better dispersal of jobs and industry),
Why not build the houses where people want them, where the jobs and industry already are?
None of this is to deny there are housing problems — too few in the places people want them (which is why we need a better dispersal of jobs and industry),
Why not build the houses where people want them, where the jobs and industry already are?
But some ‘jobs and industry’ don’t need to be tied to a particular place any more…
I suppose that it depends which is easier. The problem being that there isn’t any reason for industry to relocate close to somewhere with abundant unused housing. The government could provide incentives but this doesn’t usually work very well.
Also what Julia said, if WFH continues to become more common, moving to an area with cheap housing makes sense and, if it happens a lot, the problem with solve itself.
Can anyone pinpoint the date when Rod Liddle became a bore?
Industry tends to concentrate due to agglomeration effects plus geographical factors that make a place particularly attractive (eg some industries really need to be by by a certain category of port so you may be down to only a handful of plausible locations right from the start) so expecting industries just to disperse at the stroke of a planner’s pen – and who exactly is supposed to be in charge of this? – is dense.
Liddle is generally OK but his understanding of economics is limited.
Agglomeration effects exist, but sometimes you just run out of physical space to add more industry, and extra industry is forced to look elsewhere for space.
By some analysis, about a third of jobs can be done from home. The balance requiring showing up, at least some of the time.
If you want a better dispersal of jobs and industry abolish national pay rates. Trucking stuff an extra 200 or 300 miles down from Durham or Glasgow costs money so fob prices of goods made in Durham or Glasgow is lower than those of identical goods made in Essex. Most consumer goods manufactured in the UK are sold in Continental Europe or SE England.
This has a cumulative/ratchet effect because each time one factory in the north is closed and its workers move south the proportion of consumers in the south-east increases and those in the north decrease so tha average fob price differential increases.
To reverse the trend you need to reduce the costs to industry in the north to match the reduction in revenue: the workers will still be better off because the housing costs are a fraction of those in the London commuter zone. [Anecdote alert: I can remember going “home” to visit my parents at Christmas and seeing decent three-bedroom semi-detached houses on nice estates advertised for sale at less than my annual gross salary]
We could relocate some of the welfare dependent, who don’t need to be near the place they are not working at.
That would free up housing for those who DO need to be near the place they DO work at.
Great idea let’s spread those dark satanic mills around a bit. Let’s make sure that a hamlet centered around a new software factory is populated entirely by nerds, and we can get rid of the hipsters by building art factories on the other side of Loch Ness.
jgh,
This is also about new technology arriving. Like in the mid-80s I knew people who moved out from town to the villages nearby, because reliable cars allowed them to do that. At the time, they saved a load of money. Or, consider how many breweries left cities because they didn’t need to be 3 miles from their customers any more. Why be in Oxford when you can do it from Wiltshire and transport the beer and save on staff and rent costs?
People can talk about all this “being in a room together” but it’s mostly cobblers. 1 day per week is fine. And if you’re doing that, why not live in Antrim and fly in? Or Northamptonshire? Why live in a dump like Hammersmith in a million pound house? Cash up, move to a nice place. Buying a house in London right now is going to be a terrible investment
1 day per week is fine.
Companies all over the world know this is not the case, which is why they are forcing staff back in to the office at least 3 days a week. This is proving more difficult in the US because many of its big cities are crime ridden hellholes and in the UK, where skiving is ingrained in the culture. In the rest of the world, WFH is already over.
WFH suits a few roles but mainly benefits skivers, autistic misanthropes and the middle aged whose eyes are set on retirement.
WFH is great until it’s not. I used to do a fair amount from home but travel for meetings and general system access (about 1:45hrs each way) but now that’s largely gone to Teams and VPN. So thanks Covid for that one. Today was an on site day though, and there’s no way around that. We’re comtemplating moving out of Melbourne to the place we own in Mildura (600kms away) because living costs are skyrocketing. But I’ll have to sell work on the concept of me coming down for a week a month (not on a regular schedule, just as required) and it will still be a pain for both of us.
Affordable housing near my road and tunnel would be great.
In the rest of the world, WFH is already over.
Rilly? That will be (bad) news to my French and German friends.
WFH suits a few roles but mainly benefits skivers, autistic misanthropes and the middle aged whose eyes are set on retirement.
Let me guess – you’re a clueless PHB whose idea of management is counting the jackets on chairs.
Like almost everything IRL, WFH will suit some and not others – whether that be individuals or businesses. But I personally know of a couple of big City offices who (because they were fortunate in the timing of their lease breaks) have been able to downsize from a 500-seat office to 50 seats with Regus, with obvious and substantial cost reductions. They ain’t going back (and their staff would walk away if they tried).
MC,
“Companies all over the world know this is not the case, which is why they are forcing staff back in to the office at least 3 days a week. This is proving more difficult in the US because many of its big cities are crime ridden hellholes and in the UK, where skiving is ingrained in the culture. In the rest of the world, WFH is already over.”
Who is forcing staff back? It’s large, sclerotic companies run by bureaucrats who got lucky, who have never built a company and have no idea about how to adapt to change, so are pretending that it impacts productivity. They want the world back how it was.
And you don’t need people in the office to know if they’re skiving or not. People can skive in the office, checking their phones, chatting up girls and best of all, attending meetings and training courses. You just give people work to do and measure them on it. Did they deliver the work? Are they available if you call? Do they ask if there’s anything to do because they’re done?
Many managers who don’t like it are bluffers. They’ve somehow got themselves a team leading job in a large fat bureaucracy, but don’t know what they are managing. They add no value to the operation. WFH forces them to stop judging people by arrival and departure times, whether they have a tidy desk or a bottle of whisky in the drawer and forces them to deal with deliverable work.
Companies that are anti-WFH are going to be like those retailer who thought the internet was a fad.
@Swannypol – “We could relocate some of the welfare dependent, who don’t need to be near the place they are not working at.”
That’s ok as long as you don’t expect them to look for or get jobs. If you want them to get a job, it doesn’t make sense to move them to places with few jobs.