Don’t bulldoze the bungalows

Andrew Orlowski says the think tank-driven Street Votes policy risks trampling on middle-class dreams by bringing high-density housing to peaceful neighbourhoods

ON SILVERDALE GARDENS, a cat is yawning in the torpid summer sunshine. This immaculate cul-de-sac of bungalows doesn’t feel like an economic and cultural battlefield. I’m in New Barnet, where Hertfordshire makes a thrust deep into the belly of historic Middlesex: it’s the liminal region mythologised by the writer Nick Papadimitriou as the “Scarp”, where the Thames basin rises to the chalk uplands to the north. “So they’ll knock down my house?” asks one homeowner. As carefully as I can, I explain the concept behind Street Votes. Street Votes is the flagship housing policy idea that has emerged from the right-leaning think tanks of SW1, and I have come to test the reaction first hand. The policy brainiacs argue that we’re in a housing crisis, and that high property prices…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, August - September 2023

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