Category: Blog posts

Forward

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The number of rooms being let out in an HMO, uPVC windows and how to respond to requests for EV charging points. Some of the different issues heritage groups are grappling with on a day to day basis, as they too try and navigate what it means to seek to protect Conservation Areas. In a context where conservation issues are often cited as a barrier to environmental improvements, the couple of walking tours I joined as part of London Open House festival were a reminder that people in those areas are unsurprisingly unlikely to see themselves in that way.

The first walking tour was of Brockley, a well-preserved Victorian part of inner London in the London Borough of Lewisham. Here and there are some newer buildings, largely infill properties – either where there had been bomb damage or where there was space on the plot of a larger house to build a smaller property. Taken together, Brockley has a range of mid- to late 19th century-domestic architecture from large, ornate houses to what would have been more modest worker’s cottages. Many of the large houses have been sub-divided, in a different lifetime I lived in half the ground floor of one of the largest houses in the area – with 12 foot high ceilings and beautiful fireplaces it felt like quite the luxurious space to be in, and that was only a fragment of the whole house. Now though, it seems that some of the larger houses are getting undivided and returned to being just one home. Having lived there for just over a year it felt familiar.

The second walking tour was around Brentham Garden Suburb in west London, an area I’d never even heard of before, let alone visited. It was the first garden suburb to be built on co-partnership lines so that residents could buy shares in their homes. The suburb was Master-planned by garden city architects Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin, who later influenced Hampstead Garden Suburb and mainly built between 1901 and 1915. Designed with informal, tree-lined curving roads and small, varied house groupings rather than rigid grids, the place feels architecturally coherent but there’s also lots of variety, even on the same road.

The two walking tours one day apart offered a bit of a compare and contrast between the two areas. Of course some of what felt different might be that the people running the sessions are approaching things from a different angle, and so another walk and talk might have had more differences or similarities. Broadly though, both were engaged with what made their area interesting and grappling with what it means to preserve areas and their character.

There were plenty of similarities between the areas:

  • Green, leafy and a bit of natural chaos: there are lots of trees in both areas, really underlining how green London is, and how much people, buildings and nature co-exist together. Some of the trees were there before the areas were developed – such as the old oak tree in a green space in Brentham Gardens, while many of them were planted as the homes were built. In Brockley that meant that there are some lovely tree lined streets with beautiful mature trees. Both areas had places that felt a bit more overgrown or wild – in Brentham Gardens there are what they describe as twittens – narrow alleyways between roads that were often quite overgrown, and in Brockley they have some old mews which have got lots of evidence of nature making itself at home
  • Care and connection: in both places the area itself and the people giving the talks gave a sense of care in the place. From getting defibrillators installed in spaces around Brockley and talking with a sense of pride and quiet wonder about how they are told when they’ve been used and what that might mean for the number of lives saved, to being able to articulate what is special or distinctive about the place. In Brockley there seemed to be some active work ongoing to try and ensure HMO’s were properly set-up and able to provide good places for people to live. While in Brentham Gardens the Brentham Club provides a lot of facilities for people – from the pub to the tennis courts where Fred Perry learned to play – there were lots of signs of connection
  • Connections beyond, to the local area: Brockley felt more connected to the wider area in terms of the facilities it was close to, with lots of shops while Brentham Gardens felt more connected through the sound of traffic from some large roads that were reasonably far away.
  • Stories: there was a lot of interest in the stories of those who have lived there over time. The people on both walking tours gave a sense of trying to understand the stories and history of the place and people who have lived their over time and undertake various activities to try and capture that. From archives to informal groups who get together to support each other in exploring the history of their homes, there was a real interest in understanding more. On the Brockley walking tour there was a mention of some famous people that have lived in the area but they seemed as interested in discussions they’d had with people living in the area
  • Expensive properties: even if when they were built they weren’t necessarily intended to be aimed at the richest in society – albeit some in Brockley clearly were – neither area is really providing for the humble workers now.
  • Some surprises: it was fun to find a, with patches of green space hidden away in Brentham Gardens that had been intended to be little village greens. In Brockley there was a Nissen shelter that is in someone’s back garden

There are of course plenty of differences between the two areas though:

  • How they came to be built: Brentham Gardens was built on a co-operative model and Brockley was developed by three landowners. One was about trying to allow people who were building homes for others to be able to build homes for themselves, while the other was about rich people getting to decide how they wanted a place to be. So Wickham Road was laid out as a wide, tree-lined road because the developers thought it looked grander
  • Architectural variation: initially in Brentham Gardens there was the intention to have some variety and different approaches within a set of parameters. However new build properties have largely tried to be in keeping with the existing designs. While Brockley was more homogenous initially, albeit still with variations across buildings – with Italianate and Gothic alongside more traditional Victorian styles. Since the properties were first built in Brockley the newer buildings have had more variation. From the 1960s blocks that were in-fill buildings where there had been bomb damage, to newer build properties that have found spaces to develop. There were some that tried to replicate the kind of feel but Brockley felt more mixed in terms of the new developments
  • Wiggly and straight: Brentham Gardens was trying to instill a sense of the countryside and there were attempts in the layout to try and avoid straight roads as it was felt this would give more of an intimate country feel to the place. This means that views are a bit more meandering, apart from one long road. By contrast Brockley has got lots of straight roads, some were more of a grid pattern, but not all of them. Wickham Road was the grandest and not only is very straight but also quite wide
  • Community spaces: Albeit smaller than originally intended, there is a community centre in Brentham Gardens, while the Brockley Society people were talking about how they don’t have any community space within the Conservation Area. There are some places close by but outside of that area, and they have creatively used some old telephone boxes around the area – in addition to one that hosts one of their defibrillators, they have also turned a couple into miniature libraries.
  • Size: many of the properties in Brockley seemed to be bigger than many in Brentham Gardens, at least in terms of the height and the original size before many were sub-divided. This might be partly why Brockley has then seen many of those homes sub-divided into flats because it is easier to do some when there’s already a four storey building with a set of stairs up. It sounded as though some Brockley properties are getting turned back into one individual dwelling after the sub-divisions, while in Brentham Gardens we were shown an example of one house which used to be two.

A fun compare and contrast between two areas that in some respects are quite different but actually showed so much of what it means to live in a place and create connections from the past to the future, from a house to the wider area. They were both a great reminder of how, even in an urban setting, we aren’t apart from nature but living in and around it. That there are stories aplenty down every road and in every building if we want to have a look…

In praise of the unpeeled onion

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An oft cited aspect, by people working in retrofit, that they think mitigates against people taking up insulation measures is that insulation measures invisible, and I’ve been reflecting on that for a while. I am going to briefly unpick some aspects of whether the fact insulation is invisible is really a negative.

There are lots of other materials or systems within the home which are also invisible, but the effects are visible, and they are valued by people such as electricity, gas or water and sewage services. Indeed, the fact those measures are invisible but the effects are tangible is part of their appeal. Homes with exposed wires or gas pipes, let alone waste water or sewage pipes wouldn’t be considered to be safe or desirable. It’s true that with these measures there are still some aspects that are visible and have design considerations beyond the effect they have – light switches and plugs, hobs and taps. For the most part though, the other aspects are hidden away.

Then there are parts of homes that really are invisible or should be. Foundations, the materials used to construct lots of parts of floors, walls and ceilings. Generally if we can see the foundations it’s either because something intentional has happened – like getting an extension done, or a bad thing has happened and we’re trying to sort it out – like subsidence. Again, what’s happening between the internal walls, floors and ceilings is really invisible. There’s a layer we can see but being able to see those exposed parts of the building would be bad.

As it is with other aspects of the building that are invisible, having visible insulation wouldn’t be a positive. Insulation materials should be safely tucked away and if we can see them that’s a bad thing. Yet people seem to think differently about insulation in part because there’s a paradox whereby they seem to think it’s necessary for homes, while thinking it’s not needed and therefore occupies a different space to those aspects of the building structure that seem more fundamental.

There are other ways that the insulation can be made visible to people, through inclusion in condition surveys, references in letting or sales information, questions for mortgages or insurance. Whatever touchpoints already exist and any that might be developed over time are places where those details can be made clear to people.

So it doesn’t seem like the invisibility of insulation needs to be a bad thing, or it can’t be demonstrated in other ways. Really though, I think that view keeps niggling at me because it goes to a negative attitude that is not really in the can-do camp about the virtues of retrofit. If the people who are trying to convince others of the merits of getting works done are unable to articulate why something might be useful, and feel more comfortable talking about why the things that are being offered are a bit rubbish or hard to sell. And if people trying to encourage uptake are unable to get into a PMA about the measures, and it’s literally their job to do so, how can we be surprised when those who have less interest to start with aren’t buying?

Differently together

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Since 2013 about £26bn has been spent on government and energy company obligations, of which a chunk would be made available on a project by project basis for comms, marketing and engagement – what value has been created by that investment of public funds?

Funding will often allow for up to 10% to be spent on scheme administration, and where it doesn’t comms and marketing will often be capitalised into the overall costs of the improvements. If 3% is used on comms and marketing that would equate to £780m, even at 1% that would be £260m.

Given where we are in terms of the perception and interest in retrofit, low and zero carbon technologies – potentially solar PV notwithstanding – it’s hard to see how that investment has catalysed action or interest. We still struggle to persuade people that the measures we think will help are either useful or desirable. It isn’t the only reason that there have been consistent levels of underspend on schemes, or a need to extend timescales for delivery or reduce the amount or level of interventions undertaken, but it is clearly a factor.

But what if that investment, or even a fraction of it, were used differently? Used more collectively to develop advice or materials or try different approaches and cascade that out. Or it could be used to provide some baseline services that can be used by everyone and could outlive the projects? Building capacity and seeding interest in local community activities?

Doing things that would involve working collectively and collaboratively to put in place the things we think are needed or could be useful. Trying and piloting and testing and maybe using government funding but in different ways to try and create a legacy from that part of it.

Of course, that same approach could be developed by the sector without using or re-purposing government funding too – it could be sourced from other budgets. There are examples of one-stop shops and other models which could be developed and adopted that are much more industry or community led too.

Either way, it’s sobering indeed to reflect on the massive investment which has already happened to date and how little that seems to have shifted the level of interest. It’s also clear that we can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing and expect different results, we have to think and do differently.

New favourite things

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Yin yoga

Institutional isomorphism

French Blondes – the cocktail, not the cohort of French people

Gang of Youths new song ‘Things take time’

Antonio Gramsci and his concept of cultural hegemony

Having new favourite things has long been one of my favourite things. I was aware that my intake of new favourite things had declined and I tried different things to increase them – to tap back into the double delight of new favourites. More and more since I started the PhD I’ve felt new favourite things popping up again and again which I am loving and I can’t recommend looking for them highly enough.

As my list shows, new favourite things can come in many guises. Indeed that’s one of the things that makes them so enjoyable. It could be a new concept which helps you see and understand the world a little differently. It might be something delicious or joyful. It can also be something more prosaic, like the way I’ve rearranged my desk so it’s more comfortable to sit at. They don’t need to be massive, expensive or rare, although obviously they can be. The everyday new favourite can still engender the same sense of wonder.

Setting the bar low is really part of it though, which was why I knew the fact I was having to try and find new favourite things was a bad sign. That sense of being open to possibility and noticing is something which can enrich any particular or seemingly ordinary moment and definitely makes the finding of new favourite things more readily accessible. There’s all kinds of reasons why we can find that difficult to do but finding ways to keep lowering the bar to get new favourite things can help.

Whether it’s a struggle to get new favourites or you’re just a bit out of practice, putting in place forcing functions can help. Back in the day when I knew I wasn’t doing so well on noticing them I came up with a new years resolution to try at least 52 new to me food or drink things that year. It was a reminder to keep looking and exploring, I’m more likely to try something on a menu I’ve not already had but still, putting in place reminders and prompts all over the place can be helpful if new favourites are hard to come by.

I suppose having new favourite things is a bit like the gratitude practice, and if that works for you as a way into this then great, but I think for me those things do feel different. With my new favourite things it usually feels much more intense, whereas things I am grateful for often feel gentler and perhaps more intimate. When I find a new favourite thing I usually want to get everyone involved or knowing about it because it just seems so mind-blowing that I want people to have that chance of delight or astonishment.

And part of what’s exciting is that I just don’t know what my new, new favourite things will be. Being able to look forward to finding them is very wonderful though and fills me with a sense of abundance, for which I am grateful indeed. Only just discovered Gramsci’s idea of cultural hegemony and I’m very much not an expert but here’s a podcast I listened to as a way into it. I’m fascinated by the idea that a dominant ruling class maintains power in a capitalist society not through force, but by shaping cultural norms and values so that their worldview is accepted as natural “common sense”. What a way to understand and see the world and I’m looking forward to exploring that idea more.

If you don’t already have a new favourite thing then feel free to take any and all of mine. And if you can’t find one new favourite thing, then I’d suggest instead you try to find five…

Something for future me

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Arse-covering or honesty? Trust can take many forms and the message in how it is developed and enacted is one of nuance and complexity, where context and perspective matters.

Last week I had to a leak in my roof repaired and I hung out with the roofer who was anchoring the ladder for his colleague. He was really friendly and funny and our chat wandered far and wide but obviously given my PhD I was interested in their views of the work they do, how they got into it and how they find it. They had provided me with loads of photos and some video of the scene on the roof. I cannot imagine circumstances under which I would climb the ladder and walk around on the roof of my house, even as I wrote those words and contemplated it again I had a shudder of absolute dread. So providing me with photos and video of the before and after is realistically the only way I’m going to be able to see the works have been done. We were talking about the work and the roofer described providing these photos as ‘arse-covering’ to protect themselves. I can see why it might feel like that from his perspective but for me, someone both wanting to feel like their roof was fixed and also doing a PhD on a related subject, it definitely felt more like an action that would generate trust.

Listening to the episode of podcast Philosophy Bites with Katherine Hawley talking about trustworthiness, she describes how what trustworthy looks like varies depending upon context – our expectations differ for a spouse, colleague or business we might use. Thinking about the roofer, that sense of having to be seen to cover himself seemed to have come about as a response to situations where his work had been called into question or as a protective measure in the event of future issues – the photos would allow them to evidence that an issue was from something unrelated to the works they had done. Yet that same activity which created trust in the situation for him also created trust for people who were having their roofs fixed. In some respects the context varied for both the roofer and his client, yet it led to the same place.

It was interesting to reflect that while the perspective and context matters, how trust can be secured for the different parties involved might look similar in terms of what actions are needed. Thinking more broadly about how future me would need to try and wrangle complexity and nuance into something that can provide tangible recommendations, it was reassuring to be reminded that sometimes there can be options which can reconcile those differences, without needing to add more complexity.

Contextually compassionate

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Are we basically saints or utterly evil good for nothings? There can be times when we can convince ourselves of both propositions, sometimes swinging between the two from second to second. In ‘The Character Gap’ Christian Miller, a Professor of Philosophy, argues that while we are indeed flawed, sometimes in ways we can’t even see ourselves, it is a much more mixed picture than that.

There has been discussion about the extent to which our character is broadly fixed or more fluid, with a return to a broad consensus that it is more fixed. However, Miller argues that while this is true, a character gap can arise in practice.

There are lots of situations where we will act in ways that we or others might consider to be out of character because the context allows it. People are less likely to help others who are in danger if they are with someone else who isn’t acting – the bystander effect. Studies suggest we are much more likely to cheat if we think we can get away with it, yet the act of signing up to an honour code can override that and people will return to their honest selves. We will go to the assistance of complete strangers, or act selflessly in situations where the conditions allow us to connect to our character.

Character is the outward expression of our values and Miller’s conception of the character gap fits with Shove’s idea that the value-action gap is ‘only mystifying if we assume values do (or should) translate into action’. Taken together this suggests that it isn’t surprising we can’t draw a straight line from how someone characterises themselves or the values they hold, to how they will behave. There are lots of factors which determine if and how a link manifests itself but context is one of them.

Over and over the picture that emerges from the literature in different areas is that context is important. People aren’t making decisions in a vacuum and the various factors surrounding them influence what they do. Therefore, trying to understand and engage with that context is helpful in trying to explore and unpick what really makes does a difference.

Not trying to get on the hedonic treadmill

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If we’re not good at knowing what makes us happy, and our attempts to do the things we think will make us happy work against us, might that suggest we shouldn’t hitch ourselves to the happy wagon when trying to persuade people to take action?

Brickman and Campbell developed the idea of the hedonic treadmill in a 1971 essay ‘Hedonic Relativism and Planning the Good Society’, reflecting that people seem to have their own happiness baseline and positive or negative events can take people away from their baseline but they return to close to it over time. This idea was translated into the specific treadmill metaphor by Eysenck in his work exploring how people can chase happiness without making progress towards it. It then seems the chasing can itself then raise the bar for what we need to be happy – and you might be able to think of examples in those around you who focus on something like a holiday and being able to relax and do nothing, then come back complaining about some seemingly minor aspect, rather than giving a sense the holiday had been really relaxing.

So if this is the case, in the search for things that can catalyse action – in ourselves and others – it’s obvious why there might be an appeal to happiness. Who doesn’t want to be happy after all? Yet over and over we choose meaning over happiness. We do the difficult things. We also chase things that we think will bring happiness yet turn out not to . Perhaps then, if we can see and feel in ourselves and others that tension which exists between meaning and the pursuit of happiness, it might be worth exploring other avenues than happiness to try and engage people?

In conversation

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While we, understandably, can think of homes and buildings as mute backgrounds, we also have a sense of them as places that see, hear or hold memories – the idea that ‘if the walls’ could talk they would have stories aplenty. Sometimes that can feel difficult, visiting places where bad things have happened but sometimes those conversations can take you by surprise and bring a little moment of joy.

Visiting Emery Walker’s house in Hammersmith I was taken by a gnarly grapevine in the sunroom. I discovered that it was from a cutting taken from Hogarth’s grapevine over 200 years ago and yet it was still going strong – producing lots of grapes and generally seeming quite vigorous. So much so that recently when the original grapevine at Hogarth’s house died, they took a cutting from Emery’s Hogarth grapevine to replenish the stocks. Over hundreds of years later there is still a conversation between those houses.

And perhaps the reason I was so drawn to the grapevine rather than some of the other plants or pieces I saw was because of grapevines I had planted at my previous home. Emery’s grapevine was more likely to speak to me, and me to respond, than some of the other items precisely because it touched a memory of my homemaking in my previous home. Planting a grapevine to try and turn a narrow pathway alongside another garden into a more beautiful, verdant space – and to hide a neighbour’s garden that was more of a weedy paradise than a thing of beauty. Another grapevine I bought one anniversary of my husband’s death.

Three very different homes somehow in conversation across the centuries. Conversations mediated by people and memory, physical things and intangible emotions but a conversation nonetheless. Another reminder of how homes are porous places that can connect us to other people, and to other versions of ourselves.

The in-crowd

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Reading government and industry reports can leave me wondering where the individual is. The primacy of the family, and the subset of ‘the hardworking family’ is something that I’ve long noticed. Perhaps because I’ve spent lots of time as a single person it’s something I am more primed to see than people who have been in a relationship for years. This framing made me wonder how representative the representation is and why it might have been chosen.

Reading ‘The Warm Homes Plan’, families get mention after mention – albeit in amongst some more general references to people or tenants. Still though, four references in one paragraph doesn’t happen by accident I think. Linguistically it creates a sense of intended repetition that even just twice might not. From a logistical perspective, the amount of times that document would have gone through a review process makes it harder to imagine it was accidental. Of course things can slip through if the version control gets a bit messy and there are twin or more track reviews happening. Putting together those kinds of documents isn’t always as elegant a process as we might want to imagine yet the fact I noticed it in that document was a reflection of that longer-held awareness of how often the term is used.

Looking at the Office of National Statistics (ONS) information published in 2025 – the most recent year statistics are available for – shows that while it’s true that 66.8% of households are a family, there are now 29.5% of households where only one person lives in the home. By way of completeness 2.8% of households are where two or more unrelated people live together and multi-family homes make up 0.8% of homes. The ONS notes that the figure for single-person households is a similar proportion to the previous census, there are now more young adults aged 20-34 years old who are living with their parents.

To leave out c.33% of the population from language around who is important, to be emphathised with or needs to be supported feels odd. I assume the references don’t mean family in the sense of connections to people that you might be related to but no longer living with. Apart from anything else if that is what is meant it feels a bit garbled and unclear, and the context doesn’t suggest that is the intention. It isn’t as though there isn’t language available instead – why not just say everyone deserves x?

The use of this language can be seen as a way to try and engage people. Some of it might be about trying to head off arguments at the pass, particularly from more right-wing media and politicians for whom the family can be a key focus. There can be something respectful about going to where people are which resonates with them and helps get them on-board. This can also be a sign of pragmatism, changing the language to get things done and finding ways to go with the grain of how people might think about things

However, the danger in using language that way is that the argument is never made on its own terms, it accepts the framing of others. This creates a danger that the thing itself becomes obscured with the attendant risk that there can be an appearance of progress but later on down the line it becomes apparent you were talking at somewhat cross purposes. By reinforcing the framing rather than staking your own claim it can create the need for more of a rearguard action if the frame no longer fits the argument.

As such, the repeated choice of language around families does read as intentional. It comes across as language which seeks to be more collective and inclusive, rather than seeing people as atomised individuals. Yet the exclusionary nature of the language then serves to undermine that same intention. It is hard to see what value there is in choosing language in that context which doesn’t seek to cover the widest group of people possible. Other choices are available, so when they aren’t taken, it feels like a missed opportunity not to tell a more inclusive story.

Luxurious and necessary

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I’ve just done a thought exercise where I was trying to imagine what I’d do on day one if I were put in charge of all of the things in government and it fried my brain. It created a real tension between my understanding of what changes are needed to generate change – systemic and cultural shifts which lead to cascading and tangible changes, with my sense of what politicians are looking for – tangible things that sound good even if they don’t really deliver anything meaningful. Beyond hurting my head, it was a good reminder of why change can be hard for politicians to enact.

Even just pretending to play the part of a politican made me feel I had to silence all of those parts of my brain that think how politics tends to operate isn’t helping, and I started to grab around for something that felt like a ‘good answer’. Trying to think about how I could turn something systemic, which also recognised the limits of government responsibility, into something that was shiny and press release worthy. I think that a big issue in the retrofit sector particularly is the extent to which it looks to government to create and fund the conditions for scale, and that in itself undermines the conditions for scale. That means more government isn’t going to help, and indeed can undermine the cultural and attitudinal changes needed, albeit there are things government can do to help unblock action which will help with those shifts. Yet the short-term press release driven nature of politics is too rarely a good fit for the deeper, harder engagement with the substantive issues or ambitions. Yet in that thought experiment I could feel the pressure towards that endorphin hit of one shiny thing because that felt like what I was ‘supposed’ to come up with – that it wasn’t a serious answer if I didn’t.

In the end I just pretended the world was different and politicians can give those kind of answers. I figured that’s a luxury of not being in that position and if I can’t use that luxury in a no-stakes thought exercise, how can I be surprised that people in those actual positions don’t do that? It felt both like a cop-out given I can imagine the push-back someone in that situation would get, and also like the thing that’s actually needed.

But it was a great reminder of how institutional isomorphism and social norms can help edit out those calls to think differently. It was also useful to reflect on that temptation to try and fix things and assume control of it, rather than saying there are limits to what government can do in terms of shaping attitudes and action.