Leave a CommentA union of first time buyers?
As house prices continue to rise across the country many young people are finding themselves priced out of the housing market. The average age of the first time buyer is now 34 and the ratio of house price to salary has increased dramatically in the last decade. This figure is higher in geographic hotspots like the South-East of England. Despite recurrent predictions of a crash there appears to be no obvious end to this trend. I wonder what would happen it first time buyers got together to try and precipitate a dip?
The causes of the recent rise in house prices are multiple and complex. On the one hand it is simply about supply and demand. The number of people seeking houses in certain parts of the UK is greater than the number of houses available. The population of the South-East, for example, continues to grow through immigration, the higher incidence of divorce puts more people on the market and large disposable incomes increase the demand for second homes and buy-to-let properties.
This problem is compounded by the government’s apparent reluctance to build new properties or to allow private construction. The housing market is characterised by a strong degree of nimbyism – people oppose new buildings in the vicinity of their precious castle – especially, if they might be housing those at the lower end of the social scale. Despite recent announcements of future eco-towns, demand still vastly outstrips supply.
Meanwhile those inside the precious circle of property-ownership rub their hands as prices increase. The most fortunate with a bit of slack on their repayments re-mortgage to secure the credit and debt that drives our economy – investing wisely in fast cars and foreign holidays. As a consequence, any dip in house price growth threatens economic meltdown. Kings and queens in their castles glance nervously at tabloid reports of potential shocks to the system – the Daily Mail’s shock-horror, stock page-fillers.
Those outside the golden circle, and unable to secure a place in the dwindling rump of social housing, must depend on privately rented properties, whose rents must rise to keep pace with mortgage costs. Generally speaking these rented houses are the second homes of the already bricked-and-mortared – monthly rent payments, paying off their mortgages, widen the disparities between those in and out. Those renting pray for a crash, while those with property live in fear of it – this has become a new divide around which the country is aligned.
As a member of the renting class with a view to buying a place I wonder what might be achieved by some form of class action? If all first-time buyers got together and agreed to abstain from buying for three months, would it be enough to bring the prices down? I am no economist and don’t know what percentage of the market we represent. As a social scientist I could predict that this is not a natural coalition, and it would take a lot of solidarity to resist the temptation to split as prices fell. What do you think?
Being green – abstinence and accumulation
For a long time being green has been a statement – a declaration of opposition to the mainstream; a shout against the status quo. The green movement has a long and worthy history and in the 21st century it represents a broad church, which if it was painted would encompass more shades of green than a 70’s Dulux chart. We would have vermillion deep-greens, pastel shallow-greens, radical leftist red-greens and plumy conservative blue-greens. Several generations of sociologists have cut their teeth developing such typologies which provide rich maps to this complex and fascinating realm of identity politics.
The axis along which I want to explore contemporary greenness relates to how self-described middle-class greens organise their consumption habits and in particular how they deal with the problem of excess. I am not promising a comprehensive picture here – just another way of cutting up the colour chart, which might prove timely given the recent green turn in UK centrist politics.
There are two ideal types of identity I want to contrast here, which I will term the green aesthete and the green accumulator. For the aesthete the diagnosis of climate change and the widespread recognition that affluent elements of Western society are living beyond their means demands abstinence. For some this is an earthy retreat to the land, to local scales of living, self-sufficiency and recycling – picture Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall without his sports car. For others this abstinence takes a more urbane form – it is about downsizing, investing in durability, bicycling and a near obsessive attention to the provenance and footprint of their purchases. These aesthetes are generally pessimistic about the future; emphasis is placed on treading more slowly and lightly on the earth, on using less for longer.
Burning carbon to save the Arctic – climate change tourism
As part of their portfolio of scientific ecotourism holidays Earthwatch have recently started offering a range of climate change research trips. It is not clear whether they have really thought through the logic of this venture.
For the last thirty years or so, Earthwatch have been pioneering a particular model of scientific research. Scientists working in the field in exotic far flung places or concentrating on charismatic species approach (or are approached) by the organisation offering opportunities for fee-paying ‘volunteers’ to fly out and join their programmes. Their clients get involved in the research process, they get to witness science in action, get close to wild places and animals and have a novel travel experience. This model of scientific ecotourism has been very successful. Earthwatch now sponsor nearly 150 projects, some of which have been running for several decades and they have provided useful data on threatened species. Many volunteers come back and make these trips their annual holidays.
With the recent ‘climate turn’ in the ethical preoccupations of wealthy Western liberals, Earthwatch have sought to develop a range of climate change research holidays. If ‘biodiversity’ was the ethical watchword of the greens in the nineties, climate change and carbon are fast becoming the must-know, must-care-abouts of the ethically conscious. These projects have proved very successful and many are booked out until the end of next year.
Modelling water
In the second week of training for the flood risk project we learnt how to model the passage of a river through a landscape. Using a sophisticated piece of software we were able to play around with different parameters that changed the shape and flow of the river. Playing god in silicon we flooded and saved a virtual valley.
Complex computer models lie at the heart of flood risk mapping in the UK. They are central to efforts to predict future inundations, to decisions on where to site defences and, perhaps most controversially, as to whether or not your house is eligible for insurance. There are a number of different models on the market, which have been developed by academics and consultants and there is a fair degree of competition between them.
In an extended series of sessions, Stuart Lane – the hydrologist on the team – introduced us social scientists to the mathematics of hydrological modelling. We learnt how to turn fluxes of water into equations, comprising Greek symbols and other elegant hieroglyphics. We worked our way through Newton’s laws and were regaled with the specific material properties of H2O. Standing on the shoulders of past hydrological heroes (and heroines) we formulated differential equations that claimed to simulate the conservation of mass and momentum, that accounted for turbulence in a body of water and acknowledged the effects of the roughness of a river’s channel.
Water appears to be a fundamentally complex material that has different dynamics over three dimensions and through a variety of spatial and temporal scales. The secret to modelling is to simplify this complexity. The model we used reduced three dimensions to one and lumped the range of variables that effect the roughness of a channel into the ‘Manning’s coefficient’ – a constant devised by an Irish water engineer at the end of the nineteenth century.
It is useful to understand models as conceptual representations of reality. The Greek and hieroglyphics can be understood as an hypothesis of how the landscape works – like a photograph or painting, they depict the modeller’s view of the form and dynamics of a place. However, unlike a painting, the representations they embody can be tested empirically. To test a model you need to compare its predictions against data gathered from the field on river form and dynamics and past flood events. If the data match what is predicted then you can have some confidence in the model, if not then you need to re-examine your equations.
Poorism
Poorism – an elision of ‘poor’ and ‘tourism’ – refers to a model of tourism where wealthy and well-meaning individuals travel to poor areas, generally in the developed world, to witness poverty, vice and deprivation in the flesh. It has a long history but has recently been packaged up and commodified by companies offering volunteering holidays and ‘humanitarian tours’.
Humanitarian travel has a long history. Monks like Saint Columba, who founded the religious community on Iona, travelled long distances to bring their faith and compassion to other countries. In latter years colonial missionaries set out for Africa to minister to the people, brining schools and hospitals (as well as infectious diseases) to far flung places. Such trips were hard, uncomfortable and often dangerous. While it would be foolish to describe them as tourists, they were undoubtedly affected by the allure of distance and far away places.
This humanitarian imperative for far away travel appears to be in good health in the 21st century. Missionaries are still active and increasing numbers of secular volunteers and highly trained and often poorly-paid aid workers set off each year to try and help relieve those affected by warfare, drought, disease and natural disasters. In spite of the dubious consequences of many of their interventions, it is difficult to fault their commitment.
However, the recent expansion, cheapening and democratisation of air travel has spawned a new mode of encountering the impoverished other. Over the last ten years it has become fashionable and even necessary for future career development to undertake a short period of volunteering in the developed world. Middle class students fresh out of school or university take ‘gap years’ to teach English, help orphans, build houses or care for charismatic animals. Generally speaking these adventures take the form of six months in a poor but politically stable, formally colonised country in the developing world. Travellers work for a bit on an organised project and then take time to backpack around their host country.
Hydrological politics
I have just completed the first week’s training for a fascinating new research project that is looking into ‘knowledge controversies’ in flood risk modelling. The project is being led by three professors from Oxford, Newcastle and Durham and will be looking at case studies in Yorkshire and Sussex.
The science of hydrology lies at the heart of the politics and practices of flood risk modelling. It is a mature science dedicated to understanding the movement of water around the entire hydrological cycle. We social scientists were given an intensive crash course on the various components of this cycle by Stuart Lane, a passionate hydrologist with the rare skill of being able to communicate complex concepts to an inexpert audience.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that Stuart’s intro gave me a whole new way of looking at the landscape and tuning into its dynamics. Standing beside the River Arun in West Sussex, he brought the river and its catchment to life. He framed the system as an interwoven set of fluid fluxes obeying their own spatial and temporal rhythms. Pulses of rain falling upstream are conveyed down towards the sea, drawn by the force of gravity. On their way down their passage is attenuated – or held up – to varying degrees by the material landscape. Pulses from different tributaries meet and combine into a complex melody of fluid flows.
Back in the seminar room we learnt about the politics of hydrology and the disputes and controversies it both engenders and is called to resolve. In the ancient and intensively worked landscapes that characterise much of the UK, few rain drops pass to the sea without encountering some form of human intervention. People have been managing rivers for millennia – as sources of food and water; for navigation, drainage and irrigation; and, most importantly in the case of this project, to avoid flooding. The river systems in which most of us dwell are now intensively managed to apportion and costs and benefits of riverside living.
In these hybrid landscapes, hydrologists have replaced ancient sages and water diviners as the designated providers of the knowledge required to conduct the passage of water. They have developed sophisticated theoretical and numerical models of hydrological dynamics, which have made them central to the politics and economics of land management – there is both money and power in water if you know what it is going to do.
Generally speaking flooding is a natural process. Many of the areas we currently expect to live dry in would normally spend some time of the year under water if it weren’t for different human interventions. These come at a range of scales – from the drains that convert marsh into habitable land to the concrete levees and barriers that stop rivers from following their normal drift across and out over their flood plains. In different ways these technologies accelerate the conveyance of water through areas at risk and, in so doing, channel problems downstream.
Set against this hard engineering approach there is alternative paradigm of flood management practice growing that seeks to make space for water, designing ‘spongy’ landscapes with space to attenuate excess flows. Unpopulated and marginal areas can be set-aside to receive surges of water, providing storage that accommodates water that would otherwise flood downstream. This is still a marginal approach but it is one that is receiving increasing attention from various circles – including those interested in re-wilding landscapes, as well as those desiring more difficult and inventive engineering challenges.
In short, the politics of managing flooding lies in deciding how the rhythms of water should be conducted through a landscape. In an unregulated system those people with resources upstream could both retain and reject water as they desire, shifting whatever is excess down the valley. Those with money and land downstream can then barricade themselves in with concrete and steel funnels, passing the buck further on to those areas less able defend themselves.
Fortunately, we live in social democracy whose political ecology is less brutal. Instead, there exists a complex political assemblage of different interest groups jostling for their respective interests. Farmers argue for both better drainage and for the security of their most fertile land on the flood plain. Meanwhile, urban dwellers wish to keep their kitchens dry and to ensure their house can be insured. Debates over what to protect thrash out relative risk and the value of different areas and assets.
The problem for hydrologists is that the systems they study, model and try and predict are incredibly complex – they incorporate the intersecting dynamics of vegetation, weather patterns, agriculture and tides, to name but a few. These are processes that are very difficult to tune into and measure. Data is often scant, at the wrong scale or surrogate. If you speak to hydrologists in the lab or field they are full of uncertainty and are modest about what they know and can predict. However, the needs of policy-makers, businesses and pressure groups force them to produce definite knowledge. In their published accounts, much of their uncertainty is erased, buried behind confidence intervals and paramaterisation.
The project that I am part of is seeking to rescue this uncertainty and thus to open up the practices of hydrology, and in particular hydrological modelling to tease out the conditions under which knowledge is produced and decisions are made. It aims to explore different ways of witnessing the forms of environmental expertise that circulate in affected communities. It takes both the creativity and the uncertainty of hydrology to explore a different from of environmental politics.
Back home
All good things must come to an end – our six months finished last week and we have now returned to the UK. I not sure what to do with the blog but I am hoping to keep it going. In the meantime here are some final reflections on leaving and arriving.
Once you fix a date to leave a place it gets easier to enjoy living there. The anticipation of returning home increases the intensity of everyday experiences and hassles become easier to bear when you realise that they won’t be there in a month’s time. Furthermore, my memory seems to quickly airbrush out the grimmer moments – like improbably sunny recollections of Scottish summers, Sri Lanka at a distance is swiftly morphing into a paradise. Before this rose-tinting happens I thought it might be interesting to jot down my feelings and observations from the first few days back home.
The first and most obvious thing that struck me coming off the plane was the change in climate. When we left Colombo it was a humid 38o; I was sweating sitting still. You’d get out of a cold shower dry off and be wet again before you could get your clothes on. Apparently, conception rates tail off significantly during April and obstetricians get a lull until nine months after the rains have come. At such an extreme torpor sets in – you cower inside hiding from the cosmic laser gun, and the brain slows down as if your synapses have melted or congealed. Clothes are worn only for decency and protection – any insulation is unpleasant.
Back here in early April spring is in the air, the days are lengthening and the optimistic Brits are already barbequing and wearing shorts. However, there is still a chill around that cuts through my inappropriate clothing. I have started to feel my bones again, in a way that doesn’t happen when everything is at body temperature. It is a vague rheumatic ache in the knees that conjures images of threadbare carpets, inadequate radiators and cat-flap draughts. Lying in bed there is a stark temperature difference between my core and periphery – my nose and toes are cold to touch. Clothes become a cocoon – a cosy shell within which to shelter and a line of defence against the elements – I shiver at the very thought of wearing a sarong. For me it is a pleasant change; a return to familiarity where my overworked sweat glands can take a well earned break. I miss the less extreme heat of Kandy and the mood it engendered but it is good to have more control over my thermostat – it is always easier to heat up than it is to cool off.
The higher temperatures of the tropics accelerate the processes of growth and decay and the air was rich with the smells of fetid sewage, decaying waste and over ripe fruit. Even after six months I was struck by the density and diversity of buzzing, creeping, swooping and microscopic life; stuff feels alive and mobile with an excess of living. This sense of vibrancy is compounded by the noise, bustle and fumes of Sri Lankan cities. Drag-racer buses with belching exhausts and oil tanker horns terrorise pavement-less roads as you jostle with countless dogs, pedestrians, bicycles and buffaloes to make headway. I strove to dull my senses to filter out the onslaught.
In contrast, the land-, smell- and sound-scapes of the UK are more subtle. With winter still ascendant invertebrate life is not yet stirring, migratory birds have yet to return and feral pigeons, dogs and cats cower for warmth. Inured to the extremes of smog in Sri Lanka, the air of Oxford and London is almost fragrant with its bouquet of catalytically converted fumes. In Sri Lanka I breathed through my nose with trepidation, wary of encountering a stench and always ready to switch to my larynx at the first hint of rotting offal. Back here I inhale vigorously, confident in the likely intensity and offensiveness of aromas – I have yet to be struck by a powerful pong, or the sort of smell that moves you to a memory or a déjà vu. The immediacies of urban street life are also much more pleasant. Until moving to Sri Lanka I took pavements for granted and thought little about how accessible and public they make the city. Outside of Colombo, paved space beside roads is almost nonexistent and there is no where to wander and observe – the Sri Lankan flaneur is a hardy specimen.
Visiting my sister in Camden starkly illustrated the seeming homogeneity of Sri Lankan style. Back in the land of tattoos, piercings, hair dye and myriad accessories it is great not to be stared at and cast in a racial stereotype. The anonymity of difference heralds the return of private space in public areas but it also has its downsides. Gone are the ready smiles and flashing teeth that surrounded us in Kandy – where questioning was persistent and repetitive but it was always courteous. In the metropolis the faces on the street wear wary scowls or give blank stares – up close on the Tube eyes pass through and past you and the comfort of strangers is tinged with a vague sense of loneliness. Like a man from the countryside I find myself smiling at people and engaging with service staff.
I write this on a train speeding up the East coast mainline to Scotland. We are flying through the Fens in smooth clean bubble of ergonomic furniture and wipe clean plastic; everything smacks of order and efficiency. I know we are supposed to have the worst train service in Europe but this feels hyper-modern in contrast to the antiquated railways of Sri Lanka. There you could hang your legs out the door, eat the fiery chick peas and pineapples thrust through the window and smell the landscape as it rattled past. In contrast he we are severed from place and thrust forward to be delivered, pampered and relaxed on time at our destination. Picture windows and elevated lines frame the landscape, while air conditioning erases the cold and the changing air chemistry.
In a previous entry I wrote about the fluidity of Sri Lankan time and the open-ended nature of schedules and plans. The contrast is clear on this train – the nasal tanoy voice is currently apologising for a four minute delay and several fellow passengers tut and sigh. Four minutes in Sri Lanka is essentially the same moment in a culture of time that works in days, punctuated by lunch and tea. I have certainly found myself more relaxed when the Tube stops in the tunnel or when I get waylaid in meeting an appointment. I doubt this will last but my watch is broken and as it is being fixed I am giving myself a gradual run back in to minute accounting, diarising and getting stressed.
Overall it is good to be back. I left with the option of returning later in the year and thus my departure lacked the finality it might otherwise have engendered. It would be great to return with my experience behind me and in six months we just scratched the surface; I still feel there is much to see and a lot more to make sense of.
My colonial history
Just before I left the UK my grandfather gave me a small piece of card on which was written ‘Gilbert Cooper, Troup Estate’. He explained that one strand of our family used to be tea planters in Ceylon
Shortly after settling into the geography department at Peradeniya I went to visit the map room. This contains a complete edition of the 1 inch: 1 mile collection produced by the Ceylon Survey Office in the 1950’s – still perhaps the most comprehensive maps to be found of this country. I borrowed the sheets covering the tea country and after poring over them for a couple of hours located Troup Estate up in the hills near Talawakale.
Gilbert Cooper lies four generations back up my tortuous family tree. I won’t bore you with the genealogical connection, but he came to Ceylon in the 1840s at the height of the empire hoping to make his fortune as a planter. Using domesticated elephants he cleared a patch of jungle in hills and planted coffee. Coffee never really took off in Ceylon and his crop has soon wiped out by a pest. He returned to England a broken man. Having gathered some more capital he soon returned to the plantation, replacing the diseased coffee plants with tea bushes.
Tea proved much more suited to the climate and, safely protected by British trade controls, his crop flourished. He established the Troup estate and built a large tea factory and a classic tea bungalow with manicured lawns, flower beds and a very British pond. With his wife he lived the hard and adventurous life of a colonial planter. Their nearest neighbours lived several miles away down bone-rattling roads. Trips to school, to the shops and or to ‘the club’ involved lengthy journeys and a great deal of time was spent at home with the gin.
Adams Peak
Adams Peak is Sri Lanka’s holiest mountain and is claimed by most of the country’s religions as the site where Adam/Buddha/Shiva/St Thomas came to earth. Every good Buddhist is expected to make a pilgrimage to its peak at least once in their life. It is a stiff climb.
Although the central highlands of Sri Lanka rise to over 2500 metres, there are few distinct peaks. The one exception to this is Adams Peak, which rises like a mini-Matterhorn out of the surrounding tree-clad slopes. You can drive pretty close to the summit but it is still a steep climb to the top. The peak has been a site of pilgrimage for over a thousand years and there is now a well maintained set of over 4500 steps that take you to the top.
The climb is traditionally done in the dark to allow the pilgrim to witness the sunrise from the peak and to return again before the heat of the day. The path is well-lit by ugly strip lights which ascend in the darkness blending confusingly with the stars, so at times it looks like the path goes on for ever up into the heavens. In fact climbing in the dark is best as you can’t see how much further you have to go.
We set off at 2.30am at a brisk pace and were soon sweating and panting as the path climbed relentlessly upwards. We passed several hundred people on the way up in varying degrees of physical fitness. Some of the more frail looked like they had been climbing for days and it was moving to see hunched women in their 70’s in flip-flops being assisted by several generations of their family.
