“Children are the canary in the coalmine for what is happening to our cities”

Posted byCambridge Town OwlPosted inUncategorized

Anna Minton’s piece on gentrification is a warning for central government and the affluent business sectors when it comes to building new towns and expanding existing ones

I’m not going to let the haunting question ‘What’s a youth club?’ by one of a trio of children put to me at a recent primary school summer fete rest. How are children meant to help shape the future of the towns and cities they live in if they don’t have day-to-day experiences of the sorts of community and public services that the wartime Greatest Generation said should be theirs by right. I.e. the future that they were fighting for. It’s one of the reasons I find publications from the 1940s that look to the future to be such fascinating documents – such as this one from 1945 titled Our Towns.

“A study by the Affordable Housing Commission found that 13% of British adults under the age of 45 and in a couple delayed or chose not to start a family because of their housing situation – with nearly 2 million people potentially affected.”

Anna Minton, The Guardian 26 May 2025 (You can see more of Anna Minton’s books here)

By my late 20s (i.e. in the late 2000s) I had already decided I would not be able to have a family of my own if I were to stay in the civil service. I was already burning out and could not picture a lifestyle where I had such an extended commute leaving so little time for family life in the face of such massive costs of living – whether in London or elsewhere. Hence why I took the redundancy option in 2011 – not an experience I’d wish on anyone.

“So Antony, what do you do?”

…is the question often put to me by people meeting me for the first time. I stopped asking direct questions about occupations with new acquaintances many years ago. It helped get me out of our cultural habit of judging people by their occupation (and thus their ‘social status’). Noting that I was brought up in a society where you were very much judged by your occupation or if still at school, your ambition towards a specific occupation.

**I’m just a chronically-ill bum on benefits, aren’t I?**

That’s what I said to one fellow local civic activist recently when we tried to figure out how best to encourage more people to get involved in shaping the future of our city given how difficult the past year had been for local councils and campaign groups to get people to turn up to things – for example here in Coleridge ward last December. Which is why I’m trying to get councillors and groups to act now to get stalls and groups along to the Music in the Parks series of events in Cambridge this summer. ‘Go where the people are, not where you think they should be’ being the principle, with any stalls not doing hard-sell, rather just providing enough engaging and interesting content, materials, and activities for people and their children to make their own decisions.

While London’s gentrification issues are to do with existing communities, in and around Cambridge the problems are two-fold: existing housing, and new-build estates

With existing communities, anecdotally the change I’ve seen in my nearly-half-century living here (Give-or-take time in Brighton and London for uni and work), the destabilisation of south Cambridge due to changing housing tenures and employment patterns is something the longer term residents have picked up on. 20 years ago you would not have seen the number of people carting wheelie-suitcases up and down some of the main and secondary roads that the buses go down in Cambridge – reflecting the rise of very short term lets. Because the number of guesthouses and hotels along those roads has hardly changed. (IMHO Air BnB and apart-hotel-type bookings should be subject to a similar taxation and regulatory regime as guesthouses and small hotels, with much stronger restrictions on what sort of properties and in which locations can be used for such purposes. Ditto student accommodation). The root of the problem is that successive governments have refused to grant powers to local councils to manage, govern, and administer their settlements properly.

“The reality is that it creates sterile places, emptied of so many of the essential aspects of urban life, except the expensive activities. The city may be emptier than ever of children and families, but tables at sought-after restaurants are still booked up weeks in advance.”

Minton (2025)

My huge concern with Cambridge is that the expensive activities put on for children are only available to those whose parents are willing and able to pay for them. (I also find adverts by private schools located outside of the county aimed at wealthy people which are splashed on buses that serve council estates to be highly offensive too. (No mention of bursaries – so that excuse doesn’t wash either)).

The least that Cambridge’s politicians and businesses could do is make the case to ministers to extend the Cambridge BID to cover private schools, cram colleges, and language schools and use revenues raised to pay for a new generation of activities open to all children irrespective of background, also providing free transport and meals, and aimed at those that don’t otherwise get to do the extra curricular activities. For example if prep-school children aged 9-11 from the Perse get to take part in performing on stage at their own private event at The Junction, shouldn’t our city be providing the same opportunities to their state-school counterparts? I have no complaints for The Junction which needs every penny it can get (no – really. Have a look at their membership scheme, something which I will be asking them to increase their local marketing in the neighbourhoods that are within walking distance of their premises. (Think emails to local residents for shows that have free tickets available at the last minute, or for those shows otherwise not selling well).

Human symptoms of our broken cities: Loneliness, and political extremism

I was struck by the post of someone I know on FB who put this post out.

Amongst other things, it reflected how little there is to do collectively for people in our city if you do not have the means to pay for it. And if a critical mass of people don’t have the means to pay for it, it’s no fun.

  • Who wants to eat at an expensive but empty restaurant?
  • Who wants to be the only person in the audience at the theatre or stand-up comedy show?
  • Who wants to be the only person in the night club? Exactly.

“Too many restaurants and bars appeared closed – and those that weren’t were largely empty. Empty. On the last Saturday night before Christmas?

  • Where were the sixth form college students?
  • Where were the older students returning from university?
  • Where were all the young people?”

CTO – Describing Cambridge on the last Saturday before Christmas 2024

It also got me thinking about how in your formative years we spend ourselves surrounded by people because compulsory education institutionalises us. Then when we get out into the real world, we get a bit of a shock because the things we take for granted with surrounded by the same people five days a week during the day, suddenly become apparent. To stay in touch with people you really have to make the effort.

I remember how bone-crushingly painful (metaphorically) the sense of loneliness was during what we now call a gap year when I worked in a back-office for a bank. Most of the people around me were effectively in their employment for the foreseeable future, and I pondered with horror the concept of being middle aged and working in a similar small office environment where hardly anyone seemed to like each other. (With hindsight it was a toxic working environment – too many places still are). And the sculpture piece by Albert Gyorgy below more than captures it.

Above – Melancholie (Melancholy) by Albert Gyorgy in Geneva, Switzerland

Hence from a public policy perspective trying to make the link between loneliness in society and civic-based solutions such as new places & institutions (eg lifelong learning colleges) to build that much-needed social capital.

Loneliness is one symptom, and turning towards politically-extreme movements is another.

For anyone who thinks Cambridge is somehow immune from what’s happening in other places, we got a shock at the weekend. That alone should be enough to galvanise people from beyond existing political and civic circles to get involved in coming up with new and better responses to our city’s chronic problems.

How will Peter Freeman’s Cambridge Growth Company deal with these challenges?

I came away from Mr Freeman’s public talk at Great St Mary’s feeling more positive than many. I can understand why he got so much hostility from environmentalists. He was the first person from central government or appointed by, to face the public since Michael Gove announced his proposals, which I said at the time (July 2023) reflected panicked thinking from an administration that had run out of both ideas, and time. That no ministers from any party have faced the public or even their elected local representatives in public in the face of such transformative policies speaks volumes about our over-centralised system. I think it’s perfectly reasonable for Cambridge City Council and South Cambridgeshire District Council to invite the Minister for Housing to appear before their full councils (or a joint committee of both councils) to take their questions, giving the public the option of submitting their own questions from which councillors could source their own lines of questioning.

I think it’s vitally important that residents and campaign groups hold Mr Freeman’s political feet to the fire when it comes to facing down the most extreme demands from developers and financiers. Who let’s face it, seem to be carrying on as if there has been no change in government at all because – anecdotally at least round here, they are still submitting the same ugly and boring building designs as before. Furthermore, there is a huge risk of Swampy-style protests against major construction projects the sort made famous at the Newbury Bypass in the mid-1990s if developers do what they’ve done all too often and pay lip-service to community concerns.

“How do we avoid a dystopian future of streets lined with half-empty luxury apartments on one side, and cramped box-like developments of privately-rented-at-extortionate-prices flats built next to limited social housing on the other?”

Good question – and something to put in a policy risk assessment on the sort of outcome to avoid? I’ll leave Anna Minton with the last word:

“When the city is no longer able to cater to children, or the range of other diverse uses that keep communities healthy and vibrant, places don’t die, but neither are they truly alive.”

Minton (2025)

Food for thought?

If you are interested in the longer term future of Cambridge, and on what happens at the local democracy meetings where decisions are made, feel free to: