""" developers were coming in with proposals to demolish the Victorian villas in the area so that they could build apartments. We decided to designate it as a conservation area so that nothing could be knocked down without our permission. """

I note the author does not say what actions they took to ensure their decisions did not negatively affect the supply of housing.

There weren't housing shortages in most Northern cities in the 1980s. Significant deindustrialisation had hollowed them out and they were in economic decline. The population in Manchester dropped continuously from 766,311 in 1931 to 392,819 in 2001 before starting to recover[0].

This was also before the sell-off of council housing, so it was still possible for the authority to guarantee housing. So conservation of unloved but historically important buildings was probably a more pressing problem than finding some vacant land to build flats.

https://www.manchester.gov.uk/download/downloads/id/25393/a2...

They're not obliged to. Conservation is a good on its own terms. They also didn't address carbon burdens, asbestos or diversity.

Look I get it, there's a housing crisis. If you want to argue we should make suburban Seoul with towers for 10km can I remind you le Corbusiers ideas were implemented widely in Birmingham and Manchester and were a disaster.

Maybe, the answer is to raid the green belt? Oh look, another "special interest" bun fight. More Barrett homes now! More ticky tacky. More all the same.

No, well 1980s Manchester isn't modern day $prosperous city.

Further, I suspect a run down '10 servant' Victorian Villa could house more people in bedsits, than the replacement apartments, so in effect youre complaining that the have nots had housing at the expense of the better off, which probably isn't the complaint you were intending to make.

In China they went and built a ton of housing, but then people don't want to live in those cities and their population has peaked up. So forcing housing solutions doesn't necessarily end well either.