How would you deliver a new Garden City which is visionary,

economically viable, and popular?

Evo City

Competition Entry #38789853

The

Non Technical Summary 3Vision 4 Section #1- Vision – Aim 4 A Systemic Problem – ‘Housing Crisis’ 4 A developmental view of design history 5 The Vision – Blueprint for an Evo City 12Economic Viability and Governance 22 Section #2 – Economic Viability and Governance Aim 22 The Current Economic Situation in the UK 22 Ebenezer Howard’s Original Garden City Model 24 The Reality of the Garden City 26 The Contemporary Possibility for Garden City Ideals 27 Raising Initial Capital 29 Economic Viability - The Plan of Action 30Popularity 34 Public Support 34 The Crowdfunding Interface 34Conclusion 36Figure Credits and Bibliography 37

Contents

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Non Technical SummaryThis submission begins by describing contemporary developments in technology, society and the economy,

which have profound implications for urban planning. The possibilities uncovered today permit the construction of what is described as an ‘Evo City’. This is a contemporary adaptation of a ‘Garden City’, taking into account the progress made in the 21st century world. The name Evo City places it as a development of the idea of an Eco City, but also as a city designed not as a static creation, or a one off utopia, but as a network which will gradually evolve over time. A crucial idea here is that to evolve means to develop and increase in complexity and sophistication, while to grow means simply to increase in size. In this sense the Evo City is designed to evolve, not to grow. The key changes informing the design of the city, as outlined in the first section of this submission, ‘Vision’, are renewable power generation, internet communication and digital manufacturing. A series of drawings providing a basic ‘blueprint’ for the Evo City, taking these developments into account, is then discussed.

Inequality is the central problem caused by the ‘housing crisis’ in the United Kingdom, and is the central problem which the Evo City seeks to solve. Its financial structures, and consequent governance structures, are as heavily designed, if not more, than the actual physical architecture depicted in the ‘Vision’ section. The following section on ‘Economic Viability and Governance’ first discusses the way in which the property market currently acts as an engine of inequality. It details the economic system by which wealth gradually accrues to those who own property, while those who do not own property remain an excluded and economically marginalized group. This section then looks at Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City movement as a case study of urban planning which historically aimed to restructure the ownership of land and property, in order to distribute wealth more evenly. The reasons for the only partial success of the Garden City movement are then examined.

Finally, the section ‘Economic Viability and Governance’ describes its proposed method of financing the Evo City, and the resultant distribution of wealth created by the construction of this new urban area. This proposal is intrinsically linked to the technological and economic developments outlined in the ‘Vision’ section. In short, the initial capital is raised by ‘equity crowdfunding’. This means that innumerable members of the general public pledge money to the project via an online crowdfunding platform. Upon reaching the funding target for the construction of the Evo City, these initial investors are rewarded with a proportionate amount of equity in the Evo City Company. The local authorities agree to facilitate the project by providing planning permission and assisting with the purchasing of the necessary land, in return for the Evo City company securing public support in the form of these crowdfunded pledges for equity made by the general public. The local authority will also be able to implement a unique taxation structure once construction is completed by the company. The Evo City Company carries out the work of designing and building the Evo City, and when initial construction is complete; the Evo City Company begins to function in a fashion similar to that of a housing cooperative. A housing cooperative is a legal entity which owns real estate. In the case of the Evo City, it operates on the principal of membership, where all members are shareholders in the project. Owning an amount of shares proportionate to the value of one residential or commercial unit entitles the shareholder to occupy that unit. At this point the local government in the area, the Evo City district, does not charge council tax, but instead charges an annual tax rate based on the value of the shares owned by the shareholders. This is akin to a land value tax, an idea which has been around for over 100 years in British politics. The result is that the project will be popular with the general public, as they stand to make money from financing it in the first place, and this popularity ensures the cooperation of the local authorities. The initial capital gains benefit the local community, who provided the starting capital, as they sell their shares to prospective inhabitants who want to buy up enough shares to be entitled to occupancy. Shareholders of the company are then involved in an organization which is so much greater than the sum of its parts. As tax revenue is raised from the value of the shares, any appreciation in property values due to public spending on infrastructure, facilities and services is reflected in an appreciation of the share value, which raises proportionately more tax revenue. Yet, prices remain affordable, as buyers will take this tax into account when they evaluate their choice of becoming a shareholder. This stops the price of living in the Evo City rising beyond reason.

The central theme here, the prime directive, everything driving the proposal, is the aim to arrive at this situation, where wealth is distributed to the community who created it, rather than private landowners and landlords.

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Section #1- Vision – AimThe main aim of this section is to understand the nature of the UK’s housing problems, and then discuss what

a solution will look like. This will take the form of a contemporary adaptation of a Garden City, which we will call an ‘Evo City’. This section will therefore explain in brief:

• A picture of the current ‘housing crisis’

• A developmental view of design history, showing the progression of urban design in the UK up to the present day, and thus the next step.

• A blueprint for what this new vision (the Evo City) will look like.

A Systemic Problem – ‘Housing Crisis’The average house in Britain costs around five times the average annual income at the moment, and rising.1

The effects of this are far reaching, from a growing number of people who cannot afford to get on the ‘housing ladder’, to a tough rental market. Ultimately though, the bottom line is inequality. We are increasingly becoming a society of haves and have-nots. Those who already own property become wealthier as prices rise, and for the have-nots, the prospect of becoming a homeowner becomes ever more unattainable.

This vision, and the economic study in the following chapter, will be explored in the context of a real site, to illustrate the plausibility of the proposal. If we take the example of Birmingham, we find a large UK city which is illustrative of many of the problems faced nationwide. When we look at the ‘Birmingham Plan 2031’, we find one example of the ways in which a city council is struggling to solve problems – problems to which the Evo City holds solutions. The City Council says of the Birmingham Plan 2031: ‘We now consider that this version of the plan is the most appropriate strategy to deliver the future growth and prosperity of the City for the period to 2031.’2 This

period of growth is bringing challenges.

The Office of National Statistics (ONS) projections (2010) indicate that by 2031 Birmingham’s population will rise by 150,000 and that this will mean an increase of 80,000 in the number of households.3 It will be important that this growth is supported by high quality and affordable homes that integrate with communities, help reduce overcrowding and provide access to services and jobs.4

The city admits that accommodating this growth is a significant challenge saying that ‘For a densely built up area like Birmingham there are significant challenges in identifying appropriate sites to accommodate and deliver the long term levels of growth needed within the existing built up area.’5

1 Ben Chu, ‘Britain Is Suffering from a Housing Crisis - Who Is to Blame and How Can We Fix It?’, The Independent 20142 Birmingham City Council, ‘Birmingham Plan 2031 - Birmingham Development Plan Pre-Submission Version’, ed. by Planning and Regeneration

Development and Culture Directorate, 2013), p. 8.3 Ibid., , p. 28.4 Ibid., , p. 14.5 Ibid., , p. 14.

Section #1 - Vision

Fig. 1 A protest walk in sutton coldfield over plans to develop green belt land

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These facts are forcing them to consider very unpopular and undesirable options such as building on the green belt, even though that measure would still be unable to fully accommodate growth. The Birmingham Plan 2031 states that ‘It is not possible to achieve the levels of new housing development which would be required to meet this need within the City boundary. This reflects the fact that the land supply within the City is limited, even when Green Belt development options are considered. To meet the rest of Birmingham’s housing need, options outside the City’s boundaries will need to be explored.’6 This has led to a loss of public support and protests within the local community. Shown in fig. 1. are protesters in Sutton Coldfield marching at the start of this year against plans to develop on the green belt. Interestingly the plan also states that ‘The City Council will seek to work collaboratively with neighbouring authorities to secure the development of further homes to contribute toward meeting Birmingham’s housing requirement over the period to 2031.’7

So we have here a picture of a city authority at a loss for how to sustainably accommodate growth, and they are ready to negotiate, ready to collaborate with neighbours and explore options. They acknowledge that new urban development needs to be of an extremely high quality and built sustainably, but can’t explain how this will be achieved through conventional developer led, profit motivated, speculative construction, which is has an approach to sustainability and environmental regulations known as ‘one step better than breaking the law’.8

Figure 2, a Sankey diagram, shows the origins, and usage of the gas supply in the UK. In 2002, North Sea gas and oil production peaked and 2006 marked the UK’s flip to becoming a net importer of energy. Currently 52% of gas and oil use in the UK in imported and is predicted to rise placing further pressure on the UK’s international eco-political relationships. Birmingham is also thinking about measures to safeguard the energy supply, new development providing an opportunity to do this.

So we have an energy crisis and an economic crisis on our hands. What is the relationship between them, and how does housing fit into that equation?

If we look back even briefly through the development of the UK and its accompanying built environment, we can sense the trajectory; feel the pull of progress towards our next step.

A developmental view of design history We can briefly look through the main stages of the economic development of the UK to understand the built

environment that grew up around those particular circumstances.

It is beyond the scope of this essay to go into too great an amount of detail with regard to what constitutes an industrial revolution, and how many we can argue to have existed, but we can say that an ‘industrial revolution refers to a set of technologies that dramatically amplify the productivity of people, changing everything from longevity of and quality of life, to where people live and how many there are of them.’9 Using that definition, we can say there have already been at least two, and many argue we are now moving into a third. These industrial revolutions have massive implications for how we need to design our cities. The chart (see fig. 4.) summarizes the principal developments of the economy across these changes.

Firstly, let’s look at the period starting in the latter half of the 18th century and ending around the start of the 20th century, known as the first industrial revolution. This is shown in the first column of figure 4.

6 Ibid., , p. 28.7 Ibid., , p. 28.8 Mark DeKay and Susanne Bennett, Integral Sustainable Design : Transformative Perspectives (London: Earthscan, 2011), p. 234.9 Chris Anderson, Makers : The New Industrial Revolution (London: Random House Business, 2012), p. 38.

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The introduction of steam powered technology into printing transformed the medium into the primary communications tool to manage the First Industrial Revolution. The steam printing press with rollers, and later the rotary press with linotype, greatly increased the speed of printing and significantly reduced the cost. Print material in the form of newspapers, magazines and books proliferated in America and Europe, encouraging mass literacy for the first time in history. The advent of public schooling on both continents between the 1830s and the 1890s created a print literate workforce to organize the complex operations of a coal powered, steam driven rail and factory economy.10

The first industrial revolution was a time of upheaval from a rural to an urban way of life for the first time, and as such, the changes brought about by the first industrial revolution are unparalleled in the United Kingdom. An extremely large portion of our housing stock is still a remnant of this age. The landscape of the time was one of large factories, starting with the textile mills, which were built amongst dense urban centres of terraced houses, in order to be close to a mass labour workforce. This was connected to a network of canals, and later, the railways, also running on coal. Figure 3 illustrates the typical urban development in Britain, very much a product of its time, which is highly characteristic of much of the built environment in cities of the UK today.

We are familiar with the Dickensian problems faced by the urban poor at this time. There were vast disparities in wealth between landowners and industrialists, and the workers in the factories. Life for the urban working class meant slums, overcrowding, disease and poverty. This is very much the world that Ebenezer Howard was reacting against with his design for the ‘Garden City’. As opposed to factories being located next to residential areas where they churned out smog, the city was zoned to keep industrial buildings safely at the very perimeter of the garden city, with ample space for fresh air and public recreation in a huge green park at the centre. Add to that a wide leafy ‘grand – avenue’, which forms a ring mid way through the town.

However, the world to which the Garden City was designed to respond would change out of all recognition with the coming of the second industrial revolution. The chart (fig. 4.) again summarizes the developments which

10 Jeremy Rifkin, The Third Industrial Revolution : How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), p. 35.

Fig. 3. Terraced houses in Birmingham. This familiar building type forms a ubiquitous part of the British city scape.

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Energy

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(c. 1900 - New Millenium)

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(1990s - )

Coal to steam power

Mass factory labour

Canals and rail

Print advertising

Newspapers, Telegraph

Society organised in a hierarchy. Large concentrations of capital necessary to extract expensive key raw materials such as crude oil, and to enable mass production. Disparities in wealth and values between those at the bottom, and those at the top of the pyramid.

Fossil fuels to electricity

Electrified production lines

Internal combustion and jet engine

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TV, Radio, Telephone

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Digital manufacturing

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Society organised in a network. Functions more like an ecosystem than a market, with many experiments in collaboration for mutual benefit, shared goals and collective endevours.

Fig. 4. Chart showing the crucial changes across 3 industrial revolutions in the UK

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underpin this next stage. America, not the UK, was the instigator of this second industrial revolution, but the effects are of course universally felt.

In the first decade of the twentieth century, electrical communication converged with the oil powered internal combustion engine, giving rise to the second industrial revolution. The electrification of factories ushered in the era of mass produced goods, the most important being the automobile. Henry Ford began to manufacture his gasoline-powered Model T car, altering the spatial and temporal orientation of society. Virtually overnight, millions of people began to trade in their horses and buggies for automobiles.11

The mass electrical communications of this age, radio and television, redefined social life, and were used to manage and market the far flung activities of the age of oil economy and auto age. 12 The instantly recognisable typical urban development of this period is suburban sprawl. Single family detached houses with a drive and a garage are distributed across a road network designed for the scale of the car, accessible by motorway, where the place of work is often a lengthy drive away from the residence, as depicted in figure 5.

We are now reaching the end of this oil powered, fossil fuel burning economy, and it is this momentous event which is causing the inter-related economic and environmental crisis. The reason we can’t stop using fossil fuels to combat climate change is because our current, yet waning, second industrial revolution economy is addicted to them, it needs them to function. We have also now reached both peak oil per capita and global peak oil production, which is signalling the end of the economic viability of this industrial revolution. When the price of oil peaked at $147 per barrel in 2008, this was intimately related to the global economic shutdown.13 We already saw in figure 2, the gas distribution flow, that the UK is now a net importer of energy.

One of the main reactions against this unsustainable economic hegemony has been the environmental movement and in terms of urban design, the idea that our cities should be sustainable: an Eco-City. An Eco City would never come to fruition under this contemporary economic reality however, and there is not a single city in

11 Ibid., p. 35.12 Ibid., p. 36.13 Ibid., pp. 10-12.

Fig. 5. Suburban housing on the outskirts of Birmingham. On the periphery of every British city, suburban developments such as this have been constructed. Often single family houses arranged in cul-de-sacs, they are low

density, and encourage a lifestyle dependent on the private car fro transport.

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the UK which is zero-carbon overall. Eco villages have been the only successful examples of near zero carbon settlements.

But there is a third industrial revolution to come. The argument made by the economic commentator and advisor to the European Union, Jeremy Rifkin, defined it as based on the distributed generation of power enabled by renewable technologies, and a distributed communications medium to manage it: the internet. He argues that both of the first two industrial revolutions required huge concentrations of capital to extract the necessary resources, and massive geo-political concentrations of military power to secure access to them in the first place. But renewable energy can be harnessed anywhere. We now have the suitable technology, the internet, a distributed lateral communication network, to manage a distributed lateral energy network of renewable generation connected in a smart grid.

The power of the digital world and the computer has been radically changing a whole host of other things, from the way we manufacture products to the way we buy and sell them, to the way we interact with each other. The technologies considered to be changing the world are: clever software, novel materials such as carbon fibre, more dexterous robots which can perform complex computer controlled operations like CNC milling and laser cutting, new processes e.g. 3D printing, and a whole range of web-based services and online marketplaces like Etsy. The effect of manufacturing going digital in such a way means that we are no longer subject to the economies of scale as we have been throughout the second industrial revolution. In essence, it is becoming much more economical to make smaller batches, of a wider variety of products, with a higher level of customisation. All these changes coupled with a new energy regime and communications medium are converging into a third industrial revolution, which again, will profoundly change where we live, and how we live there. The high productivity of 3IR (3rd Industrial Revolution) technology is already beginning to reverse the second industrial revolution trend of moving factories to developing countries to employ cheap labour as the cost of labour as a proportion of the total cost of production diminishes.14

As well as developments in manufacturing, energy, and communication, we also need to talk about transport. The UK is preparing for the High Speed 2 rail link between London and Birmingham. Figure 6 shows the travel distance by rail in the UK before and after the construction of the proposed HS2 link. Each ring represents one hour’s travel, and as we can see HS2 ‘shrinks’ the UK. This may act as a catalyst for growth, but one of the less

14 Paul Markillie, ‘A Third Industrial Revolution’, in The Economist, 2012)

Fig. 6. Before (left) and after (right). The concentric rings represent 1 hour’s train travel from Birmingham before and after the construction of High Speed 2. The UK is getting (slightly) closer together.

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talked about benefits of this, is, that it will free up space on the existing rail network, making an even more highly connected urban situation possible for a wide spread of places. This meshes exactly with the principles of a distributed, networked 3IR economy.

If the first industrial revolution gave rise to dense urban cores, tenements, row housing, skyscrapers, and multilevel factories, and the second industrial revolution spawned flat suburban tracts and industrial parks, the third industrial revolution transforms every existing building into a dual purpose dwelling – a habitat and micro power plant.15

So if the key metaphor for urban planning reform in the first industrial revolution was the Garden City, and the key metaphor for progress in urban planning in the second industrial revolution was the Ecological City, or Eco City, then the new key metaphor will be the Evolving City, or Evo City. The Eco City sought to engage with the failings of the oil era and the second industrial revolution by tackling it on its own terms, and thus far has only succeeded in making it ‘less bad’. The Evo City seeks to completely transcend it. With the Eco City, with green design, the emphasis was on scaling things back, using less, scarcity, austerity, energy efficiency, and frugality, to try and squeeze human life into an acceptable ecological footprint, without fundamentally changing the way it is organised. But the Evo City looks instead to develop, or evolve to an entirely new level of complexity. It looks to the technologies of the third industrial revolution, digital manufacturing, the possibilities of the internet, and distributed renewable energy, to live a life of abundance and joy, which is comfortably staged within the parameters set by biological life.

And so what might the Evo City look like?

15 Rifkin, The Third Industrial Revolution : How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World, p. 45.

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1. Strategic location in the UKRail Network

The Evo City is located within easy reach of a large metropolitan centre, accessible by rail.

Fig. 7. Map showing the existing rail network in the UK

A Blueprint for the Evo City

J = Existing Rail Lines

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For one example: Shenstone is 10 minutes north by train of Birmingham’s largest suburb, Sutton Coldfield. Shenstone has space suitable for development, including a 65 hectare site to the west, and is well connected to Birmingham by public transport.

J Feasible site boundary J Rail line J Body of water J Green area

2. Site suitability. Map of Shenstone 1:10 000

Fig. 8. Map showing Shenstone, Staffordshire as one of many similar potential sites for new development.

N

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This masterplan shows 898 dwellings and 108,000 m2 of commercial and other floorspace on 25 hectares of the Shenstone site, achieving an overall density of roughly 36 dwellings/ha.

3. ProgramBuilding Volumes in the Masterplan

Fig. 9. A rough masterplan shown on the 65 hectare site adjacent to Shenstone

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The Evo City is conceived as a beautifully landscaped network of Boulevards, Avenues, Streets, Mews and Parkland, forming a human-scale public realm, easily navigable by the cycle lanes or on foot between a relatively dense urban fabric forming well defined public spaces.

4. Urban DesignStreet Masterplan

J Boulevard J Avenue J Street J Mews J Parkland J Forest J River J Railway line

N

Fig. 10. The street level masterplan shows the various different characters of urban space which

have been designed to form the fabric of the Evo City

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The urban fabric is made of a healthy mixture of building types: Residential, public and commercial. The busy main boulevard through the district is lined with perimeter blocks, the basic building block of many European cities. These house numerous public functions such as schools and libraries. They also contain commercial floorspace in addition to residential floorspace on the floors above. The quieter avenues have a streetscape of grand semi detached houses, also designed flexibly with the potential for commercial uses on the ground floor. The principle dwelling is a contemporary take on the traditional British terraced house.

5. Urban DesignBuilding Types Within the Masterplan

Semi detached Avenue house 3 bed terrace

Park house4 bed terraceMews houses

4 bed terracelive/work unit

Perimeter blockflats and mixed use

Fig. 11. Axonometric drawing showing the mixture of building types to be found within the Evo City.

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Each dwelling has external garden space, as well as space for car and bike parking, contained within the footprint of the dwelling. In addition, each dwelling backs onto a mews. This is a green, open, landscaped, car free zone, where children can play under the passive surveillance of all the residents on the street. In this way, the residential terraces provide a high quality of life, with open space provided in a series of courtyards, terraces, verandas and balconies, plus generous living space, and the houses are set in a pedestrian and child friendly network of streets and mews.

6. Architecture -Design of DwellingsLong Section Through Terraces

Fig. 12. A long section though several terraces showing the key principles of the residential architecture. The terraces form a continuous fabric where each terrace has a street at the front and backs onto a Mews space.

Mews Street

Garden

Parking Parking Parking

Garden Garden

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Each dwelling generates electricity renewably, as well as employing passive design strategies such as wind cowls for natural ventilation. Solar panels are installed on the south facing roof pitch. Resources such as water are used cyclically, where foul water is treated and then re-used along with rainwater to flush toilets.

W/C

N Hydrogen Energy Storage

Foul WaterWater

Treatment

Wind Cowl

Rain Store

Solar Panels

Smart Grid Connection

Electric Boiler

0 1 5 10m

7. Service DesignSection 1:200 Utilities and Building Services

J Electricity J Hot Water J Grey/Green Water J Foul Water J Fresh Air In J Stale Air Out

Fig. 13. Diagram showing the environmental design of the dwellings

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Each of these dwellings, acting as mini power plants, is then connected to a smart grid, where at times of surplus, the extra electricity is converted into hydrogen through the electrolysis of water. Hydrogen is then stored until a time of shortage when it can be used as a completely zero emissions fuel, which burns in oxygen to create heat energy and water only. This storage technology irons out the oscillations which occur in the generation of electricity from renewable sources, due to variations in the weather. These hydrogen stations are positioned below street level in the Evo city as this enables them to remain close to the source of generation. This reduces inefficiencies in transmission, but also, as shown in fig. 9. on the previous page, enables combined heat and power supply, where part of the hot water supply for the dwellings and underfloor heating, comes from the heat created by burning hydrogen.

8. Energy InfrastructureHydrogen Storage Facilities

1. Electrolysis of water to create hydrogen

2. Storage of hydrogen created during surplus generation

3. Burning of hydrogen to create electricity during times

of a shortage of generation.

Fig. 14. View of a hydrogen processing facility used in the Evo City.

9. Architectural CharacterStreet Level View

Fig. 15. Views showing the qualitatively different urban spaces of the Mews (top) and Boulevard (bottom)20

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The Vision – Blueprint for an Evo CityThat series of drawings, forming the blueprint for the Evo City, indicate what the typical characteristics of

urban development designed for the third industrial revolution could be like. This is designed as a repeatable mode which can be implemented on land near a rail link to any metropolitan centre, a common situation in the UK.

Importantly, from the outset the Evo City is envisaged as part of a larger whole, hence the emphasis on suitable sites as being those which are already part of the rail network. There are many such sites all around the UK other than Shenstone. This is in contrast to the attitude prevailing in the Garden City, and many other projects of the modern era, as well as back to basics Eco-village projects of the post-modern era, which are regarded more as stand-alone utopias. The Evo City views the development through the stages of industry as necessary elements of progress, and seeks to build on what already exists, not to wall itself off. It should be added here that the energy smart grid which uses hydrogen to store surplus energy becomes ever more effective with scale. Other Evo Cities will be connected, and as existing cities have a similar energy infrastructure retro-fitted until eventually there is an ‘energy internet’, though which energy can be bought and sold.

The principle design strategy for environmental sustainability is the distributed generation of renewable power in line with the principles outlined by Jeremy Rifkin in ‘The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power is Transforming Energy, the Economy and the World’. Currently many attempts at renewable power generation still focus on generating it centrally, through a huge array of solar panels, or a wind farm. But this is a very twentieth century way to approach it. There are huge losses in electricity because of inefficient transfer over a distance. Further to that, the distance from the source of generation means that the potential to use the heat is wasted. Currently massive amounts of energy are wasted in power plants which view heat as an unintentional by product. Added to that, you still need a huge concentration of capital to build a giant centralised energy generation facility. Large concentrations of capital aren’t conducive to equality and third industrial revolution power structures favour lateral power not hierarchical organisation of resources. Furthermore, unlike fossil fuels, you can’t guarantee a constant output, so hooking up a town to a giant wind farm, won’t be any good if it isn’t windy. The missing link is a way to store energy in times of surplus in order use it in times of shortage, which hydrogen provides. This means that every building in the city can act as its own miniature power plant. Buildings can be grouped together to pool their resources and share the hydrogen infrastructure.

One of the key precedents for the spatial design is the Accordia scheme in Cambridge. This is the first architectural scheme to win the Stirling prize which is not a single building, but is instead an incredibly well orchestrated masterplan. The key principles for the spatial design set out in the Accordia scheme are that each dwelling contains space for cars and bikes within the footprint of the dwelling, as well as external space on a variety of terraces, verandas and balconies on multiple storeys, also inside the footprint. This allows the dwellings to create a formally coherent and aesthetically pleasing street front, highly animated with life, with lots of active frontage and a clearly and positively defined public space in between these dignified urban building blocks. The public space is at a human scale, and equipped with routes for bikes, and the entire city is dense enough to mean that amenities are close enough together to create a walkable neighbourhood.

The situation this remedies is the ubiquitous suburban cul-de-sac development where monotonous detached houses are sprinkled around a road, designed to the scale of the car, and space in between the houses is merely a residual gap filled with parked cars, and some token greenery.

But the real burning question is about how to make this vision economically viable. It’s all very well to say that the built environment of the future will be sustainable, have a completely renewable energy infrastructure, a high quality of spatial provision, and remain affordable, but how can we make that a reality?

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Section #2 – Economic Viability and Governance AimThe main aim of this section is to make the case for a certain type of ‘crowdfunding’ for urban development.

This section on ‘economic viability and governance’ will therefore explain in brief:

• The current economic situation in the UK

• The economic basis of Ebenezer Howard’s original idea for a Garden City.

• The way this idea manifested itself in reality, looking at the case studies of Letchworth, and the ‘new towns’ built post-war.

• Contemporary developments, which shed new light on the possibilities of the Garden City model, looking at case studies of ‘crowdfunding’.

• A plan of action for funding the vision outlined in section #1.

• The type of governance required to bring these contemporary possibilities to fruition.

Fig. 16. Pie chart to show the proportion of income earned by the fifths of the population in the UK.

Section #2 - Economic Viability and Governance

The Current Economic Situation in the UK

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The distribution of wealth in the UK is skewed. These pie charts sourced from the equality trust1 give a clear indication of the uneven split between those at the top, and those at the bottom of the economic scale. What is causing this situation where the wealth is only flowing one way?

The stock and flow diagram (fig. 18.) shows the current situation regarding property and land ownership. Stock and flow diagrams are introduced in, ‘Thinking in Systems: A Primer’, by Donella H. Meadows, author of the seminal ‘Limits to Growth’. She describes that all systems ‘consist of three kinds of things: elements, interconnections, and a function or purpose.’2 In brief, the elements of the system are the ‘stocks’ indicated with the rectangles, and the interconnections are the ‘flows’ indicated by the arrows between them, the rate of which is controlled by the faucet or tap icon. The curved arrows represent feedback, information which causes a flow to increase or decrease. In this diagram we have two stocks. The top rectangle represents the total assets of the section of society which owns property, and the bottom rectangle, the total assets of those which don’t. The diagram describes our present situation where currently, tax revenues are raised from all members of the public. This money is spent on facilities and services in an area, which causes house prices in that area to rise, or the assets of those property owners to appreciate, this windfall leaving them an untaxed capital gain. As the economist Fred Harrison puts it: ‘Someone in the top 20% pays £1.2m in taxes. But those at the top will own property and see their total tax liability wiped out in just a couple of years by rising property values. This does not happen to the bottom 20%, since they are renters.’3 The resultant distribution of wealth between those two parts of society is clearly seen in the pie charts (fig. 16 and fig. 17.). So this is the economic structure which means that ‘as house prices increase those who already own housing become wealthier and those who do not become less likely to be able to buy property.’4 Is it any wonder, therefore, we live in a United Kingdom in which 70% of our land is owned by 1% of the population5, and the first rung of the housing ladder is becoming ever more impossible to reach? The original model for the Garden City, as developed by Ebenezer Howard, had a remarkable ambition, with regard to land ownership and wealth distribution, which we will examine.

1 www.equalitytrust.org.uk2 Donella H. Meadows and Diana Wright, Thinking in Systems : A Primer (London: Earthscan, 2009), p. 11.3 Ashley Seager, ‘A Land Tax Is 200 Years Overdue’, The Guardian 20074 http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2004/03/17/Barker.pdf5 Paul Kingsnorth, ‘High House Prices? Inequality? I Blame the Normans’, The Guardian 2012ax-ns#

Fig. 17. Pie chart to show wealth distribution across deciles of the UK population.

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Ebenezer Howard’s Original Garden City ModelThe Garden City is often talked about purely in spatial terms, as a form of town planning which combines

the best of both the town and the country, or more superficially as the idea of planning which is very leafy and suburban, or wrongly, the assumption that every house should have a garden. The spatial design is no doubt of significance, however, at the heart of Ebenezer Howard’s conception of the Garden City, is in fact an economic idea, and a radical one at that. In ‘To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform’, first published in 1898, Howard makes the economic argument which was the real drive to start the Garden City movement.

Howard, with a fastidious financial study, demonstrates that land could be acquired far enough from a large city such as London at rural prices. After developing the land by the construction of a Garden City, those land values would rise enormously to those of urban land values. This rise in land value would be enough to pay back the initial borrowings necessary to buy the land and build the town in the first place6, but also, and most importantly: ‘that if the steadily-increasing betterment value of land were retained for the benefit of the residents who had generated it, the resulting revenue would be enough to fund all local social welfare thus constituting a local welfare state, administered by the citizens on their own collective behalf.’7

This is in contrast to the situation, as described previously, that still persists today where private landlords and landowners siphon off what is referred to by economists as the ‘unearned increment’, although as Howard states, this would be better known as ‘collectively earned’8 as it is the presence of a large population which generates these land values and ground rent values. Currently this is pocketed by whoever happens to own the land, even though this ‘collectively earned’ money is unearned by them. Winston Churchill gave us a damning summary of this situation saying:

6 Ebenezer Howard and others, To-Morrow : A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, Original edn (London ; New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 46.7 Ibid., p. 46.8 Ebenezer Howard, To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1898), p. 21.

PROPERTY OWNERS’ ASSETS

NON-PROPERTY OWNERS’ ASSETS

Spending

Spending

RentTax Public spending on

infrastructure, facilities and services etc.

Income

Appreciation

Income

Fig. 18. Stock and flow diagram showing the present situation of wealth distribution in the UK.

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Roads are made, streets are made, services are improved, electric light turns night into day, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains—all the while the landlord sits still. Every one of those improvements is effected by the labour and cost of other people and the taxpayers. To not one of those improvements does the land monopolist, as a land monopolist, contribute, and yet by every one of them the value of his land is enhanced.9

Howard had a potential antidote to this with a form of collective land ownership in the Garden City, the way he envisioned it. As he himself put it:

The presence of a considerable population thus giving a greatly added value to the soil, it is obvious that a migration of population on any considerable scale to any particular area will be certainly attended with a corresponding rise in the value of the land so settled upon, and it is also obvious that such increment of value may, with some foresight and pre-arrangement, become the property of the migrating people.

This foresight and pre-arrangement, never before exercised in an effective manner, are displayed conspicuously in the case of Garden City, where the land, as we have seen, is vested in trustees, who hold it in trust, after payment of the debenture holders, for the whole community, so that the entire increment of value gradually created becomes the property of the municipality, with the effect that, though rents may rise, and even rise considerably, such rise in rent will not become the property of private individuals, but will be applied in relief of rates. It is this arrangement which will be seen to give Garden City much of its magnetic power.10

In the original publication of To-morrow, this idea was illustrated with Howard’s diagram showing ‘the vanishing point of landlord’s rent’ (fig. 19.). This diagram shows the process by which, if land could be owned in trust for the community, then, after the gradual paying off of the initial borrowings, more and more can be devoted to the municipality, until eventually, all rental income from the land goes back to the community who live there, including a sizeable chunk for old age pensions. In essence, he envisioned the eventual formation of a locally funded and governed welfare state, made possible by collective land ownership.

The success of this ‘pre-arrangement’ is contingent on a number of conditions.

• That the body pioneering the garden city, ‘First Garden City Ltd’ in the case of Letchworth, can convince a lender to lend them enough money to purchase rural land and develop the site.

9 Winston Churchill, 190910 Howard, To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, pp. 21-22.

Fig. 19. The vanishing point of Landlord’s rent, as featuring in Ebenezer Howard’s original publication.

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• The Garden City can attract enough tenants to supply a sufficient income stream to gradually pay off the borrowings, and interest on it, and incrementally fund more and more local facilities and services.

• That during and after the repayment of the borrowings, the trustees of the limited dividend company remain altruistic and benevolent, and the rent paid by the tenants is indeed properly reinvested in the community.

• That the tenants of the Garden City continue paying rate-rent, which gradually reflects rising ground rent values, with the understanding that it goes back into their community.

The Reality of the Garden City

Letchworth, where this plan was most fully implemented, was only a partially successful version of Howard’s unadulterated Garden City vision, due to problems meeting those conditions.

Condition 3 was thwarted at the inception of the project. However, ‘although Howard’s own plan for a total profit sharing scheme was dismissed at the outset by the founders, something of a compromise was reached, with a balance struck between moderate profits for the Garden City company’s shareholders and a proportion to be returned to the community.’11

With regard to condition 2 and 4, Howard over estimated the power of the Garden City to attract tenants, in particular industry.12 In a bid to make the Garden City more competitive and attract more tenants, the directors introduced long term rate-rents, which did not reflect rising land values, thus frustrating attempts to fully pass the

11 Howard and others, To-Morrow : A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, pp. 215-216.12 Ibid., p. 147.

GARDEN CITY CORPORATION’S

ASSETS

(+)

Spending, including loan repayments

Appreciation

GARDEN CITY’S TENANTS’ASSETS SpendingIncome

Rent

Investment ininfrastructure, facilities

and services etc.

Fig. 20. Stock and flow diagram drawn to represent the re-structuring of wealth as proposed by Howard in his work ‘To-morrow - A Peaceful Path to Real Reform’.

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collectively earned increment onto the community.13 This decision, coupled with conflict between the trustees who borrowed the money and built the development, and the board of management, who spent the proceeds from the rate-rent, ‘destroyed the very foundation of his scheme.’14

The next stock and flow system (fig. 20.) shows the distribution of wealth within the Garden City as it ideally would have worked. The upper rectangle shows the main stock as the assets of Letchworth, which is owned by the small group of initial investors who found enough starting capital to purchase the land and develop it. Simply put, all the revenues of the Garden City are raised through rent paid by its tenants. All of this money is then reinvested in the community in a total profit sharing scheme. This greatly improves the provision and the quality of life for the tenants. The green arrows show a positive feedback loop where the more rental income reinvested in the public good, the more the assets of the Garden City Corporation appreciate, and the more rent it is reasonable to charge tenants, meaning yet more rental income to be reinvested. As previously described, the lack of income from tenants, and the necessity to pay a proportion of profits to shareholders, instead of reinvesting in the Garden City, crippled the positive feedback loops in this system, and resulted in the partial success of Letchworth.

Although only consider a partial success, the trust, has now morphed into a foundation which still ‘returns to the community a share of the proceeds from its holdings that far exceed what any local authority for a town of this size would normally be able to afford.’15 The quality of life in Letchworth owes its relative superiority to the Garden City model’s consideration of distributing its wealth to its people. ‘There was nothing complicated about the idea of a Trust for the town; the sad thing is that it has not been widely adopted elsewhere.’16

This idea was further diluted in the ‘new towns’ of the post-war era. Instead of a trust, the new towns were funded through public corporations financed directly by the exchequer, who then took the profits. These were then used by the state, to dubious benefit of the inhabitants of the new towns.17

The Contemporary Possibility for Garden City IdealsPerhaps Howard was just a bit too far ahead of his time… I firmly believe that if Ebenezer Howard could have

witnessed the vast possibilities for organizing human beings into networks, with a common purpose and meaning, where the whole is so much greater than the sum of its parts, enabled by the distributed power and networked communication of the internet, he would have danced for joy.

Traditional top-down hierarchical forms of organization are falling apart in the face of a third industrial revolution economy. Just think of the effect file-sharing and streaming has had on the music industry, the effect Wikipedia had on Encyclopedia Britannica, or the effect the blogosphere and social media has had on newspapers. 18

And there are most certainly developments today that are able to breathe fresh life into ideas about collective ownership and governance, or distributed/lateral power, even on the scale of an urban region such as Garden City ideals - developments, such as ‘kickstarter’.

Kickstarter.com is an example of a ‘crowdfunding’ platform, where many supporters and potential customers

collectively provide the money necessary to produce a product.19 In the case of Kickstarter, it is ‘a website where people post descriptions of their projects and anyone can chip in to help. Rather than just making a donation, most contributors essentially pre-order the product by making a contribution above a certain level.’20 At the time

13 Ibid., p. 33.14 Ibid., p. 89.15 Ibid., p. 215.16 Ibid., p. 215.17 Ibid., pp. 46-47.18 Jeremy Rifkin, The Third Industrial Revolution : How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World (New York: Palgrave

Macmillan, 2011), p. 36.19 Chris Anderson, Makers : The New Industrial Revolution (London: Random House Business, 2012), p. 166.20 Ibid., p. 166.

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of writing, kickstarter has successfully funded 55,845 projects, with a total of $968,000,000 pledged to kickstarter projects.21

This method of crowdfunding, enabled by the huge reach and minimal cost of an online platform, where innumerable individuals collectively contribute towards a funding goal, solves three main problems for entrepreneurs:

• Moves revenues forwards to when they are most needed, avoiding reliance on a venture capitalist, or borrowing.

• Customers become a community. The start-up provides its pledgers with updates and progress reports, and responds to their comments and suggestions in forums during product development. Pledgers promote the product through word of mouth and social media.

• The fundraising is simultaneously market research and “de-risks” the process. If a project doesn’t reach its funding target, it would most likely have been a failure in the marketplace anyway.22

The typical kickstarter project is often a videogame or a film, or a creative project, although it is becoming ever more impossible to pigeon hole, and currently the most funded product is ‘Pebble’, an E-paper watch that links with iPhones or android devices securing over $10 million in pledges. However we also know from precedent that the crowdfunding model can work for larger scales of production, even an infrastructural project.

Abundancegeneration.com is another crowdfunding platform, this time for renewable energy projects. Success stories of theirs include: £480,000 raised for Oakapple Renewable Energy to purchase 435 kWp of solar PV installations,23 £216,000 raised in just 11 days for Brighter Schools plc to fund the installation of solar PV systems in schools24, and several others.

This crowdfunding platform differs from kickstarter in that it is a form of peer to peer lending. Many investors contribute funds in the form of debentures, through the website, which pay a proportion of the capital back every six months25. With abundancegeneration.com these debentures offer returns of up to 9% IRR.26 In essence, investors can make a return on their investment by lending money to renewable energy projects.

However, there is yet another emerging possibility, which is equity-based crowdfunding. This means that instead of making a donation in return for a reward, or lending money and receiving a return on your investment, you pledge money in return for equity in the company. Crowdcube.com, launched in 2011 is UK based, is the world’s first equity crowdfunding website, is now authorized by the Financial Services Authority (FSA)27, and has successfully funded 92 businesses with a total of £17,574,970 to date.28 Simon Dixon’s banktothefuture.com provides yet another up and coming example.

Architectural projects, which by their very nature affect a large community of people, who have vested interests in the outcome, and would benefit from part ownership, are perfectly suited to the possibilities of crowdfunding. ‘What distinguishes crowdfunding is that it innately encourages community based investment in projects that have a collective goal and shared regional interest.’29 Could crowdfunding contribute to the genesis of an entire metropolitan region? What are the pros and cons of these various types of crowdfunding with regard to funding an architectural project?

21 https://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats?ref=footer22 Anderson, Makers : The New Industrial Revolution, pp. 167-168.23 https://www.abundancegeneration.com/projects/#!/41937/about24 https://www.abundancegeneration.com/projects/#!/4193525 https://www.abundancegeneration.com/why-invest/faq/26 https://www.abundancegeneration.com/why-invest/27 http://www.crowdcube.com/blog/2013/02/04/crowdcube-fsa-authorisation/ 28 http://www.crowdcube.com/29 Massolution, ‘Crowdfunding Architecture - customized Research Report Prepared for the American Institute of Architects’, 2013), p. 4.

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Raising Initial CapitalFirst of all, it is clear to me that attempting to fund city development through donation based crowdfunding

would be no different to a tax, albeit a voluntary one, so we will talk about lending vs. equity based models for the purposes of funding our Garden City, or as outlined in the Vision section, the Evo City.

Factors which affect the suitability of debt based vs. equity based models

• The nature of the return: For investors, with debt based models, it is very easy to calculate the return on your investment based on the repayment schedule. The offering is simple and monetary. With equity based models, you would need to evaluate the share value in order to form an opinion, but the rewards have a much higher potential.

• Ownership: The ownership of the company does not pass into the hands of any funders with the debt based model. With the equity based model, ownership is then shared.

• Credit risk: With a debt based model, this increases the risk of not being able to repay, however with the equity based model the risk is shared with the investors/shareholders, which due to their number, is a relatively small risk for any one individual.

• Community and popularity: With the debt/lending model, offering people a repayment schedule as the incentive for investment creates only limited potential for community involvement, or tapping into ‘social capital’. However, with an equity based model, offering shared ownership creates vastly greater potential for support and popularity. It must be asked whether the success of the project depends upon its acceptance within a community. This may not even make an initial difference to meeting the funding target, but the popularity with the public can make a huge difference to the perspective of other stakeholders, such as outside co-investors, or local authorities. An example of this is the equity crowdfunding platform ‘community leader’30 which gained local support for a development, that otherwise would not have been permitted by planning.31

These principal differences are summarised in the table below: 32

Types of crowdfund-ing

Ownership Credit risk Community synergies

Lending No effect Increased Limited Equity Reduced No effect Increased

It is my contention that equity crowdfunding could therefore hold the key to delivering an ‘Evo City’ that is visionary, economically viable, and popular.

The support of the local community, and the popularity of the project, is utterly critical to its success, and by offering the public a stake, this gives the potential for numerous community synergies to open up which will be further explored in the section on ‘popularity’. Importantly, by securing this popular position with the public, other important stakeholders, such as local authorities, will want to facilitate the creation of the project. Popular support, the all important social capital, will be vital in order to attain the necessary level of cooperation from government.

Another important basis for the equity over lending argument is the nature of the gains of the project, which create the right incentives for investment in equity. The Evo City is not a short-termist profit motivated organisation. It is playing the long game. The value of the shares can reasonably expected to skyrocket initially due to the capital gains, whereas any profits would take a long time to repay the value of the initial borrowings plus interest on them, making lending a less lucrative prospect. This means that investors would be more tempted by the financial allure of equity in the project, as opposed to a repayment schedule on a debenture at a fixed rate. The necessity to repay debenture holders according to a repayment schedule would undermine the design

30 http://communityleader.com/31 Massolution, ‘Crowdfunding Architecture - customized Research Report Prepared for the American Institute of Architects’, , p. 20.32 Ibid., , p. 9.

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principles of the vision, which seeks to create a high quality built environment, rather than create profits needed to repay a loan, and the credit risk would hang over the project. The lending scenario would also mean that the outright ownership of the project would still be very concentrated once the debentures have been repaid, which goes against ideas of wealth distribution, accountability and collective ownership. Offering equity in the project instead of debentures solves these problems. It means that the company is accountable to the community who are its shareholders, offers the right incentives for investment, and ensures popular support of the project and thus cooperation with other stakeholders.

Economic Viability - The Plan of ActionThis is the proposed plan of action the Evo City Company will take:

• A consortium of sustainably minded planners, urbanists, civil engineers, architects, landscape designers, structural engineers, energy experts, design consultants, accountants, web developers, property developers etc. forms the Evo City Company, with the aim of making the vision a reality.

• The Evo City Company meet with the local authorities and agree that planning be granted to their vision, and they will facilitate the purchase of the necessary land, should they be able to secure public support for the project in the form of crowdfunded pledges for equity in the company. In addition the local authority will also charge a yearly tax on the value of the shares of the company upon the completion of construction.

• The vision is pitched to the general public via a user friendly online crowdfunding platform.

• The general public pledge money in return for a proportionate amount of equity in the company.

• When the funding target is reached, Evo City Company becomes a limited liability company, where its shareholders are those who pledged money. The Evo City Company uses that capital to buy land and pay for construction, managed by the consortium (who charge a fee for the work).

• Once the land is developed, the market capitalisation of the company has risen significantly, due to the undeveloped land they originally bought now having urban land values.

• The Evo City then begins to function like a large housing co-operative i.e. a legal entity which owns real estate. By owning a proportionate amount of the shares in the company, you are entitled to occupy one unit. Let’s say the Evo City owns 1,000 units, you would need 1,000th of the shares in order to occupy that unit. Technically, the inhabitants do not own any real estate, but a share in the company/legal entity which does. They also pay a rate to the Evo City, which is enough to cover the running costs incurred by any residential development, as well as paying for the operations of the board of directors, voted for by the shareholders (most likely members of the design consortium), who manage the spending of these proceeds.

• At this point, the local authority sets up a special administrative body, the Evo City District, which taxes the value of the shares in the Evo City Company annually (at a rate of around 1%). This replaces council tax and stamp duty, yet would raise more revenue. The inhabitants would be happy to pay it as it would be tangibly reinvested in their community as decided upon by the district, who are accountable to the Evo City shareholders, who also vote on the governing members of the district. It should be added that this tax incentivises the initial investors to sell their shares, and take those substantial initial capital gains from the development of the land. They will be purchased by those who wish to inhabit the Evo City, who buy the shares at the proportionately higher price reflecting the value of the new development. This tax dis-incentivises buying more shares than necessary to benefit from occupying one unit, as you will pay more tax, yet still only be able to use one unit. Sub-letting is not permitted.

• As tax revenue is gradually spent on public infrastructure, facilities and services, the people who live in the Evo City feel the benefit of the value that they help to create. Any appreciation in assets, created by this investment of tax revenue, is reflected in the amount of tax paid. In this way, the Evo City pays for its evolution towards ever greater complexity and higher quality of life.

For a basic hypothetical model of this situation, please see the spreadsheet (fig. 23.) at the end of this section.

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In our final stock and flow diagram (fig. 21.) we examine the system of wealth distribution under our system of equity, where the starting capital was raised by equity crowdfunding, and the inhabitants are all shareholders in the Evo City. At last, the collectively earned increment is benefitting those people who have collectively earned it. There are no tenants, everyone who lives in the Evo City is a shareholder, and the shareholders own the company outright, as well as holding sway in the local governance of the Evo City district. The positive feedback loop indicated by the green arrows shows that the shareholders are taxed (at a rate of approximately 1%) on the value of their shares. This then helps to pay for infrastructural improvements, schools, health services, welfare etc. in the district. Any appreciation in property values due to this public spending is reflected in an appreciation of the share value, which raises proportionately more tax revenue.

We can understand that the tax on the value of the shares in the Evo City functions is akin to a land value tax (LVT). This idea has been around for a long time in British politics but has not yet been implemented. If brought to fruition however, it would mean that ‘people who live in desirable locations would be required to pay a regular levy that would match the social benefit they receive’.33

Finally it is left to us to briefly outline the necessary governance structures which would make this economic vision possible. The following diagram overleaf shows the principal stakeholders in the project.

33 Ben Chu, ‘Britain Is Suffering from a Housing Crisis - Who Is to Blame and How Can We Fix It?’, The Independent 2014

EVO CITY’S SHAREHOLDERS’

ASSETS

(+)

Spending, includingconsortium’s design fees,maintenance and running

costs (depreciation)

Tax on the value of the share

Public spending oninfrastructure, facilities

and services etc.

Income

Appreciation

Fig. 21. Stock and flow diagram drawn to represent the proposed re-structuring of wealth in the Evo City.

THE DESIGN CONSORTIUM THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS LOCAL GOVERNANCE

EVO CITY DISTRICT

THE INITIAL INVESTORS

THE INHABITANTS

Stakeholders in the Project - Governance

J Private Sector J Public Sector J Third Sector

Role: Project ImplementersContribution: The design of the initial vision and the know how to build it.Incentive: A design fee as well as meaningful work with a purpose.

Role: Initial BackersContribution: Initial capital as well as ready made market research.Incentive: Making a good return on their initial investment, as well as holding sway over the direction of development in their community.

Role: Ongoing ShareholdersContribution: Buying the shares from the initial investors,paying a rate to the Evo City Company for upkeep, and providing tax revenue for the district.Incentive: The chance to live in a built environment providing an extremely high quality of life at an affordable price, and as a shareholder in the company, having agency over the spending choices. Being part of a community greater than the sum of its parts.

Role: Ongoing GovernanceContribution: Responding democratically to the inhabitants of the Evo City, and reinvesting tax revenue for the public good.Incentive: A meaningful well paid position for civil servants.

Role: Project ManagersContribution: Act as the directors of any joint stock company would. After construction is complete they manage the spending of the rates paid by inhabitants.Incentive: Their wage (part of the rates charged) and a leadership role.

Role: Project FacilitatorsContribution: Grant planning permission and enable buying of necessary land, make legalities possible.Incentive: A much needed high quality housing development in their constituency, with massive popular support.

Fig. 22. Project stakeholders and their role in Governance32

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CrowdfundingPopulation of Birmingham'smetropolitan area (2011census)

Percentage ofwhole metropolitanarea who invest

Average size ofpledge (£) Funds raised

3,683,000 15.00% £ 185.00 £ 102,203,250.00Sutton Coldfield population(2011 census)

95,107 100.00% £ 1,000.00 £ 95,107,000.00Shenstone population

2,220 50.00% £ 5,000.00 £ 5,550,000.00

LandArea of land to be purchased(hectares)

25Area of land to be purchased(acres)

Price of Land peracre

Sum invested inland

62 £ 7,000.00 £ 432,433.75Construction per functionalunit*

Average cost per unit Number of unitsTotal constructioncost of Dwellings

£ 60,000.00 898 £ 53,880,000.00Construction per squaremetre*

Cost per square metreArea (squaremetres

Total constructioncost of commercialand other uses

£ 400.00 108,000 £ 43,200,000.00Total cost of all land andconstruction

£ 97,512,433.75Annual tax revenue for districtin first year raised by Evo Cityshare tax (1% of share value)

Annual tax paidper person in EvoCity share tax

£ 1,950,248.68 £ 1,200.00

If property values average of £120,000 after construction, then the share value for the initialinvestors will roughly have doubled, and prospective inhabitants would need to buy£120,000 worth of shares in order to be entitled to an occupancy. NB: There is nothingstopping people investing a large proportion of money at the start with the expectation oflater moving into the completed project.The crowdfunding shows numerous ways in which £100 million pounds could be raised,which would be enough to pay for the vision shown in our 'blueprint for an Evo City'. If only15% of the Birmingham metropolitan area invested £185 each on average, the target wouldbe reached. Most likely, people would invest from all adjoining counties and surroundingsettlements.The vision is scaleable, and a minimum threshold could be set. Even if half or a quarter ofthe amount shown here was raised, the project could be designed along the sameprinciples, yet made proportionately smaller. This would still represent a significantdevelopment.

*Davis Langdon LLP., Spon's Architects' and Builders' Price Book, 137th edn, (London:Spon,, 2012), pp. 79-91.

Fig. 23. Basic hypothetical scenario showing the potential to pay for the vision shown in our ‘Blueprint for an Evo City’ through equity crowdfunding.

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Public SupportThe public support of the project is intrinsic to its financial success. Indeed, due to the fact that the starting

capital is provided through crowdfunding, the project will not get off the ground at all without the backing of the general public. This mechanism ensures that the proposal will not come to fruition, unless public goodwill is in place.

As covered in the ‘Economic Viability and Governance’ section, the general public will be more swayed to buy in to the project, if they are offered equity in the scheme. Due to the nature of the gains of the project, equity is a far more lucrative prospect than a debt based model.

We started the vision section with the image of protesters in Sutton Coldfield, up in arms concerning the prospect of green belt development in their city. The other main draw for the crowd will be that they attain an element of agency over the nature of future proposals. In this sense they are persuaded by a combination of push and pull factors, as the success of the proposal would offer an alternative to the unsatisfactory prospects resulting from new development presently. As the shareholders in the project, the Evo City Company is accountable to them, and therefore they can dictate the nature of their proposal to an extent. The ‘blueprint’ shown earlier describes the physical characteristics of the Evo City. Not only is the design of an unparalleled architectural quality compared to the bog standard suburban property development of today, it is also sensibly located in a well connected place in the rail network. This is bound to be a far more popular idea with the existing community, than simply sprawling into the green belt, and ever further into the hinterlands immediately surrounding the city.

These issues of immediate concern to the local community provide the shared regional interest which makes crowdfunding innately suitable to this type of project, as there are region wide ambitions to be met.

It remains to be said that not only will those who life is adversely affected by the purchase of land belonging to them for the construction of the Evo City be financially compensated in the sale; they will also be given options regarding shares in the company. They can be entitled to shares equivalent to the value of a unit, entitling them to occupancy in the completed scheme, or if desired, they can sell those shares for a profit. (The tax which kicks in after completion will discourage hoarding of shares in anticipation of a later rise in value).

The Crowdfunding InterfaceThere are important factors in the design of the online crowdfunding platform which affect the likelihood of

success. If we take a look at the web design of abundancegeneration.com, the crowdfunding platform which has successfully funded large infrastructural projects through offering debentures, we can see some of the methods used to assure the popularity and successful marketing of proposals. (See fig. 24.)

This screenshot from the website abundancegeneration.com shows a current project open to investment. Design features which increase the popularity include

• Friendly graphics

• A returns calculator, enabling potential investors to quickly calculate a projection based on what they stand to gain.

• A target bar, showing progress towards meeting the target, and the minimum threshold.

Section #3 - Popularity

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• A simply stated figure of how much has been raised so far by how many investors. In this case £551,789 raised by 301 investors at time of writing (investing an average of £1,833 each)

• Positive updates on progress. We read here next to the ‘buy debentures’ button that: ‘REG High Down has met its minimum target raise of £500,000 in under two weeks! That’s a new record for us!’

• The website is accompanied by easy to find well presented information on all aspects of investing, explained to people who are not financial experts. This can be found under a ‘why invest?’ button. In particular, there is strong video content persuasively used throughout the site.

All of these measures are design features which could be included in the website design for the Evo City’s crowdfunding platform, to ensure it captures the imaginations of the public and would-be investors.

Fig. 24. Screenshot of the crowdfunding website abundancegeneration.com. This demonstrates many of the methods through which good design can act as a catalyst for the popularity of projects.

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ConclusionIt requires the active participation of all three sectors, government, the business

community, and neighbourhood civil society organisations. Revolutionizing the infrastructure of a city, region, or nation intimately affects the lives of everyone by changing the way they live, work, and play. Making sure that every interest is represented at every step of the deliberative process ensures community support. Without broad consensus on goals and objectives , it is unlikely that any political jurisdiction will have sufficient social capital to rally its citizenry for such fundamental changes.1 – Jeremy Rifkin

This quote summarizes the collaborative attitude needed to bring about successful change for the future. We can conclude that the equity crowdfunding model proposed in this submission is one such example of cooperation between all three sectors, and an avenue of great potential for creating an Evo City which is visionary, economically viable, and popular.

1 Jeremy Rifkin, The Third Industrial Revolution : How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), p. 103.

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Fig. 1. Neil Elkes, ‘Sutton Coldfield Protest Walk against Green Belt Homes Plan’, Birmingham Mail 2014Fig. 2. Acknowledged contributorFig. 3. Arial photo, google mapsFig. 4. AuthorFig. 5. Arial photo, google mapsFig. 6. Acknowledged contributorFig. 7. AuthorFig. 8. AuthorFig. 9. AuthorFig. 10. AuthorFig. 11. AuthorFig. 12. AuthorFig. 13. AuthorFig. 14. AuthorFig. 15. Acknowledged contributorFig. 16. Retrieved from http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/about-inequality/scale-and-trendsFig. 17. Retrieved from http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/about-inequality/scale-and-trendsFig. 18. AuthorFig. 19. Ebenezer Howard and others, To-Morrow : A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, Original edn (London ;

New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 22.Fig. 20. AuthorFig. 21. AuthorFig. 22. AuthorFig. 23. AuthorFig. 24. Retrieved from http://www.abundancegeneration.com

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ed. by Directorate, Planning and Regeneration Development and Culture, 2013)DeKay, Mark and Susanne Bennett, Integral Sustainable Design : Transformative Perspectives (London:

Earthscan, 2011)Howard, Ebenezer, To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1898)Howard, Ebenezer and others, To-Morrow : A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, Original edn (London ; New

York: Routledge, 2003)Kingsnorth, Paul, ‘High House Prices? Inequality? I Blame the Normans’, The Guardian 2012Markillie, Paul, ‘A Third Industrial Revolution’, The Economist 2012Massolution, ‘Crowdfunding Architecture - customized Research Report Prepared for the American Institute

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