John Prescott Quotes

By scrapping the government's centrally dictated density targets we'll ensure that the right type of new homes are built where they're needed, ending the glut of one- and two-bedroom flats.

We need find the space to build more affordable homes in the city. That involves a number of different policy responses. For example, I've spoken about the need to rethink the greenbelt - the protected land around the edge of London that was originally intended to be protected and retained as an area of natural beauty but in many cases is neither natural nor beautiful.

We should concentrate our work not only to a separated housing problem but housing involved in our daily work and all the other functions of the city.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to the challenges facing our cities or to the housing crisis, but the two issues need to be considered together. From an urban design and planning point of view, the well-connected open city is a powerful paradigm and an engine for integration and inclusivity.

The Dallas model, prominent in the South and Southwest, sees a growing population as a sign of urban health. Cities liberally permit housing construction to accommodate new residents. The Los Angeles model, common on the West Coast and in the Northeast Corridor, discourages growth by limiting new housing.

We can build new housing while preserving the quality and character of adjacent residential districts and ensuring infill development strengthens the surrounding neighborhood.

Tackling affordable housing via land use planning won't necessarily solve the problem.

We need a government policy all-out in favor of more, denser housing.

I grew up in a small town that was absolutely a perfect embodiment of new urbanism.

Basically, New York housing is designed by formula, with lots of restrictions.

To give everyone a house and garden is very difficult in urban areas.

The biggest thing growing cities need to do is minimize barriers to development so that as long as someone is doing good urbanism, they can get permitted quickly and get building quickly.

What kind of town do we want in the future, and how are we going to plan on that?

In the traditional modernist planning that created the suburbs, you put residential buildings in suburban neighborhoods, office spaces into brain parks and retail in shopping malls. But you fail to exploit the possibility of symbiosis or synthesis that way.

Mixed use is what cities are all about. If you don't have mixed use, you don't have cities.

The government only makes restrictive rules, they don't show you what to do so you know, OK, here's where we need this many apartments, with open space, playgrounds, kindergartens.

We need to create planned communities: whole new towns with the infrastructure and amenities they need, communities where people genuinely want to live, and built where demand is high.

I think Bill de Blasio is doing interesting housing stuff in New York, Rahm Emanuel is doing interesting stuff with the infrastructure bank in Chicago. I want to go to America to meet with and engage with American mayors.

There's no way to understand housing as it exists today without federal policy.

I don't think that you can address poverty unless you address the lack of affordable housing in the cities.

If I become mayor of London, my single biggest priority will be to build thousands more homes every year. I will set a target to make half of all the new homes that are built genuinely affordable, with first dibs for Londoners.

We have failed to fully appreciate how deeply housing is implicated in the creation of poverty.

Housing being a top-order issue for cities is something that's not trivial.

Incentives and infrastructure should encourage development and that development needs to contain the right types of housing in the right places.

We need to reform our land use policies to build more housing in urban centers and near transit.