The evolution of cities is a distinctly liberal phenomenon. Cities do not exist because of central planning; they exist because individuals make choices. A city’s shape, size, and function are best determined not by top-down mandates, but by the organic decisions of millions of individuals. They grow and change as people ‘vote with their feet,’ moving to where jobs, culture, and opportunity thrive. Beyond economics, cities also form around social ties—family, friends, and communities that provide support, identity, and belonging. Planning laws that restrict growth do not ‘preserve’ a city’s character; they suffocate its ability to evolve into what people want. In Britain, this natural evolution has been stifled for too long. Our planning system has turned cities into stagnant, unaffordable enclaves, locking people out and throttling growth.
When I sat down to write this piece, I hopped onto Rightmove and started to search for houses in Cambridge. Much to my, frankly expectant, horror, I saw an average price of £569,932. A price simply unreachable for any young professional that doesn’t happen to have inherited a minor fortune. The fact that property is so inaccessible and distributed along such plutocratic lines is a deeply illiberal failure of the British state. What we must ask ourselves, as liberals, is how to rectify this, and that starts with base principles.
Fundamentally, housing is a question of both negative and positive liberty. The ability to build on your own land, free from arbitrary restriction but with reasonable regulation to prevent genuine nuisance, is a crucial negative liberty—one that Britain’s broken planning system violates. Yet the existence of affordable, accessible housing is also a question of positive freedom. Without it, people are unable to move for work, start families, or fully participate in society. In a broader sense, housing is the foundation of opportunity: it determines access to jobs, schools, healthcare, and social networks. Without stable, affordable housing, individuals cannot plan for the future, invest in their communities, or pursue their ambitions. The ability to live in environmentally sustainable, well-connected places is also a freedom—one that is denied when planning laws force people into long commutes and high-carbon lifestyles. If we are to take liberalism seriously, we must tackle both aspects of this issue: removing the restrictions that artificially constrain the supply of housing while ensuring that markets are allowed to deliver the homes people need.
Now, I could wax lyrical about one’s moral right to private property as justified by a Lockeian labour theory of property, but in this current moment, Kant is whom we should turn to. His emphasis on the state’s role as a guarantor of private property should be the basis of any liberal attempts to fix our broken housing system. For Kant, private property is a noumenal possibility, though for that possibility to become a reality, a social contract is required. In essence, despite private property being a priori a ‘natural right,’ it is only provisional before the existence of civil society—i.e., the state—as a guarantor. In the state of nature, it was actually one’s moral duty to compel fellow individuals to enter into civil society to enable private property. What this jargon-heavy explanation is outlining is that the government exists to guarantee property, rather than control its distribution.
This is where Britain has gone catastrophically wrong. Overregulation is a disease endemic to the British state, particularly our planning system. Clement Attlee’s Town and Country Planning Act of 1947 has left the UK’s major cities in the equivalent of green straightjackets. The discretionary planning system introduced in the Act requires developers to enter a lengthy lottery to garner approval for the most minor of projects. It is an unnecessary market intervention that has prevented housing stock from increasing in line with demand, driving prices up. What we need to advocate for is a return to a Kantian position of the state as a guarantor and enabler, not a heavy-handed regulator.
As liberals, we know that housing is not only a roof over someone’s head but a realm in which individuals can exercise the greatest degree of freedom, unburdened by the restrictions of society and the state. But the connection between accessible property and liberalism runs deeper than this negative freedom case. A lack of affordable housing inhibits the free movement of all: to seek better jobs, to live near family and friends. Most damaging, we are pricing the best and brightest individuals out of our productive and innovative cities. Not only is this an illiberal tragedy—meaning that brilliant, educated people cannot climb the social ladder as generations previously could—but it is a serious drag on our economy. When combined with a culture of safetyism and overregulation, it is not hard to see why the UK struggles to foster global business giants, while the United States, with a more liberal but still heavy-handed planning system, dominates the global economy.
The negative consequences of our draconian planning system extend beyond being a stop-cork on meritocratic economic growth. Inequality, birth rates, environmental sustainability, and long-term climate action are all inhibited. The scarcity of housing has led to ‘gentrification’ and the breaking up of inner-city communities, priced out due to the aforementioned increases in demand from professionals wanting to live in high-productivity areas. Rather than take the typical declinist position of believing rent controls or other means of manipulating the market are the answer, why don’t we just grow the pie and build more houses? We seem to forget that cities’ populations are not fixed numbers.
The lack of housing security has also played a role in declining birth rates. With young people unable to afford stable housing, family formation is delayed or abandoned entirely. The freedom to have the number of children one desires should not be curtailed by a failure to build enough homes. If young families are forced out of well-connected cities and into distant commuter towns, it is not just their economic prospects that suffer, but their ability to live the lives they want. Nowhere is this clearer than Cambridge, where the Green Belt forces young families into car-dependent satellite towns like Northstowe, cutting them off from opportunity and increasing their reliance on long, high-carbon commutes. This is an environmental disaster, and an entirely avoidable one.
If we turn to Cambridge, Michael Gove boldly took a characteristic knife to that green straightjacket, promising a vast expansion of housing. This was an ambitious plan, though one that was meeting even more ambitious demand. As a city brimming with potential, home to world-leading research institutions and cutting-edge industries, Cambridge could be an engine of British prosperity—if only we let it grow. Despite its staggering economic contributions, the city is frozen in time by planning laws that prioritize preserving its past over securing its future. Laboratories and tech firms are bursting at the seams, struggling to find space for expansion. Researchers and skilled workers, many of whom could drive the next wave of technological breakthroughs, are locked out by exorbitant housing costs. If Cambridge is to remain a centre of global innovation, it must be allowed to breathe.
It was Margaret Thatcher who said, ‘housing is the start.’ She knew that a lack of access to affordable housing would massively hold individuals back in their lives, particularly those who do not have generational wealth to rely on. But a lack of housing goes so much further. Not only will it hold individuals back, but our economy too.
As I have outlined, failures to meet housing demand inhibit innovation and productivity, drive up inequality, depress birth rates, and leave us on the back foot in fighting climate change. These national issues matter for individuals; without a growing economy, the state cannot perform its functions effectively, already overburdened by an unsustainable pensions system and paying high rates of interest on borrowing. We have a crumbling social safety net, alongside a critically underfunded defence apparatus placing a strain not only on our ability to stand up for liberalism abroad but also on fulfilling our most basic security obligations. Economic growth is the closest we have to a magic bullet towards reversing these trends and advancing liberal ends.
The evidence is clear that if we fix housing, it is the simplest way to stimulate that growth we so desperately need. Cambridge is a prime example—a city overflowing with talent, world-class research, and economic dynamism, yet shackled by outdated restrictions on its potential. If we cannot take up the mantle of housing now, in this critical moment, faced with an opportunity as ample as Cambridge, are we even liberals?
Jack Peters is the Speakers Officer for CULA 2024/25. This blog is written purely in a personal capacity, and does not reflect the views of this or any other organisations or individuals.
This article can also be found on the Cambridge YIMBY Substack
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