BLOG: It's all about comfort zones 

Live Work Network director Tim Dwelly tries to understand planners and developers who find live/work an uncomfortable concept.

Hello and welcome to my first entry on the liveworknet.com blog. I will be posting my thoughts regularly here on ideas and events that are shaping the world of live/work development.

I don't claim to have a monopoly on live/work insight. But in my work advising people how to create effective live/work properties, I meet a lot of different people in different places trying to do the same thing. Or to stop the same thing. It's constantly fascinating to me how the same challenges - and the same prejudices - crop up, whether you are proposing live/work solutions in Penzance, in Peckham or on the Pacific coastline of California...

Here's a thought for those of you struggling to persuade sceptics that your live/work idea is a good one: the problem is that they just don't feel confident going outside their comfort zones.

For traditional planners - especially the development control types - live/work can represent a nightmare world of uncertainty. Remember, many still see land as zones with different purposes. Live/work is doing two things - a challenging concept to this old approach. You might hear them say things like: 'We don't have a policy on this. This site is not allocated for live/work. Where is the evidence of demand? This is the wrong place, it's employment land. What if someone's business fails?' Or the lamest line of all: 'It doesn't work in Hackney'.

Live/work developers know this feeling well. But the same can apply to the other side. What about those more progressive and can-do planners and economic development officers, who want to explore what live/work schemes can bring to their area? They raise the idea with local housebuilders (hardly well known as the most innovative breed) and find another series of reasons it's a bad idea. 'It doesn't work, there's no demand. People just want normal residential property. It was a London fad in the 1990s. You should just let us do residential on that site.' And so on.

It's an odd coalition this. The kind of developers and planners who feel quite at home (sic) having huge bunfights over residential applications find themselves in agreement on this one. Why? Because live/work requires them both to do things differently.

What can you do when faced with these comfort zoners? Well, first remember that it's not you that has much to prove here. The rise in homeworking, growing concerns over global warming, improvements in IT, aversion to commuting, appeal of work-life balance are all self-evident. Or should be. Live/work is hardly going against the grain. The question is not whether to develop live/work, but how.

Try turning the tables on the sceptics. Ask them to justify their belief that the old way of providing property is sustainable.  Do they think the way businesses operate today - or for that matter the way people use their homes - is the same as it was ten years ago, let alone during the Victorian industrial era? If no, what is their vision for the way property will be used in the future?

If this fails, one of my cardinal rules of live/work advice may prove handy: If you are a live/work developer, look for open minded councils and planners. If you are an open minded council wanting to encourage live/work, look for a specialist live/work developer rather than trying to persuade housebuilders to do it. Innovators unite! 

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