Ant Breach
Director of Policy and Research at Centre for Cities, working on Housing, Planning, Devolution. Stuff on Ukraine + Eastern Europe and Japan + East Asia too. YIMBY. Views own etc. 🥑🇺🇦
- Reposted by Ant BreachNEW REPORT out today. TLDR: Rules-based planning works and we can introduce it in British cities relatively easily. A small thread on Croydon’s 3-year planning ‘experiment’ and what it means for urban planning…
- 🆕What happens when planning rules are clearer and more predictable? Our latest briefing examines Croydon’s Suburban Design Guide and its impact on small-site housing delivery. 👇 buff.ly/vLNo0r9
- Reposted by Ant BreachThis is a great paper based on that rarest of things: an actual (fleeting) English planning success story. Zero excuse for any council claiming a housing crisis to not have a knock-off version on the books by September. My only criticism is the cowardly dodge of ‘Croydon Facelift’ for its title.
- 🆕What happens when planning rules are clearer and more predictable? Our latest briefing examines Croydon’s Suburban Design Guide and its impact on small-site housing delivery. 👇 buff.ly/vLNo0r9
- Reposted by Ant BreachLoved working on these maps with @mauricelange.bsky.social for his briefing out today, showing Croydon's Suburban Design Guide impact on small-site housing delivery. The flythrough helps show how viability translates into action (in Croydon's case), and where else it could work in London.
- Reposted by Ant BreachToday's newsletter: some thoughts on two excellent reports, one by @dsquareddigest.bsky.social and one by @centreforcities.bsky.social that I think provides excellent collateral and a worked example of his thesis about how to get better at building infrastructure:
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- Reposted by Ant BreachPeople keep saying our housing problems aren’t just planning but often when we change planning it turns out we do build lots more and then people hurriedly try to change the rules back to stop it @anthonypainter.bsky.social
- We need all our cities to be a little more like Croydon. A local planning reform that allowed developers to replace suburban homes with small blocks of flats that looked like suburban homes led to an unprecedented building boom in Croydon (until it was cancelled):
- 🆕What happens when planning rules are clearer and more predictable? Our latest briefing examines Croydon’s Suburban Design Guide and its impact on small-site housing delivery. 👇 buff.ly/vLNo0r9
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- Reposted by Ant Breach📢#CitiesOutlook2026 launch event today at 12pm! @rjson.bsky.social, @antbreach.bsky.social and @andrewcities.bsky.social will be taking an in-depth look at the findings from the 19th edition of our annual flagship publication. Don't miss out on the launch event👇 buff.ly/I2fExHa
- Cities Outlook 2026 shows economic growth and living standards have been disconnected. Even though growth has almost returned to pre-2008 rates in many places since 2013, disposable income growth has been stuck near 0%. But some cities have bucked the trend -
- 🚀Cities Outlook 2026 is out now! 🏙️ Our annual report looks at how the UK’s cities are performing — and what that means for economic growth and living standards. buff.ly/w5hQiNS 🧵👇
- Places as varied as Brighton, Warrington, and Doncaster have bucked the national trend and seen higher economic growth translate into growth in living standards This range matters as it shows it's not just the rich getting richer - every part of the country can improve.
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- Reposted by Ant BreachI love that Wikipedia's edit history is public because it only takes two clicks to get to the very first version of the "ant" article in its entirety from 2001. Happy 25th birthday Wikipedia! You've come so far
- Phones mean we need to think about internet regulation as a public health issue rather than a 'what if Timmy sees upsetting content' issue.
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- Centre for Cities today making the case for a Glasgow Metro Mayor in a head-to-head with the Leader of the City Council, in Glasgow's newest quality newspaper:
- Great thread on pubs (particularly the myths being spread on business rates)
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- The Elizabeth Line hasn't increased commuting by as much as you might think. Even though Farringdon's tap-ins are up 64% from 2019 levels, displacement from the Central Line at Chancery Lane means total tap-ins for both are only up 18%. The reason is a lack of office space.
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- Reposted by Ant BreachAh, New Year’s Day! That can only mean one thing. YES, THAT’S RIGHT! The 148th anniversary of New York Herald proprietor James Gordon Bennett Jr being banished from polite society for pissing in his fiancée’s fireplace, thus giving the world the phrase ‘Gordon Bennett!’ 🧵
