The evil property developer trope has a long history in culture, for example the character of Charles Deetz in Beetlejuice
(Picture: Netflix)From It’s a Wonderful Life to Beetlejuice, you can be sure that if a fictional character is a property developer, they are a villain.
Western culture is full of cold, heartless money men (almost always men), whose hobbies include corrupting politicians, destroying cities and making our cool and authentic hero or heroine homeless (or flattening their quirky place of work) so they can build a soulless new apartment block.
Even in ‘real life’ we tend to focus on the bad: evasion of Section 106, fetishisation of a street’s character and history while erasing both, shirking responsibility (moral and financial) for building safety issues.
Are we wrong to do so? Often we are not.
At the same time, the inconvenient truth is that we need new homes, many more than we get, and unless the Government, local councils or housing associations step up, we need developers to build them.
So the Evening Standard’s New Homes Awards last Thursday were in refreshing contrast to the general culture — we cheered rather than booed.
Amid a sea of identikit, boxy flats with balconies, the awards rewarded the best homes being built and sold now, from splashy penthouses with London Eye views to shared-ownership options for first-time buyers.
There’s a full overview of all the winners here, including the Grand Prix, awarded to Battersea Power Station, which is set to open to the public next week.
The goal now is to get the entire industry up to standard.
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