Abundance Across The Pond: Chris Curtis MP on Radio Abundance, Part One

Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:

Hey, everybody. Welcome to Radio Abundance. My name is Steve Boyle. I'm the Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America, and we are live on location in London today with Chris Curtis, Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes North. Chris, thanks for joining us on Radio Abundance!

Chris Curtis, Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes North:

Thank you very much for having me! It's great to be here. Well, it's great for you to be here, I suppose, is probably the better way of putting it? Thank you for coming to this great city and chatting to us!

Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:

I mean, it is a tremendous honor. As I mentioned the other day at the Labour YIMBY Summer Party, it genuinely is the honor of a lifetime, no matter what happens from here on out, because I'm not in London to hang out with you — that's very fortunate for me — I'm here because, 20 years ago, I survived the July 7th terrorist attacks, and it felt very important for reasons I could hardly begin to explain to be back here for the anniversary.

And it turns out to have been because, a couple days before coming, the Labour YIMBY folks reached out to me and asked me if I wanted to do a podcast with them. I said, "You're never gonna believe it: I'm coming to London!" They said, "You're never gonna believe it. We have, like, 10 things booked that week. Do you want to do all of them?" And so we have gotten to meet each other, and here we are sitting down together.

Chris Curtis, Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes North:

Yeah, it's very good to have met you, and very good to form these Trans-Atlantic partnerships to beat the scourge of NIMBYism and hopefully get both of our great countries building again, because it's the only way we can start to solve the problems that both our nations face.

Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:

I mean, it is incredibly exciting, right? Our nations are family members. And, you know, families bicker from time to time. But that's a family, right? You have a kid. You raise the kid. The kid gets older and says, "I want more agency." You say, "I don't think so." Kid says, "I think so."

Chris Curtis, Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes North:

Who's the kid in this?

Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:

We're the kid! You're the parents. And, eventually, we've got to leave the nest. And then, after a little time of tension, we become quite close again. And have been ever since.

Chris Curtis, Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes North:

Yeah, I mean, if you follow the analogy to its end, eventually you are going to be caring for us. I'm not sure how I feel about that!

Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:

I think we've done a lot together as nations, from supporting each other in democracy to defeating fascism, and if we can help each other to build, that's fantastic.

And what I mean by help each other really is to learn from each other. Because I think the best way to go about this — the best way to help each other — is to share information and also case studies. So, I'm excited that we get to do that today, because even for our very wonkish and worldly audience, there's things you know about the UK and there's things you don't.

I think most people will be able to name your Prime Minister and the last few as well. They will have knowledge of certain UK scandals and historical developments. I'd be surprised, though, if a lot of people know what Milton Keynes North is.

Chris Curtis, Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes North:

A massive shame that is.

Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:

Well, tell us about it!

Chris Curtis, Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes North:

So, Milton Keynes is probably one of the places in the UK that would feel most familiar and at home to an American visiting.

We have these things that are incredibly rare in the UK, actually, which is roads that run straight. We have a grid system like you have in DC and lots of other places. And that is basically because it is a New Town. A New City.

I'm the first Member of Parliament -- it's the same age as my mum -- I'm the first Member of Parliament that was born and grew up in the New Town, now City, of Milton Keynes. It's got a population of about 300,000. It was built and designed by the 1960s Labour government, who saw the massive housing shortage that the country faced and realized, particularly here in London, that we needed to start building new places and new settlements to live in.

AMilton Keynes was the biggest and most successful of those places and has consistently grown ever since. Over the past decade, we've been building between 2,000 and 3,000 homes every single year. We are on a trajectory to become a city of about 500,000 over the next 15 or 20 years.

I think what's most exciting is: we built this new settlement, now this new city, where so many people have made their home, but we've also built a massive economic success story.

It's halfway between London and Birmingham, two of our biggest cities here. It's also halfway between Oxford and Cambridge, which are big university cities which I'm sure many of your audience have heard of. It's slap bang in the middle of all four of those. So, it's got really good connections to all of those places. And, partly because of that, it's got a real thriving economy.

We've got a massive growing tech sector. Robotics. Loads of other exciting stuff going on. More startups than almost anywhere else in the country. So, anyone that's coming over or looking to invest in the UK, please do consider it, because it is a really exciting, vibrant place and somewhere that I'm determined to continue building and ensuring that kids growing up there today can have the same fantastic start in life that I had growing up there a few decades ago.

Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:

Let's just double stamp something you said. Before we even get to your role in Parliament, how UK housing law works, and how you're trying to change that: you mentioned that Milton Keynes is a New Town. Which is to say, in the thousand year history of your nation — you can correct that; I know there's several pieces to the United Kingdom and maybe you have different ideas of where they begin. I'm going Battle of Hastings; we can refine that —

Chris Curtis, Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes North:

We're getting the Bayeux Tapestry coming over! That was announced this week.

Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:

Ooh.

Chris Curtis, Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes North:

We've already gone off on a tangent! The French are sending us over the Bayeux Tapestry for a little bit next year. Come back and see it!

Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:

It's a dangerous precedent for you if we're starting to return artifacts to different places…

Chris Curtis, Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes North:

I refuse to comment!

Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:

But in this long history, not so long ago, your people in government said, "Hey, you know this place where there is nothing? There should be a town here. We will build it." And you're not the only one!

So, I'm very curious: you started to allude to this, but, man, I think an American audience would be interested in why that decision was made in and how it was executed, right? Was it just the government building things? Was it a public private partnership? How did this work?

Chris Curtis, Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes North:

It was a big government decision, and it was far more government-led and executed. It was a Development Corporation, as we call them, that was set up, which is a publicly-owned organization. It had compulsory purchase powers.

My great, great grandparents were farmers on the land. They had their farm compulsorily purchased off them by the government in order to build it. So, it was a level of forcefulness and government control. A lot of it was private money still. There was a lot of private capital that was invested in it, but it was a lot more government-centered and government-focused than you would necessarily do today.

It was just because there was such a determination at the time to break through the housing crisis that the country faced. I think what was also interesting about it — obviously, kind of having a quite well planned city was quite interesting, and you talk about the grid system and everything else — but it was also being able to start from scratch. Picking what was effectively a lot of farms and going, "Let's build something here" really allowed for innovation.

So, they built entire housing estates to look at how, if you build in slightly different ways, it can lead to homes that use less energy, because there was a fuel crisis at the time. Thinking about how to build far more efficiently, so that you can get more bang for your buck with building.

We learned so much through the process of building as well. Actually, we — the government in the UK — is now thinking about repeating this process with a series of more modern New Towns. And what's interesting as part of that process that we're going through is looking back to the New Towns of the past, particularly Milton Keynes, and thinking, "What did we get right? What did we get wrong? What can we learn from them to ensure that the places that we build in the future can be even better?"

And that's quite exciting.!Like, actually, we talk about building and development and the things that it achieves in new homes, whatever. But actually, this idea of building somewhere new — and the innovation and what you can learn from it — I think is also really exciting.

Stay tuned for the next chapter of our Radio Abundance interview with Chris Curtis, Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes North in the United Kingdom, filmed in London.

Get full access to Radio Abundance by YIMBY Democrats for America at radioabundance.substack.com/subscribe