A little over sixty years ago, when they were barely older than I am now, my grandparents bought a cottage in a little village called Pontesbury near Shrewsbury. My grandfather was a newly qualified teacher, and could walk to work, whilst my nan took up part-time work as a secretary.
Today, I left the house I rent a room in and then commuted to work for an hour and a half. The world my grandparents inhabited could scarcely be more alien to those of my generation. I’m one of the lucky ones. 3.8 million young adults between 20 and 34 are still living with their parents. Imagine being in your early 30s and still having your mum moaning at you about the socks left on your bedroom floor.
A home is the foundation upon which we build our lives, and for 3.8 million of our young people, they are still waiting to start their lives. I have spoken to a series of other people my age who are effectively counting on the death of a doting relative in order to buy a home. Others, simply, give up.
Why, then, is it so hard to get young people engaged in the planning that very obviously affects them?
Quite simply, because young people feel rather despondent about their housing opportunities. And why wouldn’t they? More and more of them are struggling to enter the workforce, and all the while, property prices are outpacing wage growth. It’s a pretty bleak picture for someone my age, freshly out of university.
All too often, consultations are run as a NIMBY appeasement exercise. Young people are largely seen as a waste of time and resources to engage with, because, whilst they are unlikely to write a supportive comment, they are even less likely to write a negative one.
But I think that misses an opportunity.
Because we know young people can be engaged. And when they do get engaged, they are typically some of the most enthusiastic proponents.
You all know I’m about to say social media. But it really is an excellent way to engage young people. For context, I worked Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm last week. In between that, I spent ten minutes shy of forty hours on social media (according to my screen time). Other young people have even more free time than I do, and as such are even more committed to their algorithms. When a planning application is happening near them, that might affect their ability to buy a home, they should be hearing about it.
If you want to engage young people, you need to understand social media or find a keen young person who does. The first time I engaged with a planning application was one proposed in my home village, just after I was eighteen. I had seen the website, ignored it, and then suddenly a video, a quick meme, came up on my TikTok and I decided, with purpose, that I was going to do something about it. And then I persuaded some of my friends to do the same. The proposal was still opposed and delayed, but at least we had done our part. Social media works.
Take inspiration from New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, or even the little pubs and cafes now posting skits to boost their sales. Mamdani in particular has been phenomenal at finding ways to engage people with comparatively dull concepts through humour, visuality and strategically deploying memorable facts and figures to support his arguments. All whilst coming across as a real human being. He is worth studying for anybody trying to sell ideas, and you don’t need a mayoral candidate’s budget to do it.
The next point is also key: make supporting you as easy as possible. Many of my friends can be tremendously enthusiastic proponents of things they will do positively nothing to achieve. Only a dedicated NIMBY has the motivation to trawl through the process to try and stop homes getting built; a young person will not do this.
There is a real untapped resource out there in the world of planning consultations, one frequently neglected in current approaches. The truth is; we can get young people to engage with planning. My generation yearns for the world our grandparents had where a first home was an expectation rather than an aspiration. You just have to know the right way to do it.
Adam Caudle