The Planner(28)

‘Yes, but without some kind of order and planning, all you’ll end up with is endless sprawl. You wouldn’t want to live in a city like that.’

‘Actually, I’m not especially snobbish about sprawl in the way that you lot are. Just because it doesn’t meet your density targets it doesn’t mean that people don’t like living there. They can do their shopping, they can park their cars easily and have barbecues in their gardens. Those are things that people care about.’

Like everything else other than work, the evening was proving to be incredibly hard work. And yet, this was the strange thing, she wasn’t leaving. He had been careful to give her plenty of opportunities, but no – she was still there, in fact, she was now going to the bar to buy some more drinks. Could it really be possible that she was having a good time? It was difficult to tell. Laura certainly didn’t seem very happy. Then again, she wasn’t going to hang around with him unless she wanted to. He’d met these Treasury maniacs before, he knew the kind of cost-benefit analysis they brought to every decision, every discretionary purchase and social interaction. But maybe she was lonely? After all, they lived in just about the loneliest city in the world.

Laura returned from the bar with two large glasses of white wine. There was no getting away from it – she was very pretty. She was tall and blond, but that was actually beside the point, and nor was she in the least what you’d call striking. Rather her face was an organisational triumph – the collective effect of a standard-shaped mouth with even teeth, set apart at a reasonable distance from a moderate nose, light-blue eyes and average-sized ears. As with her analytical reasoning, there were no mistakes or irregularities in her appearance.

‘You’re wrong,’ he said, trying hard not to sound as if the argument had already been lost. ‘About planning – I think you’re totally wrong. There wouldn’t even be a functioning market if it wasn’t for planners. We’re the ones that make things work, that tackle all the market failures.’

‘Well, of course – it’s not as if I’m an anarcho-libertarian or anything. I’m an economist and I think I understand the concept of market failure better than most. I’m just not sure how much we really benefit when people like you go around trying to fix them.’

‘But the market failures in London are endemic. Congestion, poor housing, urban poverty, pollution, unemployment, crime. It’s the job of planners to sort all of these things out. Imagine what it would be like if there wasn’t any planning.’

James wasn’t entirely sure if these were really market failures or not, but no matter – Laura was now beaming at him. That was the way with these Treasury types. They thrived on conflict, on being impertinently questioned and intellectually challenged – as long as in the end they won, which they almost always did. In fact, what he should probably do now, if he really wanted her to become affectionate, was to escalate, to manufacture an ill-tempered argument, and then try and insult her in some way.

‘The problem isn’t market failure,’ said Laura. ‘It’s easy enough to identify those. The problem is government failure. Just because you’re not pleased with something, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the state’s solution will make things any better. And, quite often, it ends up making something else much worse.’

‘You’re not a Conservative are you?’ asked James.

‘Oh God, probably, though of course I don’t vote for them. I’m not like you anyway – I’m not a planner. I have a strong and healthy sense of the value of personal freedoms.’

James swallowed some of his pub white wine, and ate a handful of peanuts to moderate the aftertaste. Professionally he had been taught to distrust most types of freedom, and personal freedoms were usually the very worse. Developers, architects, graffiti artists – they were the champions of personal freedom, of economic liberty and self-expression, and they were all his enemies.

‘Put it this way,’ continued Laura, ‘I trust the people to screw things up for themselves in ways that are more enjoyable and less costly than when people like you and me try and do it for them.’

‘But that’s not what I do at all. I—’

‘I know it’s not what you try to do. I’m not questioning your morals or anything. It’s just what invariably happens. It’s not even about economics. The way I see it is this: when people spend money on themselves, okay, it’s not great – in my case I tend to buy books I’ll never get round to reading. But when people spend money that belongs to somebody else, on behalf of other people, well, that’s never going to work is it? Even if they’re clever and well meaning it’s unlikely to work. Never mind if they’re stupid or venal. And let’s be honest: almost everyone we work with is one or the other.’