There will be significant demand for new housing, as a result of new household formation and changing housing dynamics. In essence it is suggested that social trends will lead to increasingly less people per dwelling by 2050:

• family units will become smaller and more fragmented;
• a greater number of individuals will choose to live alone for economic and cultural reasons;
• capital wealth amongst the grey lobby may increase demand for second homes.

Significant programmes of housing building will be therefore a feature throughout this period. The rate of demolition will be slower in order to ‘soak up’ some of this demand. Total number of homes needed to meet demand in the UK are estimated to be up to 31.8 million in 2050 equating to up to 10.8 million new homes: a net increase of 140,000 – 150,000 new homes per year.

Models of housing development may vary widely. These may include approaches that emphasise ‘concentration’, such through the reclamation of brown-field sites, and the controlled expansion of existing settlements. Alternatively, development may be more dispersed and small scale and involve the active creation of new settlement structures. In all of this, market processes may override careful planning of housing resources especially in relation to environmentally vulnerable zones (such as building developments on flood plains). This process may also result in changes in the design and feel of living environments, such as the creation of “singleton settlements” based on, what one report terms, a ‘mix of communalism and highly protected ‘individualism’. A trend towards more intelligent - environmentally friendly - forms of design could be a feature of housing development in the future.