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Jim Gleeson

@geographyjim.bsky.social
2.2K followers 1.1K following 397 posts

Housing research and analysis lead at the Greater London Authority. Opinions here only my own, if that. data.london.gov.uk/housing/

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Reposted by Jim Gleeson
Leonardo Carella @leonardocarella.bsky.social · 20h
Something bugs me about Italian opinion polls. There's not enough variance: FdI has been at 27-and-a-bit in 12 of the last 13 polls. My suspicion was herding, so I went down a statistical rabbit hole, which involved inventing a new measure of herding (which may have picked up a different issue!). 🧵
A table of Italian polls. Available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_Italian_general_election#Party_vote
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 23h
And it leads to this kind of argument where Output Areas are simultaneously individual streets and self-contained "communities" that constrain people's contacts and economic opportunities.
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 23h
I think there's also something a bit silly about doing Output Area (average population 250) analysis and calling them "neighbourhoods". For areas that small there are bound to be some (in this case only 3369) where the rate exceeds 50%.
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 23h
Their blog here says they're using Output Areas www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/newsroom/rev...
centreforsocialjustice.org.uk
Revealed: the 3,000 areas with over half of working-age adults on benefits - The Centre for Social Justice
The full scale of Britain’s worklessness crisis is to be revealed this week by a major inquiry into the benefit system.
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Ben Barclay @benbarclay.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
It’s a commonplace that London constituencies often encompass everything from great wealth to deprivation, and Holborn and St Pancras is no exception. Lincoln Inn’s Fields, Bloomsbury, British Museum, Somer’s Town, Camden Town and Kentish Town. And once it was home to a very original development.
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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
This graph is a good reason to introduce my new paper: By Generation and by Design: A Review of the Empirical Rent Control Literature. This paints a (somewhat) misleading picture of rent control evidence because it groups all rent control together regardless of design feature.
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Richard Brown @richardbrown.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Troubled bridges. What to do about London's river crossings? Me for On London, partly prompted by @jamesrball.com and @neilgarratt.bsky.social. www.onlondon.co.uk/richard-brow...
onlondon.co.uk
Richard Brown: London cannot let its bridges keep on falling down
The very long history of failing to properly fund and maintain these vital Thames crossings needs to be brought to an end
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Thanks Andy, I'm not on there much myself but might (reluctantly) make a bit more of an effort!
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Do you know if there is much of a data Viz presence on Instagram?
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Tom Copley @tomcopley.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I was delighted to present the Mayor of London Award to @phoenixtogether.bsky.social’s Farmstead Road development in LB Lewisham, designed by Metropolitan Workshop, at the Housing Design Awards. Farmstead Road shows how a constrained suburban site can provide much-needed affordable family homes.
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Edwin Heathcote @edwinheathcote.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
www.ft.com/content/0146... It’s time for a stone-brick revolution @groupwork.bsky.social @designmuseum.bsky.social
ft.com
It’s time for a stone-brick revolution
It’s low carbon, reusable, quirkily beautiful — and can be cheaper than concrete and steel. Why on earth aren’t more architects building in stone?
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Strongly recommend this delightfully bonkers Korean time-travel food-quest romcom en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bon_App...
en.wikipedia.org
Bon Appétit, Your Majesty - Wikipedia
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Yes, but the price drop is greater for houses than for flats, for flats in taller buildings and for leasehold rather than for freehold flats.
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
There is far less difference in rents than in prices, which to my mind does not rule out a substantial Brexit effect but does suggest a big role for Grenfell/building safety/leasehold effects.
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Not the main point of the story but this bit mixes up two different measures of housing supply. On the correct measure estimated net housing completions in England were around 200,000 in 2025-26.
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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 25/09/2026
‘Everyone can relate to pain and struggle. So I’m sharing mine’: Michael Kiwanuka on life after his devastating stroke
theguardian.com
‘Everyone can relate to pain and struggle. So I’m sharing mine’: Michael Kiwanuka on life after his devastating stroke
The Mercury prize winner hasn’t been able to go home since falling ill last summer. In his only interview, he opens up about the ‘poignancy’ of finally releasing the new album his stroke shelved
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Rob Kitchin @robkitchin.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Housing in Ireland book forum, Oct 14th, iD8, Dublin, 18.00-19.30. Join me in conversation with Lorcan Sirr, @mickbyrne.bsky.social, @ronanlyons.bsky.social, Mike Allen, @danihynes.bsky.social & Lidia Manzo, each of whom have recently published a book on housing. www.eventbrite.ie/e/housing-ex...
eventbrite.ie
HOUSING EXPERTS PANEL — BOOK FORUM
Housing experts and writers discuss their books and the current housing emergency
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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
AI is screwing up journal papers: Journal editor asks authors of 10 submitted papers to meet and discuss their paper. Of the 7 that showed up, 3 were unable to answer basic questions about the paper and 3 had difficulty when asked further questions on technical details… medium.com/@TmlrOrg/ask...
medium.com
Asking Authors About Their Own Papers
By Nihar B. Shah
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Very informative thread Joseph! Though I don't think the number of PRS homes was that high in the 1990s? It had shrunk quite a lot by then IIRC.
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
That's not right, there's a whole chapter about impacts on house prices www.gov.uk/government/p...
gov.uk
Evaluation of the Help to Buy scheme: evaluation findings report
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Steven Schmidt @stevenschmidt.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
New at Social Problems! Lora Phillips and I use panel data from LA to look at the prevalence and predictors of anticipatory stress around housing loss, i.e., worry over the possibility of experiencing displacement.
An extensive literature finds that forced moves erode well-being and widen family inequality. Fewer studies examine how worries over potential future displacement may also stratify families. Using survey data from a probability sample of Los Angeles County residents, we examine socially-patterned disparities in the prevalence and duration of anticipatory stress around housing loss, the association between such stress and health behaviors, and the role of doubling up in buffering anticipatory housing loss stress. We find that immigrants, renters, and lower-income households report significantly more anticipatory housing loss stress, even after controlling for multiple individual event stressors associated with displacement risk. We also find evidence that anticipatory housing loss stress is associated with present-day food cutbacks and that doubling up with relatives may shield against such stress. These findings advance past work on the housing crisis by demonstrating that its total impact extends beyond the downstream consequences of involuntary moves. Our results also contribute to research on socio-demographic disparities in anticipatory stress, the relationship between anticipatory stress and health behavior, and how doubling up shapes family well-being.
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Alice Lilly @aliceolilly.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
This is, in a sense, a perfect artefact of 2026 for us to bequeath to future historians
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Gautam Vyas @gautamvyas.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
But how you measure consumption matters, too. Take London overall: including housing costs, Londoners spend 25% more than average. Much of that is just how expensive London housing is – adjust for it and they spend around 3% less. (Which measure is "right"? More in the paper.) 6/7
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Jack Shoulder @jackshoulder.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
#TodayInQueerHistory Sept 11 (2001) Mychal Judge was a Catholic Priest & chaplain to the NYFD. He jumped into action to save lives in the 9/11 attacks. He was the 1st certified fatality. He was "a phenomenal, warm, sincere man". He advocated for the Church to change its stance on homosexuality.
A priest and firefighter
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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
The question of *why* we have seen such a dramatic increase in ethnic minority educational attainment in Britain is too little asked From the 1960s to early 1990s there was a large literature seeking to explain the under-achievement of minority children that is now apparently long forgotten
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Philip Oldfield @sustainabletall.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
This is an important building by Groupwork Architecture 1,000 tonnes of solid volcanic rock provide the structure for this 10-storey apartment building, massively reducing steel and concrete This could be used up to 30 storeys, to create new housing and reduce emissions
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
I've given several reasons (directly contradicted by other data; no published methodology; nobody noticing what would have been a huge socioeconomic change). It's bad data, and it's not rude to simply point that out.
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
On the other hand, if you're not careful with your data and your methods you might end up publishing a claim like "rents in London fell 17% in the last year", when they plainly did not. I'm genuinely surprised you are sticking with it, but we're not getting anywhere so let's leave it.
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Correct, they are both doing a better job than Propertymark, who do not publish any methodology at all but I would guess are failing to mix-adjust off of a volatile sample. Do you not think if achieved rents had really fallen **17%** in a single year that there might have been some wider reaction?
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Rightmove put the change in rents over the same period at +2.9% www.rightmove.co.uk/news/content... Homelet +5% homelet.co.uk/-/media/proj... Hamptons: +1.1% www.hamptons.co.uk/articles/lan... Propertymark: minus 17%! Come on.
rightmove.co.uk
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Prices have not gone up, as your original post correctly highlighted. The article you cited said rents have fallen 17% in a year and that affordability had improved 17% in a year. Both figures are just wrong, and I'm surprised you can't see that.
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
"The average rent last month was £2,385, including both inner and outer London, down from £2,875 a month in June 2025."
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
By no measure did average London rents fall 17% in one year.
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Other sources show London advertised rents rising over the year to June 2026 rather than falling by 17%. Rightmove put the annual increase at 2.9% www.rightmove.co.uk/news/content...
Greater London average asking rent for all property types. +2.9% in year to Q2 2026
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
The following month saw some more zany figures from Propertymark (a 4.2% increase in average rents in a single month!), suggesting to me that there are at the very least some issues here with data quality and/or seasonal adjustment www.property118.com/salary-neede...
High demand and limited supply continue to push rents higher, with the salary needed to rent in London soaring.

Propertymark’s rental price and average salary tracker reveals that London recorded the strongest monthly rental growth, with average rents rising from £2,385 to £2,484 (+4.2% month-on-month).

This increase means the representative annual salary needed to secure the average-priced rental home has risen from £70,050 to £74,520 (+6.4% year-on-year).
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
The figures apparently come from Propertymark, but are not to be found (as far as I can see) in their June Housing Insight Report www.propertymark.co.uk/static/d6797.... But they have been reported in various media, so the FT don't seem to have made it up.

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	https://www.ft.com/content/44814d61-d4b9-4609-a010-a69b897fb9f9?syn-25a6b1a6=1

	London’s rental affordability has improved significantly in the past year, new research has found, though the easing of pressure was offset by a sharp 3.4 per cent rise in average rents over the month to June.

According to data from letting agents, the average pre-tax salary needed to rent an averagely priced rental home in the capital fell by 17 per cent in the year to June, to £71,550. The average rent last month was £2,385, including both inner and outer London, down from £2,875 a month in June 2025.

Affordability also improved in the north-west, where a home could be rented on a salary of £33,300, down 17.5 per cent year on year. 

But the wider picture on affordability was mixed, with Scotland becoming less affordable in terms of tenants’ salary requirements. The pressure on renters in London and the south-east remains intense, with rents in June rising by 3.4 per cent and 1.7 per cent respectively. They also rose in the north-west, the east of England and the East Midlands over the month.
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Missed it when it came out, but there's a striking claim in this FT article that advertised private rents in London fell 17% in the year to June, which is wildly out of line with other source pointing to rising rents.
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
I wrote about issues at the England level here a couple of years ago bsky.app/profile/geog.... Things have improved a little since then but not enough, and the issue seems particularly acute in London.
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
That wasn't sarcasm, I am genuinely curious about where this strange factoid came from.
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Would be very keen for someone to point me to where Propertymark say that asking rents in London have fallen 17%, as opposed to an internally contradictory FT article.
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
I'm looking at the article and asking if you really believe it. Also, which part of the article, because another part says rents in London rose 3.4% (which is in line with every other source).
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
A 2.5 percentage point fall looks like a >10% fall in the rental burden to me. Again you are quite entitled to say that's nothing worth bothering with, but many would disagree, particularly in London.
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Average asking rents in London are currently increasing despite that labour market weakness, according to Rightmove, Homelet and Hamptons.
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Sorry, are you suggesting that rents fell 17% nominal / 20% in real terms in London in the last year?
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Maybe not for you, but that would actually be seriously life-enhancing for many people. Also, I thought your argument was that the rent-to-income ratio is extremely stable, making this kind of change highly unusual.
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Would love to, but the English Housing Survey data quality really suffered during the pandemic and has never quite recovered. It seems to think London's average household size is much lower than other sources indicate, which biases this kind of calculation.
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Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Lewisham Council celebrating World Car Free Day by closing part of one street for a whole three hours.
"World Car Free Day 2026  
We're asking residents to leave their car at home and join us as we celebrate World Car Free Day for a third consecutive year on Sunday 20 September. From 11am to 2pm the Council is closing part of Kitto Road in Telegraph Hill to mark the day. Get more information about World Car Free Day and our event in Telegraph hill."
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Jeremy Goldkorn @goldkorn.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
I went back to China after a decade away—I'd previously lived there for 20 years. Some notes:
chinafile.com
App Life in China
“It’s really tough doing anything in China right now,” my friend told me. He’s a serial entrepreneur in Shanghai with a locked-in grin. We were waiting for our food in a Taiwanese restaurant in a lovi...
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Ryan Dunlavey @ryandunlavey.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
I was just talking to a friend today about Dolly Parton's Imagination Library - new books every month, totally for free, for kids ages 1-5. My son was part of the program - this is a copy of the letter that came with his last book, right after his 5th birthday.
19157963309
Jim Gleeson @geographyjim.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Unexpectedly learning cool things about Japanese transport policy from the translation notes to a manga (Blue Period vol. 14)
Getting a driver's license in Japan, page 81
In Japan, obtaining a driver's license can be challenging and expensive, especially compared to the process in the United States. For both a learner's permit and a full license, applicants usually have to attend accredited driving schools, which can cost upwards of 400,000 yen (approximately $4,000). The lessons can span several weeks, and the exams are notoriously strict, with a high failure rate for first-time takers. The tests also involve written exams that you can't pass without a score of 90-95% or higher and practical driving tests on a closed course. On top of all that, once you have a learner's permit, you must take and pass the exam for a full license within six months. If not, you have to start the entire process from the beginning. And since it often takes a few attempts to get your license in Japan, you can expect to spend the equivalent of several thousand dollars before finally getting your full license.
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