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Second homes have been a source of considerable controversy in Wales for more than three decades. In this article we argue that they have, in reality, become less important in recent times, with the market contracting during the 1990s and other more fundamental demographic changes and housing pressures coming to the fore. Second homes are a highly localized issue, affecting a minority of communities -though, at times, quite severely. Retirement and other housing pressures, however, bring more significant socio-economic changes and these pressures are all too frequently amplified by a planning system used to restrict housing supply rather than manage growth. This paper has three parts, beginning with a general review of the second home debate followed by an examination of the changing geography of second homes, showing how the distribution of these properties altered during the 1990s and how the market contracted. It ends with a review of secondary data, revealing that second homes are a relatively small component of wider processes affecting rural communities, though extremely significant in some areas.

The Metropolitan Green Belt (MGB) was established in the 1930s and has expanded enormously since. Accompanying polices, including New Towns, have since been abandoned, leaving the MGB as an 'orphaned' policy which constrains land supply. Prioritising the reuse of Brownfield land and densification are now the counter to land constraint. However, it is argued that these are not sufficient to meet the housing crisis in London and the Wider South East. Moreover, academics have pointed out for decades that strong land constraint has led to chronic housing problems, including poor internal space standards and the high cost of housing in the 'mega-region'. However, despite decades of academic discussion concerning the chronic housing problems it contributes to, and the more immediate crisis, the MGB remains a bluntly applied planning tool and carries with it no serious political discussion of reform. Piecemeal change has taken and still takes place, but this has led to a series of battles that have not achieved the core task of signalling the intention to make a sustained and substantial change to policies of land constraint. In order to chart a possible path to reform the starting point is to approach the MGB as an institution, and this includes tracing the significance of how it developed historically, and in particular the confusion over the full extent of its purposes and, thus, the real range of its benefits. A second strand is a consideration of the different reasons why people commit to institutions, and how this differentially impacts the way in which they respond and/or seek to drive institutional change. Using these insights, existing proposals for change are critiqued and then an alternative is proposed that seeks to respond to the 'rational' and 'normative' drivers of support for the MGB.

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