Overcrowding

[bunn]

Apparently most people surveyed about how much of Britain is built up guessed at 50%, but it's closer to 11%. The presenter of this piece of news last night seemed to think this meant we should go ahead and build on more land.

Surely it's the other way round? Only 11% of land is built up, but that is in the most desirable / liveable/ workable areas, so most of the people that live there feel much more overcrowded than they really are, because although only 11% of the UK is built on, that 11% is where they live. Therefore we should be thinking hard about whether it's a good idea to build more in those areas, because people there are already feeling suffocated.

I also immediately wondered how much of the remaining land is actually buildable upon, and is not mountain, flood plain, nature reserve, bog or moorland.

"The houses are dead and there is too little that grows and is glad." :-(

Comments

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Well yes - a lot of Cornish villages are built on land that would cause builders elsewhere to go 'You what? You can't build on that, it's practically vertical!' and also on the top of old mines.

It's not that we physically can't build on bogs, flood plain, mountain or nature reserve. I just think it's a really, really wrong idea. In fact I think it's so wrong that it didn't even occur to me to spell it out: it's like a building block of my entire world view.