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

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

I think one needs to be very careful about these statistics. A leafy suburb counts as built-on, as does a mass of tower blocks in an inner city.

I think things should be spread out and decentralised a bit, which means building on more land, but with fewer people per acre.

I'm rather surprised that we're as high as 11%, to be honest.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

89% of the UK's population were recorded as living in urban areas 15 years ago.

Separately, quite a lot of land is buildable-on if you are desperate enough. I have been to towns built on what used to be the sea as recently as 100 years ago. There are also towns built on the slopes of volcanoes, near poisonous lakes etc. whether it is wise to build here is, of course, another matter!

[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.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I like your idea, but would prefer to see the invention of the teleport precede its implementation...

[helflaed.livejournal.com]

Given the amount of hidden homelessness in this counry, and the way that many young people either cannot afford a house or are taking out mortgages so high that they can barely afford the repayments, I believe that more houses do need to be built, and regrettably some of them will have to be on greenbelt land.

Mind you- it's amazing where houses can be built if necessary- although round here "Top of the hill where it's coldest" is a favourite- together with "Oops there's a 12th century bellpit under the 14the century church tower"

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

To be honest the two recent reviews of planning and the built environment smack very much of vested interest. There is actually a lot of building space available in Britain around towns that have deindustrialised (like ours) for a start. The problem is that companies want to operate in the South East and so their workewrs need to live nearish (where near is a funny term) . However, this is also where there is no longer enough free space with easy road/rail access and planning permisssion. Around my mum's old house fields that were farmed ten years ago are now housing estates, the only thing saving some bits of the South Downs there are that they are owned by the National Trust. And I've not even mentioned the problems of storage, supply and demand that this puts on the water table and supply/sewerage systems.

Some of us were hoping that this would push companies to move northwards and thus ease pressures on the South East (housing stock, roads, rail, green belt protection, rents & house prices). Sadly reports like this and moves to take planning authority away from elected representatives, that have to answer to local people, will mean that companies take the easy option of staying put and turning the south east into an ugly sprawl of concrete, with even Pellinor's leafy suburbs being redeveloped. Examples of that latter point being a) what was the garden of a house at the end of pellegrina's road has had a garage built and then the site flattened and a 3 bed house put up, and b) souped up granny annexes that are almsot whole new houses going up in gardens around Brighton, c) a pair of family semis at the top of our road that have had a two floor extension built on the back that extends as much as the original house.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Curses. I wrote a long comment, but LJ ate it. I can't be bothered to rewrite it, since it went through so many alterations that I can't actually remember what its finished form was. But it's the thought that counts, isn't it? So here we go:

COMMENT

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I'm not convinced that building more houses makes houses affordable for those who would not otherwise have houses though. The prices go up all the same because people buy to let or as second homes.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

... And as the housing density goes up, the more people get on one another's wicks, and the community suffers.

I think there are too many people on this island already, and would like to see the encouragement of emigration. It appears there are lots of people who want to come here, well, good, I am sure there must equally be plenty of people who just need a good spike up the bum to get them to leave, since they don't seem to care much for the place.

[helflaed.livejournal.com]

At least with buy to let someone is living in it- as for second homes- I'd love to see them taxed properly!

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

But do we want London - even a 50%-less-dense London - to be twice the size it currently is?

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

Why not just have a 50% less dense London, with the surplus people elsewhere?