Is Britain Full?
Discussion
UK National Ecosystem Assessment: http://uknea.unep-wcmc.org/
England is 10.6% urbanised but of this 78.6% is designated as natural, not built. So 2.27% of England is built on. This is very obvious if you fly around much in a light aircraft or helicopter.
Our problem is planning. Powerful vested NIMBY interests such as CPRE prefer industrialised farms to suburban gardens, so this is what we get. No government has the balls to relax planning permission in the ridiculous green belts that throttle our towns and villages. The net effect is that we live in ever denser housing, like battery hens, and the vast majority of the cost of this housing is just the planning permission, the bricks and mortar cost relatively little.
You could easily double or triple our population and still have a green and pleasant land.
The Garden City movement gave us Letchworth and Welwyn.
The New Towns movement gave us Basildon, Bracknell, Central Lancashire (Preston and Leyland), Corby, Harlow, Hatfield, Hemel Hempstead, Milton Keynes, Newton Aycliffe, Peterlee, Redditch, Runcorn, Skelmersdale, Stevenage, Telford, Washington. We need more of these.
Harold Macmillan was able to build more than 400,000 homes a year. For the last 20 years we have only been building a fraction of this. The supply has come nowhere near meeting the demand. All because of our ridiculous planning system.
England is 10.6% urbanised but of this 78.6% is designated as natural, not built. So 2.27% of England is built on. This is very obvious if you fly around much in a light aircraft or helicopter.
Our problem is planning. Powerful vested NIMBY interests such as CPRE prefer industrialised farms to suburban gardens, so this is what we get. No government has the balls to relax planning permission in the ridiculous green belts that throttle our towns and villages. The net effect is that we live in ever denser housing, like battery hens, and the vast majority of the cost of this housing is just the planning permission, the bricks and mortar cost relatively little.
You could easily double or triple our population and still have a green and pleasant land.
The Garden City movement gave us Letchworth and Welwyn.
The New Towns movement gave us Basildon, Bracknell, Central Lancashire (Preston and Leyland), Corby, Harlow, Hatfield, Hemel Hempstead, Milton Keynes, Newton Aycliffe, Peterlee, Redditch, Runcorn, Skelmersdale, Stevenage, Telford, Washington. We need more of these.
Harold Macmillan was able to build more than 400,000 homes a year. For the last 20 years we have only been building a fraction of this. The supply has come nowhere near meeting the demand. All because of our ridiculous planning system.
Adam Ansel said:
UK National Ecosystem Assessment: http://uknea.unep-wcmc.org/
England is 10.6% urbanised but of this 78.6% is designated as natural, not built. So 2.27% of England is built on. This is very obvious if you fly around much in a light aircraft or helicopter.
Our problem is planning. Powerful vested NIMBY interests such as CPRE prefer industrialised farms to suburban gardens, so this is what we get. No government has the balls to relax planning permission in the ridiculous green belts that throttle our towns and villages. The net effect is that we live in ever denser housing, like battery hens, and the vast majority of the cost of this housing is just the planning permission, the bricks and mortar cost relatively little.
You could easily double or triple our population and still have a green and pleasant land.
The Garden City movement gave us Letchworth and Welwyn.
The New Towns movement gave us Basildon, Bracknell, Central Lancashire (Preston and Leyland), Corby, Harlow, Hatfield, Hemel Hempstead, Milton Keynes, Newton Aycliffe, Peterlee, Redditch, Runcorn, Skelmersdale, Stevenage, Telford, Washington. We need more of these.
Harold Macmillan was able to build more than 400,000 homes a year. For the last 20 years we have only been building a fraction of this. The supply has come nowhere near meeting the demand. All because of our ridiculous planning system.
Adam, the above are good figures/good data, but this is not the issue.England is 10.6% urbanised but of this 78.6% is designated as natural, not built. So 2.27% of England is built on. This is very obvious if you fly around much in a light aircraft or helicopter.
Our problem is planning. Powerful vested NIMBY interests such as CPRE prefer industrialised farms to suburban gardens, so this is what we get. No government has the balls to relax planning permission in the ridiculous green belts that throttle our towns and villages. The net effect is that we live in ever denser housing, like battery hens, and the vast majority of the cost of this housing is just the planning permission, the bricks and mortar cost relatively little.
You could easily double or triple our population and still have a green and pleasant land.
The Garden City movement gave us Letchworth and Welwyn.
The New Towns movement gave us Basildon, Bracknell, Central Lancashire (Preston and Leyland), Corby, Harlow, Hatfield, Hemel Hempstead, Milton Keynes, Newton Aycliffe, Peterlee, Redditch, Runcorn, Skelmersdale, Stevenage, Telford, Washington. We need more of these.
Harold Macmillan was able to build more than 400,000 homes a year. For the last 20 years we have only been building a fraction of this. The supply has come nowhere near meeting the demand. All because of our ridiculous planning system.
The question is, 'Is Britain Full'? And the answer is yes...we can not economically sustain the population at current levels, let alone the forecast growth figures for the next 20+ years. We struggle with even the most basic need of food, importing 40% of our foods...why? With such a large non populated land mass we should be able to provide, to feed the country. Economic structure and social disparity worsening each year. And for a first world country we still have excess homelessness and extremes of poverty. Building new towns is not the answer. The answer is to manage what we have and manage it well.
Oh, and re' Macmillan...400,000 homes were able to be built during this period because 1. we had the skilled and readily available labour resource, and 2. the country borrowed from the US to fund the housing programme of post war Britain.
Adam Ansel said:
UK National Ecosystem Assessment: http://uknea.unep-wcmc.org/
England is 10.6% urbanised but of this 78.6% is designated as natural, not built. So 2.27% of England is built on. This is very obvious if you fly around much in a light aircraft or helicopter.
Our problem is planning. Powerful vested NIMBY interests such as CPRE prefer industrialised farms to suburban gardens, so this is what we get. No government has the balls to relax planning permission in the ridiculous green belts that throttle our towns and villages. The net effect is that we live in ever denser housing, like battery hens, and the vast majority of the cost of this housing is just the planning permission, the bricks and mortar cost relatively little.
You could easily double or triple our population and still have a green and pleasant land.
The Garden City movement gave us Letchworth and Welwyn.
The New Towns movement gave us Basildon, Bracknell, Central Lancashire (Preston and Leyland), Corby, Harlow, Hatfield, Hemel Hempstead, Milton Keynes, Newton Aycliffe, Peterlee, Redditch, Runcorn, Skelmersdale, Stevenage, Telford, Washington. We need more of these.
Harold Macmillan was able to build more than 400,000 homes a year. For the last 20 years we have only been building a fraction of this. The supply has come nowhere near meeting the demand. All because of our ridiculous planning system.
Why ??? why do we need a bigger population , England is 10.6% urbanised but of this 78.6% is designated as natural, not built. So 2.27% of England is built on. This is very obvious if you fly around much in a light aircraft or helicopter.
Our problem is planning. Powerful vested NIMBY interests such as CPRE prefer industrialised farms to suburban gardens, so this is what we get. No government has the balls to relax planning permission in the ridiculous green belts that throttle our towns and villages. The net effect is that we live in ever denser housing, like battery hens, and the vast majority of the cost of this housing is just the planning permission, the bricks and mortar cost relatively little.
You could easily double or triple our population and still have a green and pleasant land.
The Garden City movement gave us Letchworth and Welwyn.
The New Towns movement gave us Basildon, Bracknell, Central Lancashire (Preston and Leyland), Corby, Harlow, Hatfield, Hemel Hempstead, Milton Keynes, Newton Aycliffe, Peterlee, Redditch, Runcorn, Skelmersdale, Stevenage, Telford, Washington. We need more of these.
Harold Macmillan was able to build more than 400,000 homes a year. For the last 20 years we have only been building a fraction of this. The supply has come nowhere near meeting the demand. All because of our ridiculous planning system.
powerstroke said:
Adam Ansel said:
powerstroke said:
Why ??? why do we need a bigger population ,
Demographics.We need people to pay taxes so that Baby Boomers get their pensions and care workers.
The UK isn't full. The UK does have a big infrastructure and housing issues.
We struggle with even the most basic need of food, importing 40% of our foods...why? With such a large non populated land mass we should be able to provide, to feed the country.
And we have since pre-WW2 era. The UK diet is farming intensive and we do not farm intensively!
Take China as an example. Still a country where meat is relatively low in the diet, to the point pork is a delicacy and until recently very expensive.
The UK diet relies a lot on beef and pork production, exotic fruits and out of season vegetables.
[b]
Economic structure and social disparity worsening each year. And for a first world country we still have excess homelessness and extremes of poverty. Building new towns is not the answer. The answer is to manage what we have and manage it well.[/b]
Homelessness is a hard number to put down, but generally the UK performs well. We also don't have the extremes of poverty you discuss.
v8250 said:
The question is, 'Is Britain Full'? And the answer is yes...we can not economically sustain the population at current levels, let alone the forecast growth figures for the next 20+ years.
How is this different to any time since the industrial revolution?We struggle with even the most basic need of food, importing 40% of our foods...why? With such a large non populated land mass we should be able to provide, to feed the country.
And we have since pre-WW2 era. The UK diet is farming intensive and we do not farm intensively!
Take China as an example. Still a country where meat is relatively low in the diet, to the point pork is a delicacy and until recently very expensive.
The UK diet relies a lot on beef and pork production, exotic fruits and out of season vegetables.
[b]
Economic structure and social disparity worsening each year. And for a first world country we still have excess homelessness and extremes of poverty. Building new towns is not the answer. The answer is to manage what we have and manage it well.[/b]
Homelessness is a hard number to put down, but generally the UK performs well. We also don't have the extremes of poverty you discuss.
Edited by Evanivitch on Sunday 28th February 10:37
If you want any quality of life, if you don't want to be bankrupted by debt and sent back to early 50's living standards, yes the country is already too full.
Pointing at how 'little' of the UK is already built upon and saying there is plenty of room left, is so ignorant of the problems, it's laughable.
Pointing at how 'little' of the UK is already built upon and saying there is plenty of room left, is so ignorant of the problems, it's laughable.
MarshPhantom said:
No - anyone who thinks it is needs to get out more.
It all depends on how you define "full"As long as we are wiling to turn London into one of the world's megacities and swallow most of the green belt and home counties then you could probably house, and put in sufficient infrastructure, for 80-90 million or so.
The real question is what is the optimum population density for the best standard of living and the fact that England (not the UK) now has the highest population density in Europe is perhaps a sign that we have moved beyond that and are continuing to head in the wrong direction.
MarshPhantom said:
No - anyone who thinks it is needs to get out more.
UK definitely isn't. London and the South East is. I've been a bit of a wanderer through my life. I have lived and worked in London and the South East, The North and South of Ireland, Scotland, The North East of England and Cumbria. With the exception of London and the Home Counties people aren't exactly falling over one another.Sad thing is everything seems to be gravitating towards London as time goes on. Doesn't help that all the big construction and infrastructure projects occur down their (eg. Cameron's latest housing improvement initiative? London).
People call The Scots subsidy junkies. When you look at the situation of Govt and The Civil Service then take into account govt funded draws of labour and population such as Cross Rail, The Olympics and subsequent legacy, The New High Speed Rail Link, The Tube, The M25, The Millennium Dome to name just a few it's not difficult to spot where most of the money is heading.
I'm a believer in old fashioned regional development. Not because I'm an old fashioned socialist but because we are going to have to take the pressure off the South East and address the problems of economic wastelands such as the Welsh Valleys, Tyneside and Northumbria, Cumbria, West Scotland and Cornwall. It's not about getting more money from the magic tree it's about spreading the money we already have.
As for these immigrant types? A generation on the only evidence of the influx of Eastern Europeans will be a pile of very British kids only with funny names ready to study, work, contribute, spend, build businesses and pay taxes.
Adam Ansel said:
UK National Ecosystem Assessment: http://uknea.unep-wcmc.org/
England is 10.6% urbanised but of this 78.6% is designated as natural, not built. So 2.27% of England is built on. This is very obvious if you fly around much in a light aircraft or helicopter.
Our problem is planning. Powerful vested NIMBY interests such as CPRE prefer industrialised farms to suburban gardens, so this is what we get. No government has the balls to relax planning permission in the ridiculous green belts that throttle our towns and villages. The net effect is that we live in ever denser housing, like battery hens, and the vast majority of the cost of this housing is just the planning permission, the bricks and mortar cost relatively little.
You could easily double or triple our population and still have a green and pleasant land.
The Garden City movement gave us Letchworth and Welwyn.
The New Towns movement gave us Basildon, Bracknell, Central Lancashire (Preston and Leyland), Corby, Harlow, Hatfield, Hemel Hempstead, Milton Keynes, Newton Aycliffe, Peterlee, Redditch, Runcorn, Skelmersdale, Stevenage, Telford, Washington. We need more of these.
Harold Macmillan was able to build more than 400,000 homes a year. For the last 20 years we have only been building a fraction of this. The supply has come nowhere near meeting the demand. All because of our ridiculous planning system.
I take it you don't live in a new town? They are sEngland is 10.6% urbanised but of this 78.6% is designated as natural, not built. So 2.27% of England is built on. This is very obvious if you fly around much in a light aircraft or helicopter.
Our problem is planning. Powerful vested NIMBY interests such as CPRE prefer industrialised farms to suburban gardens, so this is what we get. No government has the balls to relax planning permission in the ridiculous green belts that throttle our towns and villages. The net effect is that we live in ever denser housing, like battery hens, and the vast majority of the cost of this housing is just the planning permission, the bricks and mortar cost relatively little.
You could easily double or triple our population and still have a green and pleasant land.
The Garden City movement gave us Letchworth and Welwyn.
The New Towns movement gave us Basildon, Bracknell, Central Lancashire (Preston and Leyland), Corby, Harlow, Hatfield, Hemel Hempstead, Milton Keynes, Newton Aycliffe, Peterlee, Redditch, Runcorn, Skelmersdale, Stevenage, Telford, Washington. We need more of these.
Harold Macmillan was able to build more than 400,000 homes a year. For the last 20 years we have only been building a fraction of this. The supply has come nowhere near meeting the demand. All because of our ridiculous planning system.
tholes, not something you want more of...http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2154822.stm
The 'green belt' is there for a very good reason - try looking it up some time.
As for full - physically, no it's not obviously. I mean to say you can walk in your garden or indeed walk anywhere so by that metric it's not. However if you want to have any sort of quality of life then the south-east is getting that way. Not enough:
schools
hospitals
doctors (and resultant surgeries)
dentists
rail capacity
sewage treatment
power generating facilities
roads (which leads back into concreting over everything)
parking (for when you get to your over-crowded destination)
The sensible course of action is to shove a lot of these people out to Wales and the North/Scotland - but who want to go there (that's not a dig at any of those places, it just seems to be the way it is)?
If you're happy to live in something like the below fine, but don't expect lot of people to agree with you.
As a practical issue you could argue that a country is full when it can no longer feed itself - by that metric we've gone beyond being full and are on the way to insanely full...
MarshPhantom said:
No - anyone who thinks it is needs to get out more.
Tokyo is not full, Hong Kong is not full, Mumbai in not fullI'd much rather live here. And it seems the rich in those places prefer to buy property in the UK.
I gather the size of an apartment in HK is restricted to 500 square feet. Rather small - can we cope with that in the "island"that is London?
BlackLabel said:
Looks like projections forecasting a population of 80M just after 2050 are proving right.Never mind, I am sure we will build plenty of housing and infrastructure for the ever growing population
768 said:
JagLover said:
Looks like projections forecasting a population of 80M just after 2050 are proving right.
Never mind, I am sure we will build plenty of housing and infrastructure for the ever growing population
I for one am looking forward to all the new roads we'll build for them. Never mind, I am sure we will build plenty of housing and infrastructure for the ever growing population
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