Gardens are too big

Poppycat

I heard a while back the government changed the planning rules so that they can cram more guinea pigs (I mean people) in the same amount of land, so gardens would have shrunk along with houses.

Plenty of rabbit hutches being built in my town, or flats built on brown acre sites where houses once stood. Theres already enough flats as it is with conversions from hotels/guest houses to flats.

I would love a garden let alone a big garden.

wolvoman

Rick62 wrote:

And actually its rubbish that there is a shortgage of land. 92% of the UK is non urbanised, ie. farm, common, woodland etc, which is very pretty, but it would be nice to have a bit more of that for families to be able to have enough gargden for the kids to kick a football.

Another 2% for residential could make a huge difference to residential quantity and quality and would still leave 90% countryside.

Bit of a play on statistics there Rich!!
If you think about it, most of that 92% of non-urban land is actually miles from any urban area (just think of the vast swathes of Northern Scotland) so effectively is unusable.

We could build brand new towns (which I don't think would be as popular as immediately post-war with the likes of Milton Keynes and Telford).

Basically any new urban areas are just going to be bolted onto the outside of current urban areas - this is what has happened ever since human urbanisation began.

So the extra 2% will be built onto the existing 8%, which is a pretty hefty increase in urbanisation in anyone's book. That's London expanding up to the M25 and probably spilling over in some parts.... not a very attractive prospect.
And most of all, not very cheap.

ks24

id love a big garden,
i could even develop on it

jodenice

Well our new flat that we are purchasing has about a 30ft garden, its got little trees and shrubs, a kind of 'proper' garden feel (compared to the slagheap at the back of the property I am renting now!). French windows open onto it and I cant wait. I would have liked it to be bigger but the best thing is that its ALL OURS!!

liz545

Gardens don't just look nice, they serve a purpose, environmentally speaking. Concreting over front gardens is being blamed for flooding, declining wild bird species, and increased pollution: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4220044.stm
I don't have a front or back garden, but I'd really like one. Yes, lots of people have large gardens, and probably concreting over them would ease property values to an extent, but areas would quickly become much less nice to live in if there were only tiny gardens!

Guy_Montag

wolvoman wrote:

Bit of a play on statistics there Rich!!
If you think about it, most of that 92% of non-urban land is actually miles from any urban area (just think of the vast swathes of Northern Scotland) so effectively is unusable.

We could build brand new towns (which I don't think would be as popular as immediately post-war with the likes of Milton Keynes and Telford).

Basically any new urban areas are just going to be bolted onto the outside of current urban areas - this is what has happened ever since human urbanisation began.

So the extra 2% will be built onto the existing 8%, which is a pretty hefty increase in urbanisation in anyone's book. That's London expanding up to the M25 and probably spilling over in some parts.... not a very attractive prospect.
And most of all, not very cheap.

Why not dramatically liberalise the planning rules for underdevleoped areas, (also cutting business rates to stimulate growth)? Get some of the population concentration out from London to the rest of the country. Then some of the hutches in London can be bulldozed to provide medium sized gardens for people there, while the people who head out can have huge gardens.

prudryden

Guy_Montag wrote:

Why not dramatically liberalise the planning rules for underdevleoped areas, (also cutting business rates to stimulate growth)? Get some of the population concentration out from London to the rest of the country. Then some of the hutches in London can be bulldozed to provide medium sized gardens for people there, while the people who head out can have huge gardens.

I thought businesses were moving out. Didn't the MOD move all their offices somewhere North? I guess we'll have to wait for a stock market crash, then all the investment firms will downsize or merge.

wolvoman

Guy_Montag wrote:

Why not dramatically liberalise the planning rules for underdevleoped areas, (also cutting business rates to stimulate growth)? Get some of the population concentration out from London to the rest of the country. Then some of the hutches in London can be bulldozed to provide medium sized gardens for people there, while the people who head out can have huge gardens.

Well again it depends whether you value large gardens over small ones, or small gardens over none at all.

The fact is huge amounts of people who live in London don't want gardens - they want to spend their free time in a different way and don't want the work and upkeep that gardens require. Not to mention that for many Londoners it is the fact that many more people live in a small area that makes it more attractive. The bars/restaurants are busier, leisure facilities are better because there is greater demand and so on.

Gardens are a choice and right now there are houses available for sale with gardens of all sizes, all over the country. If people want them then they have to pay for them - that has always been the case.

Richard_Webster

My wife was brought up on a farm and thinks our 1950s 100' back garden is tiny!

alanobrien

Greed wrote:

I've been using http://maps.google.co.uk/ (satellite or hybrid) and I think that a lot of the houses built since WWII use up too much land for the garden.

If I was in charge of housing then I would do it differently.

I was watching something on TV recently (cant recall what) that said we in the UK are building houses around 20% smaller than the rest of Europe.

In my view that is just another way that big business here is ***ewing the general population and eroding our lifestyle.

The reality is given the choice most people would want a house with a decent sized garden, few people buy studio flats by choice, its usually out of necessity.