New Build Houses - Size and Density

zagubov

Oh dear. I can see where this is going.
I agree, England has a higher population density compared with the rest iof the UK.

Also the population is concentrated in and area that doesn't stretch much further north than the belt from Liverpool to Hull.
Also the south east contains a massive concentration of that population.

The answers is definitely not keep out foreign workers; it's spread the population evenly.

When I visited West Germany in the 80s, I noticed that the population was fare more widely spread, There were massive built up areas in the West on the Rhine.

There were also large population centres in the far north (like Hamburg) and the far south (Munich). There were loads of other cities distributed evely around the place. No particular place looked overcrowded or overly empty.

The capital was relocated to the far west (Bonn) and was basically a small town and wasn't allowed to grow too large.

The whole area was the size of the UK but with about 8 million more people- 64M compared with our 56M (OK admittedly about 2 million were squeezed into distant West Berlin but even that seemed very spacious and uncrowded; my mate worked as an architect there at the time and noticed very much the same).

How in the world we let a (formerly) enemy country develop so well and let our country become polarised so the top half is basically sheep farms and the southern half is all the housing, business and industry is beyond me. Moving Girobank to Merseyside or DVLA to Swansea was too little too late

There's an incomprehensible saying down south which goes someone's "too clever by half". :mad:

Trust me that's the last phrase that would leap to your lips when trying to describe the people that run this place.

Cornucopia

Comparing Germany and the UK for housing is problematic. The Germans have a much higher proportion of rented housing than we do. That means that there isn't the same connection to property ownership that we have, and consequently not the same tendency to boom and bust in the housing market.

Governments could have acted (and so could individuals) to mitigate this - mainly by separating housing finance from money market rates. But that hasn't happened.

MacMickster

zagubov wrote: »

How in the world we let a (formerly) enemy country develop so well and let our country become polarised so the top half is basically sheep farms and the southern half is all the housing, business and industry is beyond me. Moving Girobank to Merseyside or DVLA to Swansea was too little too late

There's an incomprehensible saying down south which goes someone's "too clever by half". :mad:

Trust me that's the last phrase that would leap to your lips when trying to describe the people that run this place.

The problem is that in the UK our town planners seem to do anything but plan, and there is no overall strategic development authority to make the best use of land in the UK.

I don't think that it is even a top half and bottom half of the country as a divide. The major developed area of the UK is within a triangle with corners near Liverpool, Leeds and London. Outside of that triangle there are huge swathes of sparsely populated and under-utilised land.

zagubov

MacMickster wrote: »

The problem is that in the UK our town planners seem to do anything but plan, and there is no overall strategic development authority to make the best use of land in the UK.

I don't think that it is even a top half and bottom half of the country as a divide. The major developed area of the UK is within a triangle with corners near Liverpool, Leeds and London. Outside of that triangle there are huge swathes of sparsely populated and under-utilised land.

I agree totally.
As I said on an earlier thread At the moment Britain looks like the border pub in Spike Milligan's Puckoon where 9/10s of it is empty but everybody's squeezed into the 1/10 where drink prices are cheaper.:D

Not a great use of a landmass compared with Germany, Netherlands, Belgium all with high population densities.

The push for home ownership was Mrs T's social engineering to lumber the working population with mortgage debt to undermine thier desire to stand up to unfair work conditions. It's unsuitable for this country. All over northern Europe people are living better than us, but we look down on them as they don't all "own" their own homes. They live all their lives in better, more affordable homes than us then so do their kids, and so on.:)

MacMickster

zagubov wrote: »

All over northern Europe people are living better than us, but we look down on them as they don't all "own" their own homes. They live all their lives in better, more affordable homes than us then so do their kids, and so on.:)

Quite right. In more enlightened countries people work to earn money to enable them to enjoy living their lives. In the UK we have this obsession with owning our own 100 square metres which we can leave to our children (in their 60s), even if that costs us the ability to make the most of our own lives.

cookie_monster

Before we brought our 2 bedroom victorian house we saw a Wimpey new build 2 bed house and left a deposit on the plot which cost about £63k, we were drawn in by the show home and easily pictured me & the wife living there. We still carried on looking around until the contract was signed and saw the house that we are now living in and can truely say we got off lightly by not buying the new build as we have ample of space and a very large garden compared to what would have been a small living room, kitchen/diner and very small plot of grass passing as a garden. Also managed to save 20k.

zagubov

MacMickster wrote: »

Quite right. In more enlightened countries people work to earn money to enable them to enjoy living their lives. In the UK we have this obsession with owning our own 100 square metres which we can leave to our children (in their 60s), even if that costs us the ability to make the most of our own lives.

By the time the kids have moved out our houses will be too big for us and by the time they inherit them they'll still be too big for them.

Empty houses will be passed between successive waves of aging empty nesters instead of being circulated down to the growing families with kids that need the room and have to squeeze into cramped inadequate housing instead.

GeorgeHowell

cookie_monster wrote: »

Before we brought our 2 bedroom victorian house we saw a Wimpey new build 2 bed house and left a deposit on the plot which cost about £63k, we were drawn in by the show home and easily pictured me & the wife living there. We still carried on looking around until the contract was signed and saw the house that we are now living in and can truely say we got off lightly by not buying the new build as we have ample of space and a very large garden compared to what would have been a small living room, kitchen/diner and very small plot of grass passing as a garden. Also managed to save 20k.

Some of the preoccupation with new builds is the preoccupation with having everything minted new that affects some people these days. Nothing "previously enjoyed" is good enough for them -- unless it comes from eBay of course, that's okay because it's trendy and acceptable.

buglawton

My son in his 20s has never bought anything used on Ebay. Only his budget minded dad does that!