Green Belt - what's it good for?

POPPYOSCAR

CLAPTON wrote: »

I visit the SE regularly and travel on both roads and public transport.


Apart from having a grand plan for the whole of the SE, do you have any other 'solutions ' that could start to work this year?

Really?

And you do not agree the M25 is horrendous?

michaels

POPPYOSCAR wrote: »

Really?

And you do not agree the M25 is horrendous?

And without it how much would be knocked of gdp? 10%?

CLAPTON

POPPYOSCAR wrote: »

Really?

And you do not agree the M25 is horrendous?

bizarre

have I said anything about the M25?

ukcarper

michaels wrote: »

And without it how much would be knocked of gdp? 10%?

The fact that it is needed and things would be a lot worse if it wasn't there doesn't make any less horrendous.

cells

Running_Horse wrote: »

Have you ever visited New Jersey? Look at it on a map. Sure, the towns have names, but it is endless sprawl with no identity. People leave London for the Home Counties because they no longer wish to live in London. They don't expect London to follow them. It is great most people in this country live a few minutes from countryside.

Why does London need ever more housing? Because a huge percentage of its population has arrived from abroad. Is it sustainable to simply keep gobbling up surrounding green belt for a permanently expanding megalopolis? I would set the boundary of London at the M25. London could build as much or as little within that boundary as it needs or wishes, but leave the rest of us alone.

Like almost everyone what you don't understand, because it isn't clear from first impression is that additional housing is needed not primarily for immigrants or an increasing population but it is needed to lower the occupancy rate.

To give you a clear example.of this, for 4 years in the 1970s the uk population shrank. Immigration was low and as said overall population fell. So what was housing demand during those 4 years? How many got built?
Well many would answer that with no pppulation growth no additional homes are required so little to none would have been built. However this is wrong. What happened is that 1.2 million yes 1.2 million homes were built during that time. The result was that at tje end of those 4 years the ocupancy rate was lower than at the beginning (ie fewer people per house)

This is still true today. Even if the UK saw ZERO population growth we would need millions more homes so the occupancy rate can fall.

The UK with zero population growth would still need 2.35 million additional homes so it can go towards 2.0 occupancy rate.

cells

POisPYOSCAR wrote: »

Really?

And you do not agree the M25 is horrendous?

It depends on the day and time of the day.

I've used the M25 literally thousands of times and generally speaking it is quite good. Outside of peak times its got lots of spare capacity. the stretch I use even during the 8am - 8.30am peak period was good the vast majority of the time with only road works or accidents making it bad.

But what is your point? Infrastructure is meeded and that probably includes more roads. Personally I think a north to south tunnel and an east to west tunnel for cars would help and may even pay for itself. Current HGVs or cars may have to go around 70 miles to get from one side to the other with a tunnel this is reduced to half the distance and it would remove many hundred of millions of car/truck miles on the m25

cells

ukcarper wrote: »

Easy to say from Aberdeen. I agree we need more houses but If brown field sites asuitable for housing left unused or other types of property are being left empty when the land could be used for housing then that is unacceptable. I also agree that there are plenty of fields being used for equine purposes that could be used for housing and some of those could be used for housing without having to much impact on the green belt but they are not always the areas put forward for new building.

The idea that all brownfield sites should first be used for housing is just stupid.
As the name suggests brownfield sites were used begore and some sites will be extremely expensive to make suitable for housing so if you want to ise all brownfield sites first you are going to need housing to get very very expensive.

Also the UK population is going up quite a lot. We may well see 20% population growth over tje next few decades. That means we will need more offices and factories and industrial sites in the future. Disused factories and office building will be needed in tje near future so converting or trying to comvert every last one os silly

cells

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

The green belt has become a green noose.

Throttling the life out of growth and the younger generation's prospects for housing.

End the madness now, and build, baby, build......

I mean, look, I'm someone that loves high house prices more than a fat kid loves cake....

But when even I can see a housing crisis developing into a housing catastrophe if we don't get building on a massive scale it's well past time something was done about it.

A min of 400k homes are needed
200k more than is likely to be built.
That is some 750k full time job equivalents lost because of throttling demand. And probably another 100k full time Jobs equivalents in the side businesses that furnish homes and do removals and maintiannce

ukcarper

cells wrote: »

The idea that all brownfield sites should first be used for housing is just stupid.
As the name suggests brownfield sites were used begore and some sites will be extremely expensive to make suitable for housing so if you want to ise all brownfield sites first you are going to need housing to get very very expensive.

Also the UK population is going up quite a lot. We may well see 20% population growth over tje next few decades. That means we will need more offices and factories and industrial sites in the future. Disused factories and office building will be needed in tje near future so converting or trying to comvert every last one os silly

You have no idea the value people place on the country side and it doesn't matter if it is expensive to build on brown field sites the value of those sites should reflect the cost of preparing them the way things are changing many of the factories and shopping centres will not be needed again. If the occupancy rate is falling then people will have to get use to different types of property. It's unavoidable that some green spaces will have to be used but all that can be done to avoid it should be done.

ukcarper

cells wrote: »

It depends on the day and time of the day.

I've used the M25 literally thousands of times and generally speaking it is quite good. Outside of peak times its got lots of spare capacity. the stretch I use even during the 8am - 8.30am peak period was good the vast majority of the time with only road works or accidents making it bad.

But what is your point? Infrastructure is meeded and that probably includes more roads. Personally I think a north to south tunnel and an east to west tunnel for cars would help and may even pay for itself. Current HGVs or cars may have to go around 70 miles to get from one side to the other with a tunnel this is reduced to half the distance and it would remove many hundred of millions of car/truck miles on the m25

Of coarse the M25 is needed and it does run OK for a lot of the time but parts of it are regular congested and it is its ability to cope with peak traffic that is the problem. The problem is that the transport system in London and the surrounding area is not far off breaking point. I regularly travelled 25 miles into outer London and it normally took 90 mins and that was leaving early enough to avoid the absolute peak time.