Green Belt - what's it good for?

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

POPPYOSCAR wrote: »

10.6% in England

Nope.....

Less than 2.3% of England is built on.

The % of the entire UK that is 'concreted over' as you like to put it, is even lower....

The urban landscape accounts for 10.6% of England, 1.9% of Scotland, 3.6% of Northern Ireland and 4.1% of Wales.

Put another way, that means almost 93% of the UK is not urban. But even that isn't the end of the story because urban is not the same as built on.

In urban England, for example, the researchers found that just over half the land (54%) in our towns and cities is greenspace - parks, allotments, sports pitches and so on.

Furthermore, domestic gardens account for another 18% of urban land use; rivers, canals, lakes and reservoirs an additional 6.6%.

Their conclusion?

In England, "78.6% of urban areas is designated as natural rather than built".

Since urban only covers a tenth of the country, this means that the proportion of England's landscape which is built on is…

… 2.27%.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18623096

POPPYOSCAR wrote: »

Green space is supposed to be the 'lungs' of the towns

Our country consists of around 98% 'lungs'.....

There's almost nothing but green space in the UK.

ukcarper

That 2.3% is pretty irrelevant when the places they are trying to build in is in the more densely built on area. You could stick a couple of hundred thousand in the highlands but it wouldn't do much good.

CLAPTON

ukcarper wrote: »

That 2.3% is pretty irrelevant when the places they are trying to build in is in the more densely built on area. You could stick a couple of hundred thousand in the highlands but it wouldn't do much good.

fair enough

give us a better figure for the more densely built on areas

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

This is a close up of the Greater London Area, far and away the most 'concreted over' part of the country.

Even there, with the exception of the very centre, it's still mostly green space.



Now to put that in perspective, note what an incredibly tiny percentage of the country the London area covers in the photo below.

You really do almost need a microscope to find the built up areas of Britain, even in large scale photo's, and even in the South East of England.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

To put things in perspective, if you were to turn the entire British Isles into a giant city with the population density of London, you could house around three quarters of the entire World's population, or 4.5 BILLION people.

Leaving just enough population in the other 99% of the planetary land mass to tend to the crops.....

Now that could conceivably be called 'concreting over the country'. (Although there would still be a considerable amount of greenspace left within the 'City of Britain'..... )

But to describe increasing the current 2.3% built-on-area to 2.4% (to fix the current million house shortage) and then taking it to 2.5% (to deal with many decades of growth) as 'concreting over Britain' is just absurd.

ukcarper

That map is a lot more than Greater London and the built on figure is disingenuous as it is just buildings are you going to build properties without gardens drives roads etc. The problem is the bulk of the property is needed in the southeast and a doubling of what is already in the southeast would have an enormous impact.

Generali

ukcarper wrote: »

That map is a lot more than Greater London and the built on figure is disingenuous as it is just buildings are you going to build properties without gardens drives roads etc. The problem is the bulk of the property is needed in the southeast and a doubling of what is already in the southeast would have an enormous impact.

Are you seriously suggesting that the population of the SE would rise from 20,000,000 to 40,000,000 given enough properties being built? It seems highly unlikely to me.

There is loads of empty space in the SE of England. Surely it can be put to better use than being used as a tax shelter for rich people. I think it can.

ukcarper

No but the impact of building the required amount of property would be greater on the south east which already has well above the average amount of land built on. I'm sure that places can be found to build in the south east but it needs more thought than to just let people build on the green belt.

CLAPTON

ukcarper wrote: »

No but the impact of building the required amount of property would be greater on the south east which is already has well above the average amount of land built on. I'm sure that places can be found to build in the south east but it needs more thought than to just let people build on the green belt.

In London over 99.99% of new builds occur on brown field sites:

where I live (not in the SE ), most new housing is build on already used sites (to the vocal opposition of the local conservative MP) and a small amount of unused land (green belt) also vocally opposed by the local conservative MP.

Not sure what the lessons are, but we need to build more homes in areas where people want top live and there are jobs.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

ukcarper wrote: »

I'm sure that places can be found to build in the south east.

Take this picture of the South East, for example.....



Around 20% of it is grey, ie, 'concreted over'.....

Now move that figure to 21% and you've fixed the entire existing housing shortage for the South East.

Move it to 22% and you've built enough houses to cover decades of growth and housing needs for the South East.

It is little short of criminal that this country has failed to build enough houses over the last few decades and been held hostage by NIMBY's, but especially when doing so would involve such little use of additional green space.