 |
 |
Paul asks lots of interesting questions about the British town and country planning system. A lot of them were discussed in the book 'The Containment of Urban England' Two Vols 1973 by Peter Hall, Thomas et al. (Yes, that Thomas is ME - when I was a much younger man!) Yes the general drift of this study made at PEP (that has yet to be superseded) is consistent with a lot of what Paul Spicker says. The study showed that a major function of the British planning system is to preserve and enhance property values. But the relevance of that function in the context of population is that these property values also represent the value of the property to those who own or rent the property. When those who live in pleasant commuter villages in Surrey oppose housing developments they are opposing something that threatens their way of life. They don't want to be part of a housing estate. But developers want to build in and around such villages and people want to live in the houses they build precisely because of the amenities the residents value so highly. The OPT argument is that this opposition indicates that Surrey (and Kent, and Sussex, and Essex etc.) have already reached or exceeded their carrying capacity and so indicates that that parts of England (at least) are already overpopulated. I find it difficult to controvert that argument other than on sectional grounds. NIMBYs are humans too. If property prices reflect conflicts between different social classes that also indicates that SE England does not have enough room to accommodate different social classes in accordance with their aspirations. The crux of the OPT argument is that the consultation document on housing ignores all the evidence on carrying capacity and so denies its premiss of concern about sustainability Personally I'm a New Towns man. I even managed to get a bit about the New Towns in Scotland into the PEP study that was supposed to be about England. Seems to me that real new towns - 'self-contained and balanced communities' - are the proper solution to urban growth. And if it is accepted that the UK needs new housing, new towns in Scotland should be on the agenda. Does the consultation document mention that possibility? Ray Thomas (in happy Milton Keynes new city) ************************************************************ -----Original Message----- From: email list for Radical Statistics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Paul Spicker Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2007 12:46 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: OPT and housing Ray: Why are you considering the UK or England as a whole, rather than the distribution of population within them? 90% of the UK population lives on 8% of the land. The most populous borough in the UK (Kensington and Chelsea) has over 15,000 people per square kilometre. What is the justification for reserving most of the land in England for pastoral farming? Why have we strangled the towns, with the resulting effects on housing density and commuting? It's not often I agree with anyone from the Adam Smith Institute about anything, but they argued recently that we can supply enough land for housing development easily; releasing 5% of agricultural land for development would provide enough space for 950,000 houses. (See http://www.adamsmith.org/images/uploads/publications/landeconomy.pdf ) We're not short of space in the UK; we just use it very badly. Why is the size of the UK more relevant than the density of housing or population? Restricting the comparison of the UK to larger countries is not obviously meaningful - there aren't very many big countries in the world, and comparisons of the UK with the populations of the very largest would be fatuous. But many smaller countries, and some parts of the UK , have much higher population densities. Confining the argument to comparison with other large countries seems to depend on the idea that high-density urban development in larger countries must be balanced by a hinterland of relatively thinly populated land. Why should it be? The ability of local infrastructure to cope with housing expansion has very little to do with environmental limits. (The Netherlands has a higher population density in much more adverse environmental conditions than any we experience in the UK.) In Scotland, we have a very limited capacity to expand housing across large expanses of territory, but that is not because of lack of land or physical resources. We have unsustainably low population densities, which is why essential services like schools, post offices, banks and health care are under threat. The obstacles to housing expansion are first, that construction expenses in remote areas are high; services like power cables, drains and sewers are not in place; we have the inheritance of a semi-feudal system of landholding which concentrates massive tracts of undeveloped wilderness in the hands of relatively few owners; we have a planning system designed to obstruct development; and we are infested with NIMBYs who are fighting tooth and nail to prevent change of any sort - the resistance to wind farms is indicative. Lastly, for what it's worth, housing demand and population expansion are not equivalent. The UK has undergone rapid expansion in the numbers of housing without a corresponding increase in population. Paul Spicker Professor of Public Policy Centre for Public Policy and Management The Robert Gordon University Garthdee Road Aberdeen AB10 7QE Scotland Tel: +44 1224263120 Fax: + 44 1224263434 Website: http://www.rgu.ac.uk/publicpolicy/ ****************************************************** Please note that if you press the 'Reply' button your message will go only to the sender of this message. If you want to reply to the whole list, use your mailer's 'Reply-to-All' button to send your message automatically to [log in to unmask] Disclaimer: The messages sent to this list are the views of the sender and cannot be assumed to be representative of the range of views held by subscribers to the Radical Statistics Group. To find out more about Radical Statistics and its aims and activities and read current and past issues of our newsletter you are invited to visit our web site www.radstats.org.uk. ******************************************************* ****************************************************** Please note that if you press the 'Reply' button your message will go only to the sender of this message. If you want to reply to the whole list, use your mailer's 'Reply-to-All' button to send your message automatically to [log in to unmask] Disclaimer: The messages sent to this list are the views of the sender and cannot be assumed to be representative of the range of views held by subscribers to the Radical Statistics Group. To find out more about Radical Statistics and its aims and activities and read current and past issues of our newsletter you are invited to visit our web site www.radstats.org.uk. *******************************************************