Danny Dorling has calculated that one third of Britain's people live
within just 3 percent of its land area - the urbanised strip that
runs from Merseyside to London. (Atlas of the Real World, I think).
This puts the term "little England" in a new light. (I think it works
out roughly that for most British people, Britain is the size of
Wales).
Not covered by the sort of calculation above (and Ted's) is the
additional lebensraum wealthier people enjoy, via privileged access
to other people's (privatised) spaces.
So somebody like Sir Andrew Green (population-controller; founder of
Migration Watch) not only has a fairly large spread in Deddington,
Oxfordshire, and his apartment in Pimlico, and sundry other
properties probably, but also access to his rich chums' and
aristocratic relatives' ancestral messuages. And a club or two, I
suppose. So, quite a big umwelt for him. Difficult to measure, but
worth trying, imho.
My own Little England has shrunk in various ways in recent years.
Here in Oxford it gets harder to walk into the wide-open spaces
occupied by the University's colleges without handing over money, and
the fences have become un-climb-overable. In the countryside around
about, I've found footpaths re-routed around wealthy people's country
hideaways - presumably to preserve the higher levels of privacy they
need, as their wealth increases. I've come across this several times
in different parts of the country but not been able to find any
central figure on the phenomenon.
Meanwhile, new houses continue to shrink (RIBA report, 14th September 2011).
I used to put bits and pieces about this kind of thing here:
http://equalitywhen.posterous.com
- including a link to a Rowntree-funded study of 2008, of a group of
young men whose England measured just 200 x 200 metres. And how
Cambodia shrank by 50% that year, having been flooded by a small
number of zillionaires.
Hope that's of interest,
Bob Hughes
At 12:00 +0100 27/10/11, Ted Harding wrote:
>Greetings All!
>Now that population and resources have come up, I'm prompted
>to put a question that has been lurking in the back of my
>mind for a while.
>
>We are used to seeing the highly skew distribution of income
>(along with discussion of median versus mean, etc.) being
>used to discuss income inequality.
>
>What I would be interested to see some information about is
>the distribution of land area per person used for living.
>
>For example, a family of 3 occupying a house on a plot of
>land 10m by 30m would occupy 100 sq. m. per person, which
>is 1/10000 sq. km.
>
>Or a solitary rich person occupying a manor house set in a
>landscaped park of 2 sq. km. is occupying 2 sq. km. per person.
>
>At the other extreme, a homeless vagrant who sleeps on a
>park bench, but is otherwise standing around or squatting
>on a wall is perhaps occupying 1 sq. m. per person, maybe
>somewhat less on average.
>
>There are clearly issues with definition and ascertainment
>associated with this question.
>
>For example, a farmer who owns and lives on the land he farms
>should not be considered as using his 50 acres of agricultural
>land "for living" -- that should be confined to the area of
>land that includes his house & garden (whatever "garden" might
>precisely mean in this context). Similarly for the owner of
>a business who happens to live in a house on the site of the
>business.
>
>For the solitary rich person in his manor house, one would
>need to know how many staff also live in the manor house or
>in houses in the grounds -- and in the latter case what areas
>of land are associated with each one as "private" living space,
>even thbough these are of course owned by the rich man.
>
>There would not necessarily be a clean correlation between
>one's position on the income scale and one's position on the
>land-occupied scale. For example, one could have 50 quite
>rich financial traders living in a 20-storey apartment block
>standing on a 50m by 100m rectangle of land, so 100 sq. m.
>(1/10000 sq. km.) per person.
>
>Does anyone know of published studies which attempt to address
>this question for the UK?
>
>With thanks,
>Ted.
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------
>E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <[log in to unmask]>
>Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861
>Date: 27-Oct-11 Time: 12:00:42
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