Its scary what folks believe about their environment...

Chalky

The illusion of a concrete Britain - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42554635

randella

The public are idiots and should never be asked anything.  Ever.

I remember watching an episode of Who Wants to be a Millionaire once, in which five members of the audience thought that CS gas was used to fill cigarette lighters.

I kept an eye out afterwards for people walking down the street blind, with red-raw eyes, screaming in pain whilst clutching on to a packet of Marlboro Lights for dear life.  

quarky

The problem is, 0.1% isn't really a good representation. 

So Great Britain is 209,300 km2, and London is 1,572, so London itself is 0.7% of the area of this island if my maths is not pathetic. 

So in other words, that 0.1% isn't just concreted, it is *very* densely populated. 

I think the things about "densely populated" is that it means different things. To those setting the arbitrary definitions, it means 80% or more covered in concrete. To the average person, it may just mean "crowded". And if we say that "crowded" means "lots of people" or "small houses", it is easy to see why the arbitrary 0.1% figure is vastly different from the responses to the survey.

In summary, way less than 1/7th of London is densely populated according to the definition in that article.

thecolourbox

I'm not sure the average person would have really given it any thought before being asked the question though to be fair. And bear in mind that a world that believed in a flat earth still gave us Galileo

CabbageCat

randella said:

The public are idiots and should never be asked anything.  Ever.

I remember watching an episode of Who Wants to be a Millionaire once, in which five members of the audience thought that CS gas was used to fill cigarette lighters.

I kept an eye out afterwards for people walking down the street blind, with red-raw eyes, screaming in pain whilst clutching on to a packet of Marlboro Lights for dear life.  

I think that there is a bit of a difference between not knowing what CS gas is and going onto the dark net to specifically order a custom-made lighter full of the stuff under the belief that the butane-filled ones at the Co-op won't work.

57Deluxe

but large amounts of open green space is private estates/crown etc... misleading stats

randella

CabbageCat said:

randella said:

The public are idiots and should never be asked anything.  Ever.

I remember watching an episode of Who Wants to be a Millionaire once, in which five members of the audience thought that CS gas was used to fill cigarette lighters.

I kept an eye out afterwards for people walking down the street blind, with red-raw eyes, screaming in pain whilst clutching on to a packet of Marlboro Lights for dear life.  

I think that there is a bit of a difference between not knowing what CS gas is and going onto the dark net to specifically order a custom-made lighter full of the stuff under the belief that the butane-filled ones at the Co-op won't work.

@CabbageCat I was being tongue-in-cheek about the whole thing.

Besides, this was long ago enough that there wasn’t a ‘dark net’.  Maybe I’ll have to start keeping an eye out again

Bygone_Tones

Just have a look on google earth for the true picture.

That article is a bit 'click baity' in my opinion. Roads and motorways are not shown for a start. Gives the false impression the UK is mostly wild green space and humans have hardly touched it, but yes some people clearly need to get out into nature a bit more if they think so much of it has been concreted over.

RandallFlagg

but is it flat?

munckee

Depends on perspective, I live in southern hampshire, between Southampton and Chichester along the coast is like one big city, 10 miles north theres virtually nothing until you hit Surrey.  Lots of this area may be slightly under the threshold to be counted as concreted but is still to the observer concreted.   This is also the UK they are talking about.  Most of Scotland is totally untouched and that accounts physically for a large chunk, same for large parts of wales, cornwall, suffolk, etc.  Try telling people in croydon, or sheffield (no offence to these places) that they live in an empty country.   As someone said above take away the land owned by the crown, the mod and the gentry and its a very different picture.

Kilgore

I'm only interested in these kinds of stats if they're measured in double decker buses.

goldtop

munckee said:

Depends on perspective, I live in southern hampshire, between Southampton and Chichester along the coast is like one big city, 10 miles north theres virtually nothing until you hit Surrey.  Lots of this area may be slightly under the threshold to be counted as concreted but is still to the observer concreted. .

Even in the South of England, the country is less developed than first impressions would suggest. There's a pretty obvious reason for this: our understanding of over-crowded or concreted-over Britain comes from walking along man-made roads, in places where the roads are mostly enveloped by man-made structures.

Years ago, and long before Google even dreamed of Google Earth, I bought my sister a coffee table book which was beautiful aerial photos of the whole of Britain. Stunning. When I took a sneak peak before wrapping it up, I was gobsmacked that so little of the country - even bits of the South that I thought I knew well - was built upon at all.

Main roads - where my understanding was based on A-Z maps and atlases - appeared as cobweb-thin strands across the page. Now, I'm not stupid - I knew the lines widths on the map were not to scale, but these roads were barely there in sheer square meterage on the photos.

With the history of ribbon development, and us only being able to observe the environment from the road, it looks as if much of the SE is developed. And it's not.

Phil_aka_Pip

@munckee Mid-Suffolk District Council are hell-bent on urbanising as much of Suffolk as possible. The County Council are little better. While there may be more green here than in some other places (Stepney for example), a lot of it is under threat and there are few places you can find that don't have street lights. The villages are close together and if allowed to expand by much more they'd soon be touching each other. Places that were villages are now just suburbs of big towns. What has happened elsewhere is happening here, and I'm not at all surprised that many think it is worse than it is, because that's what it feels like.

mart

goldtop said:

... our understanding of over-crowded or concreted-over Britain comes from walking along man-made roads, in places where the roads are mostly enveloped by man-made structures.
....

Indeed. Maybe the average Briton spends 47% of their time in concreted spaces?

fandango

RandallFlagg said:

but is it flat?

Yes, but only at airport runways.

munckee

@goldtop I think both points here are correct, yes people over estimate how much of the country is developed, but the report that only 0.7% of the country is developed is ludicrous because "developed" means 80% covered in concrete.  By the A27 in Chichester for example there are large grassy roundabouts and areas of private owned land fenced off which cannot be seen which would equate to 20% I'm sure, it is not an undeveloped rural area though.

It is of course true that a lot of people never go anywhere rural despite large amounts of it being accessible to the public.

@Phil_aka_pip thats pretty much the same as where I live.  On the bbc "how developed is your area" my area shows as 74% developed.  However Hampshire county council are obsessed with building houses on any bit of grass it can find, despite there being insufficient infrastructure in place.

ToneControl

goldtop said:

Years ago, and long before Google even dreamed of Google Earth, I bought my sister a coffee table book which was beautiful aerial photos of the whole of Britain. Stunning. When I took a sneak peak before wrapping it up, I was gobsmacked that so little of the country - even bits of the South that I thought I knew well - was built upon at all.

Main roads - where my understanding was based on A-Z maps and atlases - appeared as cobweb-thin strands across the page. Now, I'm not stupid - I knew the lines widths on the map were not to scale, but these roads were barely there in sheer square meterage on the photos.

With the history of ribbon development, and us only being able to observe the environment from the road, it looks as if much of the SE is developed. And it's not.

I bought possibly the same book: RRP £100, aerial photos of all of England
It was almost completely impossible to find any town or city I knew without cheating and going via the index
Almost everything was green, roads and motorways invisible. That's when I learned that "concreting over the countryside" was BS

ToneControl

mart said:

goldtop said:

... our understanding of over-crowded or concreted-over Britain comes from walking along man-made roads, in places where the roads are mostly enveloped by man-made structures.
....

Indeed. Maybe the average Briton spends 47% of their time in concreted spaces?

they said that even people who lived in the countryside had stupid ideas on the percentage as well

goldtop

ToneControl said:

mart said:

goldtop said:

... our understanding of over-crowded or concreted-over Britain comes from walking along man-made roads, in places where the roads are mostly enveloped by man-made structures.
....

Indeed. Maybe the average Briton spends 47% of their time in concreted spaces?

they said that even people who lived in the countryside had stupid ideas on the percentage as well

As demonstrated by @Phil_aka_Pip above. I lived in Suffolk - it's VERY green and open. Ipswich = tiny. BSE = tinier. Stowmarket, Diss, Woodbridge ... all minute and lovely places to live.

Which is why this misunderstanding is emotionally entwined with NIMBYism. The house that Phil now lives in was once a blot on some poor, long-dead person's landscape who said exactly the same thing centuries ago.

@ToneControl - that's the one. Gorgeous book, but I bet my sister charity-shopped it years ago!

Neill

mart said:

goldtop said:

... our understanding of over-crowded or concreted-over Britain comes from walking along man-made roads, in places where the roads are mostly enveloped by man-made structures.
....

Indeed. Maybe the average Briton spends 47% of their time in concreted spaces?

I reckon the percentage will be a lot higher than that.  I'm constantly astonished at how little most UK residents know about their own country.  

There was something on the radio the other day about Hull, and when they built the channel tunnel someone said why bother when we already have a bridge - they thought the Humber Bridge linked Hull with France. 

 

Phil_aka_Pip

aw c'mon @goldtop when did you last go to Ipswich? 'kin HUGE place! Built up nearly all the way to Woodbridge. Stowmarket is a shithole, Diss has a pleasant enough town centre surrounded by sprawls of housing estates. I live in an early 1970s chalet-style semi with a street light outside. There's nothing remotely rural or even East-Anglian about it. You could see exactly the same thing in any big town in the country, and the place I live in isn't even designated as a "town", although I don't think it will be long before it's big enough to be called one.