Its scary what folks believe about their environment...

scrumhalf

I can well imagine that someone from the London Borough of Barnet has read the article and decided that more concrete would be a good thing given that the overall number is so small.

Fretwired

Very misleading. I grew up where I now live (having moved away for 25 years). Back in the 1960s I could walk into the countryside and there was open space between local towns. I could now walk from home to central London along pavements. All the local towns have blurred into a single concrete mess.

Now take a satellite photograph and you'd be saying .. "hey Fret .. what bollocks are you talking about .. look at all the green bits" .. there are plenty of green bits. Golf courses - we have loads of them, working farms, private estates .. we have two major estates with single track footpaths you can walk through, a university which has taken lots of green space, an agricultural college and a research centre. Two minutes from where I live there used to be a large field where you could walk the dog and play football. It's now a rugby club with 6 pitches. We've lost public heaths and open space, parks and football pitches which have been built on and somehow we have to accommodate 65,000 new houses.

So excuse me if I think the report is bollocks. Take Scotland out of the picture and look at urban England and you get some interesting stats. I'm pretty close to living in Greater London (as London expands).

Wolfetone

Kilgore said:

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

...or anything that references Wales or the Isle of Wight

scrumhalf

Wolfetone said:

Kilgore said:

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

...or anything that references Wales or the Isle of Wight

Or football pitches.

I actually find those helpful, for some odd reason I'm not great at understanding the size of a space in terms of bare dimensions.

FX_Munkee

scrumhalf said:

Wolfetone said:

Kilgore said:

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

...or anything that references Wales or the Isle of Wight

Or football pitches.

I actually find those helpful, for some odd reason I'm not great at understanding the size of a space in terms of bare dimensions.

1 football pitch ~ 1 acre
so you can now sound edumacated.

Chalky

You think 70 x 110 yards = 4840 sq yards?

Heartfeltdawn

randella said:

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

Safe bet that you weren't in charge of either referendum campaign then. 

SteveRobinson

Not just the public, "experts too. Minette Batters (NFU Deputy President) said on WATO today (13:57) that Britain is the most densely populated country in Europe. 

Phil_aka_Pip

http://theconversation.com/fact-check-is-the-uk-the-most-crowded-country-in-europe-38468

SteveRobinson

Old Minette just parroting Farage then.

quarky

From the page quoted by @Phil_aka_Pip
"The UK is one of the most densely populated countries in Europe, but not the most populated."

So it is still densely populated, just not the MOST densely populated. Which could be why land is so damn expensive (and we suffer massive economic knock on effects because of that).

Phil_aka_Pip

I think land is expensive because the houses that get built on it are seen as "investments" not as places to live. Land you can't build houses on is cheap by comparison.

SteveRobinson

Phil_aka_Pip said:

I think land is expensive because the houses that get built on it are seen as "investments" not as places to live.

Absolutely.

quarky said:

From the page quoted by @Phil_aka_Pip
"The UK is one of the most densely populated countries in Europe, but not the most populated."

So it is still densely populated, just not the MOST densely populated. Which could be why land is so damn expensive (and we suffer massive economic knock on effects because of that).

I'll bet houses are cheaper in general in both The Netherlands and Belgium which are more densely populated than UK. They certainly are in the respective capitals https://www.emoov.co.uk/news/2016/06/22/much-property-prices-across-28-eu-member-states/

robgilmo

Phil_aka_Pip said:

@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.

But Suffolk isn't exactly countryside, its farm land, some people like myself dont really see farm land as true countryside, its just field after field, nothing natural about it. 

robgilmo

goldtop said:

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!

Ipswich, Stowmarket BSE and Diss? Lovely places to live? They are proper shit holes mate, lets not delude ourselves here. Most of the town centres are pound shops and charity shops, what does that tell you? Go to Cambridge or Norwich, the difference is blatant.

Fretwired

Interesting stats:

Population density of UK 271 per square kilometre
Population density of England 440 per square kilometre
Population density of Scotland 69 per square kilometre
Population density of Wales 149 per square kilometre
Population density of Netherlands 414 per square kilometre
Population density of Belgium 373 per square kilometre
Population density of Germany 232 per square kilometre
Population density of France 123 per square kilometre

Elsewhere:

Population density of Islington 15,600 per square kilometre
Population density of Tower Hamlets 15,404 per square kilometre
Population density of Hackney 14,358 per square kilometre
Population density of Luton 5,000 per square kilometre

Where I live the population density is 941 per square kilometre - it's quadrupled in 20 years

As of June 2016, it was estimated that there were 54,786,300 people living in England. The UK is set to have the largest population in Europe within 20 years.

quarky

Phil_aka_Pip said:

I think land is expensive because the houses that get built on it are seen as "investments" not as places to live. Land you can't build houses on is cheap by comparison.

So do you think houses are exempt from supply and demand then?

The problem with blaming investors (and I refused to buy a house to let out on principle) is that it isn't just residential land that is expensive in the UK. 



http://www.farms.com/expertscommentary/land-prices-around-the-world-infographic-91443.aspx

So with even farmland 10x the price of what it is in Australia (a country which is almost entirely desert!), to arbitrarily come up with statements that say that only 0.1% of the UK is densely built on, as the BBC article did, is ludicrous. It is some of the poorest journalism I have seen for a long time.

It doesn't make any sense at all to pretend that the UK isn't densely populated, because Belgium has a higher population density, or because there are still green bits left, or to support whatever agenda people are promoting. With demand so high, it is the ultimate definition of sticking heads in sand.

Sporky

Fretwired said:

The UK is set to have the largest population in Europe within 20 years.

I'm a bit wary of predictions like that - as demonstrated by the Economist in 2006:

http://www.economist.com/node/5624861

Statistical analysis (look at the hyperbolic curve) predicted the razor singularity in 2016, when we were due to witness the release of a razor with an infinite number of blades...

Phil_aka_Pip

quarky said:

Phil_aka_Pip said:

I think land is expensive because the houses that get built on it are seen as "investments" not as places to live. Land you can't build houses on is cheap by comparison.

So do you think houses are exempt from supply and demand then?

Not at all, Sir, they clearly aren't. But the price of residential land has to be influenced by the value of the houses you can build on it.

sgosden

fandango said:

RandallFlagg said:

but is it flat?

Yes, but only at airport runways.

And the patio I build last year. used a spirit level, and the dog can lay on it without rolling off.