[toyg]

This might be a problem down South, I don't dispute it; but over here in the North, it's anything but. There is still a huge amount of brownfield to regenerate, and we desperately need to hold on every little bit of greenfield the Victorians failed to build mills on.

The urban developments this pieces glorify, like New Islington, compound the problem by being completely unbalanced towards the young and childless: small flats built for profit, not for people to live in with kids. Medium- and High-rise are also very much at odds with typical English individualism, and people simply won't live in them if they can afford anything else. A lot of these fancy new towers around Manchester are half-empty.

What we need up North is a serious policy of brownfield cleanup. Give local authorities more money to dispose of all shit resulting from 200 years of environmental abuse, instead of enabling more abuse on what little good greenfield is left.