[Zenst]

What an odd article, lambasting green area's and pushing that they must be built upon. Sorry but we like to have cleaner air as best we can and think of the green belt as the UK's Amazon.

When you view it like that then you see how silly this whole article is.

[stupidcar]

Who's this "we" you speak of? I guess it's Fuck-You-Got-Mine baby-boomer Tory brigade, who bought cheap suburban houses in the 1970s and 80s and have watched them rocket in value ever since.

Because it certainly isn't the rest of us, who have no prospect of ever buying a home, or getting a pension, but are still expected to pay hundreds of thousands in taxes to subsidise over our lifetime the retirement of the aforementioned baby-boomers, while listening to their lectures about how we don't work hard enough, and don't value the precious green belt that keeps their house prices buoyant.

England is ~10% urban[1]; the figure is even lower in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The green belt isn't about protecting some dwindling remnant of unspoilt land, it's about propping up the house prices of people too stupid and selfish to even admit to themselves how stupid and selfish they're being.

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18623096

[crdoconnor]

>are still expected to pay hundreds of thousands in taxes to subsidise over our lifetime the retirement of the aforementioned baby-boomers

It's curious how the 0.1% can mysteriously grow fabulously wealthy, cut pensions that older people rely upon, cut NHS funding which older people rely upon, jack up tuition fees, jack up rail prices, trigger the largest financial crisis in decades, price younger people out of the housing market and yet still manage to convince the younger generation that their own parents are obviously the ones who ripped them off.

[coroxout]

While also convincing the parents that all their and their children's worries can be fixed by doing whatever the 0.1% wants and that they should call anyone who disagrees an out-of-touch metropolitan elite, even/especially those never-going-to-own-houses kids

(Disclaimer: I have been guilty of anti-boomer rhetoric elsewhere lately, but I read your post and you are probably right.

It is still frustrating, though, to hear older people, comfortably retired mortgage-free in houses with 3+ spare bedrooms, tell us that if only we worked harder and didn't eat out occasionally we could surely save up for a house)

[tsukikage]

So, "why do we need green belts? My mansion has gardens!"

[Paul_S]

That makes no sense. If you let people build in the city then they can cycle to work. If they have to live in a village 20 miles down the road they have to drive to work - longer distances equals more pollution. You want to breathe less fumes? Stop creating a false scarcity of houses in cycle-able distances.

Hectares of barren grassland don't magically cleanse the fumes.

[toyg]

> If you let people build in the city then they can cycle to work.

You can already build in the city. In fact, New Labour put in subsidies and incentives to build multi-storey houses, which are probably still in place. So why don't developers just go and replace low-rise with high-rise? Because nobody really wants to live in flats in England if they can avoid it. It's a cultural thing and it has nothing to do with land scarcity, it's probably a result of the failed '70s projects mixed with the hardcore individualism that emerged since then. This drives down prices of flats to the point where it's not appealing for developers to build new ones (except in the immediate vicinity of SW1 or other areas that are attractive to singles and childless couples, who can be persuaded to fit into tin boxes). What sells is low-rise suburban, for which they are running out of space; hence the push for greenfield liberalisation. Everything else is divide-et-impera rhetoric, boomers vs impoverished etc etc.

[Paul_S]

There's more to the UK than London.

You can't knock down buildings here. They're all listed. Where they are allowed to they build flats which go for half a mill (and are sold out before building completes - so much for your claim about people not wanting to live in flats). House building is cheap - it's the land that's expensive and it's only expensive because it's illegal to build anywhere outside of town.

There are sleeper villages all around the town. It's an insanely inefficient configuration only propped up by house owners' short-sighted interests.

[toyg]

> only propped up by house owners' short-sighted interests.

I disagree. Those sleeper villages exist because people don't want to live in cities. If they wanted to, they'd be elsewhere; but until very recently, you couldn't pay people to live in central Manchester, Liverpool or Birmingham.

If you think developers want the greenfield to build high-rise, you're sorely mistaken. They will build more and more low-rise suburbia, because that's what people want.

[crdoconnor]

>You can already build in the city. In fact, New Labour put in subsidies and incentives to build multi-storey houses, which are probably still in place. So why don't developers just go and replace low-rise with high-rise? Because nobody really wants to live in flats in England if they can avoid it. It's a cultural thing and it has nothing to do with land scarcity, it's probably a result of the failed '70s projects mixed with the hardcore individualism that emerged since then.

I live in London and this is just about the most ridiculous thing I've ever read about it.

You only have to look at the prices to see that people want to live here.

[toyg]

Yes, but only in London. Most of "urban Britain" elsewhere is still considered very much undesirable. Price dynamics outside London are extremely different.

This is the problem with housing policies in England: they are all designed around London and the South West, with little regard for the rest of the country.

[crdoconnor]

There doesn't appear to be any shortage of demand for city center accommodation in Bristol, Manchester, Birmingham, etc. either.

[monk_e_boy]

And there is plenty of room to build up. There is a lot of low density housing that could be replaced with nice highrise buildings.

We need greenbelt, even the crap that PEOPLE don't like, wildlife does, especially on the stuff that dog walkers avoid. It's full of rabbits, badgers, invertebrates etc.