[crdoconnor]

>Exactly. And yet "why can't they build on brownfield?" is the immediate cry whenever anyone even starts looking sideways at the green belt.

The kinds of the people who start looking sideways at the greenbelt (the Economist very much included) implies to me that it's more about building big expensive houses for the wealthy in a nice green area than it is about building affordable housing for Londoners.

The very fact that the Economist would lobby for this while simultaneously slamming the "ultra left wing" Corbyn policy of "just build more council housing" ought to be a sign that something is amiss.