[lmm]

If it's anything like the London greenbelt then it's counterproductive. It just pushes the urban sprawl to the far side, and meanwhile housing gets ever more expensive while a bunch of prime land is tied up in barely-used golf courses and parks.

I've moved to Tokyo which takes the opposite approach - indefinite sprawl, barely regulated at first - and the result is actually a city that's much more pleasant and walkable. Small parks mixed among the housing, where they can actually be used, are much better than a big ring of parkland that only the rich can even take the time to visit.

[Reason077]

London still has large amounts of "brownfield" low-value industrial land as well as low-quality, low-density suburban housing that is often close to existing, under-used infrastructure. We are much better off making better use of that existing land to build walkable/cycle-able neighbourhoods that are well served by public transport.

Expanding into the greenbelt is just lazy development that would increase London's existing problems (car traffic, air quality, sprawl).

... and there are plenty of small neighbourhood parks in London! I can't imagine that you're ever more than 5-10 minutes walk from one.

[lmm]

> London still has large amounts of "brownfield" low-value industrial land as well as low-quality, low-density suburban housing that is often close to existing, under-used infrastructure. We are much better off making better use of that existing land to build walkable/cycle-able neighbourhoods that are well served by public transport.

It's not either/or. At the level of housing demand that London has, we need to build everywhere.

> Expanding into the greenbelt is just lazy development that would increase London's existing problems (car traffic, air quality, sprawl).

There's no reason building in the greenbelt would be worse for car traffic or air quality - indeed there are quite a few places where there's already a railway or underground station, but no houses get built because it's greenbelt.

> ... and there are plenty of small neighbourhood parks in London! I can't imagine that you're ever more than 5-10 minutes walk from one.

Clearly you've never been to Tottenham. (There was a "green" on paper, but it's just a square of grass next to a main road. The marshes are lovely if you can get out to them, but they weren't somewhere you could stop off on the way home from work).

[iso1631]

Housing is more expensive because more people want to live there then the supply provides for.

There's a simple solution. It's not sprawling suburbia, it's to build London at an appropriate density for a global city.

Westminster (with plenty of green space including Hyde and Regents Parks) has a population of 123 per hectare.

If London matched that throughout its area there would be room to double London's population with another 10 million people. If Inner London alone was increased to Manhattan density, that alone would house 5 million more people.

But then things like this happen

https://www.onlondon.co.uk/will-grant-shapps-get-away-with-b...

[CraigJPerry]

It’s a radically different scenario. Imagine a square that had one corner in St Pauls and the diagonally opposite corner in Blackfriars in London. Now imagine that surrounded with a parkland belt about the width of the thames at Blackfriars.

It’s not a perfect square belt, in the north it’s quite a bit thicker but there’s the Zoo and University campus etc.

It’s really pleasant and the most expensive real estate lies outside the borders of the parklands.