SHOULD GREEN BELT LAND BE BUILT ON.

Once it’s gone it’s gone forever.

The great thing about living in the suburbs, is it’s not overcrowded, and there is countryside nearby. In the summer I can hear the early morning dawn chorus, a wonderful sound to experience. Destroy the green belt and all this will go, Noise and traffic congestion will increase, and the quiet nights I enjoy now, will be replaced by 24HR traffic. That’s the difference between London and the suburbs, and why I like living here. The M25 isn’t far from here, and that’s very busy, build on green belt land, and the M25 will become a bigger nightmare than it already is. I was listening to radio 2 during the week, and this chap called a phone in program and said, he thought it was a good idea to build on green belt land. Apparently he is a pilot and flies over the south east regularly. He said he was amazed how much land had not been built on, around towns. He thought it was time to do so, and was happy that planning regs protecting green belt land may be removed. I will let you decide, which of the above makes more sense to you.
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SHOULD GREEN BELT LAND BE BUILT ON ?

NO

Another problem with building on green belt land, is that heat from the sun will remain trapped in buildings and roads. So the suburbs will become like London, much warmer during the evenings. Green belt land such as Trees and fields don’t retain as much heat as buildings or concrete do. This trapped heat also has an effect on the weather, and may well create worse droughts, than we have at present. Making Towns larger, will mean there will be less water for everyone, so stand pipes will become mandatory. Anyhow with the countries population growing , with many people from abroad, I think green belt land will be built over, regardless of the consequences. So in the end everyone will suffer, due to short sighted thinking by the government. That is the time when us more intelligent individuals ,will move away from the mess.
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In answer to the original question, No. Oxford is a nightmare already and if the green belt is built on there’d be no dividing line to stop Kidlington from becoming part of Oxford and I, for one, can live without that.

So long as we realise the flaws of past New Towns. Creating a place where people grow with no future prospects of employment unless they move is one point where the ideal failed in one respect. MK itself on the peripheries has as you say a good standard of living. The town centre though leaves a lot to be desired in that it does not exist or at least was not obvious to my eye.

Mk and Stevenage are products of the past, with a little more imagination from town planners, better towns could be built.
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Build new Towns like Milton Keynes, spread out the population and jobs. Then everyone will have a better quality of life

So long as we realise the flaws of past New Towns. Creating a place where people grow with no future prospects of employment unless they move is one point where the ideal failed in one respect. MK itself on the peripheries has as you say a good standard of living. The town centre though leaves a lot to be desired in that it does not exist or at least was not obvious to my eye.

Build new Towns.

Build new Towns like Milton Keynes, spread out the population and jobs. Then everyone will have a better quality of life , with minimal flooding risk. The answers simple, isn’t it. The alternative to this, is build on green belt land, which although seems an easy option, is asking for trouble. Anyhow, I guess most people don’t mind living in overcrowded Towns and cities, it’s a case of ” I don’t know any better, so I don’t mind.” Which is fine by me, but I certainly wont be around, when my standard of living drops to that level. London is in my opinion, a complete nightmare City, driving through there is extremely stress full, probably more so than being a jet fighter pilot. It’s a perfect example of an over developed City, and an old one at that. Suburbia is liable to go the same way, if green belt land is built on.
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I think that brits already own about 1% of the total landmass of France 😀 😀
That’s where the most volatile housing market on the continent gets us!

In answer to the question, no, i disagree with building on green belt land. There are some things that should be conserved, and the tranquil countryside is definitely one of them.

If you were to state that 12 to 13% of the UK is developed and we need 5 million homes in the next 20 years, that there’s demographic of people having to wait into their 30s to afford a home due to demand, then solely on that I would get a JCB revved up ready to go.

However we are very centric beings and location is all. You probably could not make London work it you could move it to the North-East coast!

Green belt is largely established to protect areas around our developed towns and cities. Some areas I can think of (it was in the Guardian today) are Birmingham, Coventry and the SE (London). Exceptions are other green belt areas are set aside for prosperity like the New Forest.

It is precisely the fact that developed want to nucleate around these areas that the green belt was established to choke and why it is no under such strain.

The solutions are not obvious.

One can loosen the green belt and let development be near were it wants to be.

Less effective would be build new settlements on non green belt land (and we have been here before). East Anglia for example, is not green belt according the paper today and with all that flat land, building houses, roads and infrastructure should hold few barriers. But again back to the point above, you would need to get people to want to move, live and commute wherever you develop.

You always make everyone speak English and have a united Europe. I’m sure the French don’t need all their land 🙂

One last thought. Birmingham at the momment is getting pretty good at sending people up! City living is all the rage and new skyscraper/tower developments are making use of a small footprint to increase population density. We’re already accepting smaller houses, why not change our building styles also?