NEWS: The Sunday Times January 5th, 2020
Built-up Britain: Green land gobbled up by urban sprawl
The Sunday Times reports that “The space occupied by buildings and roads has grown more than 10% in the past decade. Now ministers are planning a construction boom”
The report continues “Britain’s green and pleasant land is turning grey. The land occupied by buildings has grown by more than 11% in just a decade.
“In the first study of its kind, the Ordnance Survey has measured land use to the nearest square inch to reveal how the country has changed since 2010.
“Danny Dorling, an Oxford geography professor, said: “In absolute terms this is very likely to be the largest increase in the number of square miles that have been tarmacked or paved over in any decade in British history.”
“In a decade when the population of England, Scotland and Wales rose by 5m, or 8%, buildings secured an extra 129 square miles, roads expanded by 132 square miles and artificial surfaces such as car parks and hardstanding grew by 282 square miles.
The figures only take into account the footprint of buildings on the surface, i.e. the “footprint” not the space they take up with building up. So the area of new growth is greater than these figures suggest.
Danny Dorling is reported as saying he “was “surprised and shocked” by the figures and Britain was going the way of Los Angeles by giving in to urban sprawl. “This has happened even though we have not solved the housing crisis, because instead of building apartments in the cities we are building starter homes in the countryside where people need to commute by car.”
“Future developments were entrenching car dependence, he said. “The [proposed] Oxford-Cambridge expressway has 13 junctions on it, and on either side of each junction it has space for a town the size of Didcot or Abingdon. So that is 26 car-dependent towns strung out on an arc from Oxford to Cambridge.”
“Emma Bridgewater, president of the countryside charity CPRE, urged the public not to accept urban sprawl. “We have to resist the terrifyingly high rate of encroachment on our green spaces or we will go mad,” she said.
The Sunday Times also reports “As the government prepares to oversee another building boom, Hugh Ellis, director of policy at the Town and Country Planning Association, urged a different approach.
“We have not used our land wisely or well,” he said. “We now have to decide if we want to model ourselves on the dereliction of Detroit or the green future of Copenhagen.”
“The Danish capital is seen as a model because it has energy-efficient housing and has cut its dependence on the car.”
It really makes you think.. we have to do things differently! More housing.. yes, but we must avoid urban sprawl which ties people to their cars!
You can read the full article here.
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