The utility of building on the green belt is questionable. The London green belt is so far away from the city center that you'd be better of living in Birmigham and taking the train than trying to get in from there. The UK's biggest issue that the government housing stopped being built in the early 1980s and the number of privately built housing never increased. There has been a deficit of 200,000 housing units a year for over 30 years. Even now almost all housing that is built is built for the top end of the market and will do nothing to bring housing prices down.
Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery
11–20 of 52 posts
Re: Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery
#12Very little of Britain is actually built on - 2.7% according to this BBC article (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18623096)
Re: Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery
#13What 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.
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 aforem…
>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.
Re: Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery
#14The utility of building on the green belt is questionable. The London green belt is so far away from the city center that you'd be better of living in Birmigham and taking the train than trying to get in from there. The UK's biggest issue that the government housing stopped being built in the early 1980s and the number of privately built housing never increased. There has been a deficit of 200,000 housing units a yea…
Exactly. What we need is for money to be put into affordable housing on brownfield sites in and around the cities. People don't want to live miles away from anything. Why ruin undeveloped land when there is an abundance of land (and buildings) that sits unused. The reason is because the real estate companies don't want to lose out on profit by building affordable homes on high value land. If the government actually enforced affordable housing requirements (or heaven forbid actually invested in housing directly) then that would be worth something. Instead they are pushing 'garden towns', which whatever the hell it means will probably result in facility deserts and degenerating estates as well as the unnecessary destruction of the countryside.
Re: Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery
#15I don't see a byline for the article, so I can't Google to see what sort of connections to the UK real estate industry that the author has. Oh well.
Wouldn't it be better to address the article on its own merits, whatever those may be, instead of looking for the author trying to make an ad hominem argument?
It is difficult to read past the potential for bias here though.
Re: Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery
#16The utility of building on the green belt is questionable. The London green belt is so far away from the city center that you'd be better of living in Birmigham and taking the train than trying to get in from there. The UK's biggest issue that the government housing stopped being built in the early 1980s and the number of privately built housing never increased. There has been a deficit of 200,000 housing units a yea…
> The London green belt is so far away from the city center that you'd be better of living in Birmigham and taking the train than trying to get in from there.
Utter nonsense. Vast swathes of the green belt around London are within walking -- or a short bus journey -- distance of rail stations providing very reasonable commute times into central London.
You mention the failure of private builders to meet demand for new houses. Why do you think that is?
Do you think it might be something to do with inflated land prices and onerous planning restrictions? The green belt, for example?
Re: Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery
#17Never going to happen because it would lower the values of peoples' houses. End of story.
I can't afford a house in the city I work in. Everyone I know lives outside and commutes by car which is a waste of time for everyone (add cost of petrol, pollution etc.). This is stupid.
Re: Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery
#18The utility of building on the green belt is questionable. The London green belt is so far away from the city center that you'd be better of living in Birmigham and taking the train than trying to get in from there. The UK's biggest issue that the government housing stopped being built in the early 1980s and the number of privately built housing never increased. There has been a deficit of 200,000 housing units a yea…
Exactly. What we need is for money to be put into affordable housing on brownfield sites in and around the cities. People don't want to live miles away from anything. Why ruin undeveloped land when there is an abundance of land (and buildings) that sits unused. The reason is because the real estate companies don't want to lose out on profit by building affordable homes on high value land. If the government actually e…
People don't want to live in the London green belt?
Let's lift the restrictions and see if that holds true, shall we?
I think you vastly underestimate the suffering millions of people in the UK are enduring as a result of the housing crisis, and the range of alternatives that would be considered an improvement for those people.
Re: Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery
#19I don't see a byline for the article, so I can't Google to see what sort of connections to the UK real estate industry that the author has. Oh well.
The profit maximising situation for the large UK housebuilders is not one in which planning restrictions are lifted and the price of land collapses.
Why would they be trying to advance these policies?
Re: Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 aforem…
>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 h…
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)