Finally I am reading some articles which articulate my view. I have of course always supported more development on the grounds of creating growth, allowing young people to buy a home, and simply because not to develop more would mean to be static and in fact decline.
A couple of choice quotes from Phillip Collins in The Times yesterday give some perspective.
"Only 10% of this country is developed and close to half of that is accounted for by gardens. On this crazily crowded island we have built houses on only 1.1% of the land. Sheep and cows have more room to live in than we do. Roads are choking up 2.2% of land, taking up less space than reservoirs."
and on productivity "agriculture as an industry produces 0.5% of GDP. Not a huge return on 72% of the land mass"
I still think that our national obsession with protecting 'the green fields' is a collective form of nimby-ism. Phillip Collins also recounts a meeting he chaired on mobile phone masts, another nimby no no. At the meeting, which was packed out, he asked all those present with a mobile phone to hold it up, which of course was everyone. Before they could take their arms down he asked them to keep their arms up if they were in favour of new mobile phone masts, and of course they all fell. He says "they wanted to progress and yet also to conserve and they didn't want to choose between the two. Yet sometimes you have to."
This brings me nicely on to this article which really hits the nail on the head. Perhaps what we are actually suffering from is a great lack of imagination. People see buildings and roads they don't like the look of and oppose development thereafter. Wouldn't it be so much better if instead they accepted progress and focused on making new development as pleasing to others as it is useful it is to it's owners.
For the good of rural life, we must build houses in the English countryside
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Good post bude! :-)
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