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Do We Hate High Density Housing?
94 Answers
I've been waiting for an excuse to start a thread about this for some time and found just the thing I needed
http://
emmie wrote:-
//from figures elicited some time ago to the same sort of thread, 70 percent on UK is farmland, so suggest we start getting rid of much of it and build more houses, because that is what we will have to do, and i reiterate i was not just talking of London, where the majority of you don't live, and it has never been as cosmopolitan as it is now. //
Why pave over yet more fields? Goodness knows with the world's population heading for 11 billion by 2050, we're going to need all the growing capacity we've got AND continue to import vast quantities from overseas.
Don't forget that, in WWII, farmers were pretty much ordered (by the Ministry) to bring all their scrubland, marshy and semi-useless marginal farmland into producing some crop or other. Even though the population, then, was less than it is now, we were still heavily dependent on imported food.
To my mind, we became overpopulated in the first place because we had the empire and had the collective wealth to support large families all round.
I think the mistake Britain made was to build tower blocks and put the poor people into them, whilst the middle class retained their ideal of own-house-with-garden.
In America, they had the sense to build apartment blocks for the wealthy and make a packet in the process.
http://
I'd welcome your thoughts. I wasnted to ask "Why do we hate high density housing" but let's first establish whether we do or we don't, eh?
http://
emmie wrote:-
//from figures elicited some time ago to the same sort of thread, 70 percent on UK is farmland, so suggest we start getting rid of much of it and build more houses, because that is what we will have to do, and i reiterate i was not just talking of London, where the majority of you don't live, and it has never been as cosmopolitan as it is now. //
Why pave over yet more fields? Goodness knows with the world's population heading for 11 billion by 2050, we're going to need all the growing capacity we've got AND continue to import vast quantities from overseas.
Don't forget that, in WWII, farmers were pretty much ordered (by the Ministry) to bring all their scrubland, marshy and semi-useless marginal farmland into producing some crop or other. Even though the population, then, was less than it is now, we were still heavily dependent on imported food.
To my mind, we became overpopulated in the first place because we had the empire and had the collective wealth to support large families all round.
I think the mistake Britain made was to build tower blocks and put the poor people into them, whilst the middle class retained their ideal of own-house-with-garden.
In America, they had the sense to build apartment blocks for the wealthy and make a packet in the process.
http://
I'd welcome your thoughts. I wasnted to ask "Why do we hate high density housing" but let's first establish whether we do or we don't, eh?
Answers
The race to modernise the housing stock in the 1960s and 1970s resulted imn many mistakes. Communities were forced out of slums, but the modern blocks were often built in the wrong places, and away from amenities. Over the next 20 years they failed to develop into communities and were badly maintained. The result was that no one wanted to live there. The worse...
10:35 Mon 30th Dec 2013
Hypognosis, Item's are manufactured in China because it is commercial suicide not to do so, let me give you a real life example.
I was process engineer for a large UK electronics company, we made a part in-house and it cost £9.80 to produce. This was expensive, we did a cost saving exercise and got it down to £5.70 which we thought was very good.
Then someone suggested getting a quote to have it made in China, the quote came back and it was 94p including an individual test certificate for each one!
Needless to say we had to go with the China quote or go bankrupt. Within 2 years all production was in China and 600 people were made redundant, including me. The site where the factory was is still empty 5 years later.
I was process engineer for a large UK electronics company, we made a part in-house and it cost £9.80 to produce. This was expensive, we did a cost saving exercise and got it down to £5.70 which we thought was very good.
Then someone suggested getting a quote to have it made in China, the quote came back and it was 94p including an individual test certificate for each one!
Needless to say we had to go with the China quote or go bankrupt. Within 2 years all production was in China and 600 people were made redundant, including me. The site where the factory was is still empty 5 years later.
Emmie,
Local Bus serices are heavy subsidised without the payments for free travel for the elderly. The taxpayer (local and national) forked out £2.5 BILLION last year in subsidy to private firms such as Stagecoach and FirstBus. That amounts to 45% of all the profits made by these companies.
60% of all the subsidy is spent in London.
Local Bus serices are heavy subsidised without the payments for free travel for the elderly. The taxpayer (local and national) forked out £2.5 BILLION last year in subsidy to private firms such as Stagecoach and FirstBus. That amounts to 45% of all the profits made by these companies.
60% of all the subsidy is spent in London.
Happy new year emmie.
Gromit doesn't seem to have noticed your question yet. Rather than link to just one page, here's the search results I got. Hope that helps.
https:/
Gromit doesn't seem to have noticed your question yet. Rather than link to just one page, here's the search results I got. Hope that helps.
https:/
HYp, thanks, from that data, link the following
English non-Metropolitan areas had the highest level of subsidy per passenger journey (13.2 pence in 2012/13), London had the lowest level of subsidy per passenger journey (3.8 pence in 2012/13), while English Metropolitan areas were in-between (8.9 pence in 2012/13). Comparisons between London and the rest of the country should be made with care – see note in Background Information below.
One of the sub-pages is
https:/
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Table BUS0502
Net government support for local bus services and concessionary travel by metropolitan area status and country: England, annual from 1996/97 (MS Excel Spreadsheet, 95KB)
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To read this file, Microsoft Excel viewer is free and downloadable but I don't have the link to hand at the moment.
Summary for financial year 2011/12
Net Public Transport Support... 878 million
Concessionary Travel............. 1010 million
Bus Service Operators Grant.... 437 million
Total estimated net support.... 2324 million (London 851 million)
The figures for 07/08, 08/09, 09/10 were 2506, 2688, 2633 and for 10/11 2448, so Gromit's post saying 2.5 billion/year was in the right ballpark.
Of course, the kind of things accountants are less good at is assessing unquantifyable matters such as levels of traffic congestion averted by having people using buses, all be they subsidised. They do have ways of converting known levels of traffic delays into financial loss to the country as a whole but I haven't a clue how they do that other than requiring huge quantities of data about productivity and wage levels of the entire nation's workforce.
https:/
---------
Table BUS0502
Net government support for local bus services and concessionary travel by metropolitan area status and country: England, annual from 1996/97 (MS Excel Spreadsheet, 95KB)
---------
To read this file, Microsoft Excel viewer is free and downloadable but I don't have the link to hand at the moment.
Summary for financial year 2011/12
Net Public Transport Support... 878 million
Concessionary Travel............. 1010 million
Bus Service Operators Grant.... 437 million
Total estimated net support.... 2324 million (London 851 million)
The figures for 07/08, 08/09, 09/10 were 2506, 2688, 2633 and for 10/11 2448, so Gromit's post saying 2.5 billion/year was in the right ballpark.
Of course, the kind of things accountants are less good at is assessing unquantifyable matters such as levels of traffic congestion averted by having people using buses, all be they subsidised. They do have ways of converting known levels of traffic delays into financial loss to the country as a whole but I haven't a clue how they do that other than requiring huge quantities of data about productivity and wage levels of the entire nation's workforce.
@emmie
Gromit said the buses were heavily subsidised, you replied with
//is it do you have a link to that fact> //
and, between us, we've put the statistics into the thread - although you gave units in "pence", what you were quoting was actually, "pence per passenger mile".
The figures I linked to (and summarised because the website link points to a Microsoft Excel file and would be unreadable for some) are the gross amounts, in millions, per year.
The fact of the matter is that buses are uneconomic but maybe that is because our patterns of settlement are too much of the low-density, suburban style. Buses have to travel many miles to pick up a full load of passengers and make the trip to the town centre pay for itself.
With high-density housing, you should be able to fill the bus without having to travel so far. Fuel consumption and vehicle running cost per passenger is reduced and the route stands more of a chance of at least breaking even and even turning a profit.
As I said before, we justify the subsidisation of buses by claiming that the increased car traffic and pollution we'd get, due to taking them away, would be far worse.
Gromit said the buses were heavily subsidised, you replied with
//is it do you have a link to that fact> //
and, between us, we've put the statistics into the thread - although you gave units in "pence", what you were quoting was actually, "pence per passenger mile".
The figures I linked to (and summarised because the website link points to a Microsoft Excel file and would be unreadable for some) are the gross amounts, in millions, per year.
The fact of the matter is that buses are uneconomic but maybe that is because our patterns of settlement are too much of the low-density, suburban style. Buses have to travel many miles to pick up a full load of passengers and make the trip to the town centre pay for itself.
With high-density housing, you should be able to fill the bus without having to travel so far. Fuel consumption and vehicle running cost per passenger is reduced and the route stands more of a chance of at least breaking even and even turning a profit.
As I said before, we justify the subsidisation of buses by claiming that the increased car traffic and pollution we'd get, due to taking them away, would be far worse.
All those flooding problems gave me cause to raise this subject again.
I read a statistic today which pointed out that December 2014's UK rainfall was not as remarkable as it might seem, with the year as a whole only ranking about 14th on our all-time wettest list. By an odd coincidence, it seems that 1914 still stands as the worst for rainfall. (I know of no natural weather cycles running on a 100-year schedule; you may know differently).
I don't know if 1914's floods were worse (folk knowledge meant people knew the terrain and where it was stupid to build their houses). If not, despite more water being deposited, then that handily demonstrates what they mean when they harp on about "paving over acres of soakaway".
One way to mitigate further loss of soakaway would be build taller buildings on a reduced number of plots.
Since the idea of tall blocks didn't go down well (in this thread), so far, what about less visually intrusive builds; 3, 4, 5, 6 storeys, maximum?
Where would you set that maximum, if you had the power?
(I'm not asking you to set any nationwide 'rule', just give your opinion of what you think your town or local authority might deem to be 'in keeping' with the locale).
We constantly hear of the problem of "affordable housing". Surely the factors like garden + garage + detached/semi-detached + cul-de-sac are what keep newbuild prices so high in the first place. Flats can be made to affordable specification and at least give people the chance of getting on the first rung of the ladder.
Council-owned flats went bad because their was no 'pride of ownership' to cause residents to keep the place smart and (so we hear) a chronic waiting list for routine maintenance due to administration issues at some councils.
I read a statistic today which pointed out that December 2014's UK rainfall was not as remarkable as it might seem, with the year as a whole only ranking about 14th on our all-time wettest list. By an odd coincidence, it seems that 1914 still stands as the worst for rainfall. (I know of no natural weather cycles running on a 100-year schedule; you may know differently).
I don't know if 1914's floods were worse (folk knowledge meant people knew the terrain and where it was stupid to build their houses). If not, despite more water being deposited, then that handily demonstrates what they mean when they harp on about "paving over acres of soakaway".
One way to mitigate further loss of soakaway would be build taller buildings on a reduced number of plots.
Since the idea of tall blocks didn't go down well (in this thread), so far, what about less visually intrusive builds; 3, 4, 5, 6 storeys, maximum?
Where would you set that maximum, if you had the power?
(I'm not asking you to set any nationwide 'rule', just give your opinion of what you think your town or local authority might deem to be 'in keeping' with the locale).
We constantly hear of the problem of "affordable housing". Surely the factors like garden + garage + detached/semi-detached + cul-de-sac are what keep newbuild prices so high in the first place. Flats can be made to affordable specification and at least give people the chance of getting on the first rung of the ladder.
Council-owned flats went bad because their was no 'pride of ownership' to cause residents to keep the place smart and (so we hear) a chronic waiting list for routine maintenance due to administration issues at some councils.
Latest update: Even the rich folk aren't keen. Or, at least, they're not keen on some of the prices being asked: -
"Tenants Shun The Shard"
http://
"Tenants Shun The Shard"
http://
We cannot boycott to the high density housing just because of high density of population in some rural areas. Moreover, we can take an initiative to live in good and spacious houses like sugar wharf condos rather than high density housing to enjoy the nature and nurture. To read more https:/
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