Slightly Bizarre Reader's Letter Of The Day

From City AM's Rapid Responses:

[Re: Decline in homeownership is the result of bonkers red tape, yesterday]

Unfortunately, the housing shortage is London is not just an issue of “idiotic planning rules” but a fundamental unwillingness to allow the city to expand physically.(1) The debate has artificially divided into supporters of the green belt and those who want to brick over the south east.(2)

Surely there’s an alternative. Cities like Copenhagen show the possibilities – it has green fingers (rather than a belt), which stretch attractively into its centre. People can live in large suburban homes, and the danger of unattractive, faceless exurbia (like you see in Los Angeles) is carefully avoided.(3)

Growth doesn’t need to be ugly.

Caroline Morgan.

1) The "idiotic planning rules" and "unwillingness to allow the city to expand" are the same thing. There's always a trade off between 'upwards' and 'outwards' and the same unprincipled opposition to either. And the quickest way to fix this is to encourage more efficient use of existing buildings and already developed land, but we get the same unprincipled opposition to that from the same people as well.

2) Woah! A majority in this country are indeed BANANAs (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything), a lot of the people reading this will be BANANAs. But I have never, ever met anybody who saw any advantage in "bricking over the south East" such people are a fiction of fevered BANANA imagination, like some sort of bogeyman that they use to frighten their children.

3) Exactly! Having talked crap so far, the writer redeems herself by giving real life examples of good and bad town planning. The "green belt" model is the worst of both worlds, as it happens;