On 30/08/2012 16:51, d wrote:
On Thu, 30 Aug 2012 16:42:36 +0100
wrote:
Those who think that fields can just be built on ad lib should ask themselves
where the food is to come from. We cannot

I think in the minds of these people it comes from some magic food machine
run by pixies all pre packaged and labelled.


Where can I get a prepackaged pixie?

--
Graeme Wall
This account not read, substitute trains for rail.
Railway Miscellany at http://www.greywall.demon.co.uk/rail

Optimist wrote:
On Thu, 30 Aug 2012 10:34:39 +0100, "News"
wrote:

Optimist wrote:

"Oh look! We've got all those brownfield sites! Let's build over
the rest of XXXshire!"

Countryside organisations are demanding all city brownfield sites be
built on. Many think all new developments can be on brownfield sites
despite only 14% of demand being catered for on current brownfield
sites. This should be resisted as we now have an ideal opportunity
to leave most of these sites vacant, cleaned up and made natural
again by turning them into parks, woods and encouraging wildlife for
the local population to enjoy.

This is an ideal opportunity to improve brownfield areas, improving
the quality of life of urban dwellers. Righting the wrongs of the
incompetent planners of the past. Areas like Hampstead Heath could
be actively encouraged. Woods in towns and cities would also be a
great bonus. The deliberate differentiation between town and country
requires abolition as the Town & Country planning act attempts to
divide. Using the words town and country sets the tone. It creates
conflict. It creates two separate societies. It creates distrust.

One of the reasons that developers do not like to have to use
brownfield sites is the cost of decontaminating land that has been
used for industry.

Yep.

Optimist wrote:

Policy should be to get the hundreds of thousands of empty homes
back into use, rather than consuming more countryside.

Very laudable in theory. In practice many of those empty properties
are in areas no one wants to live.

Like central London, you mean? There are loads of houses in the most
expensive areas which have been boarded up and the sanitary fixtures
destroyed to make them uninhabitable.

Land Valuation Taxation would sort that out. Full tax is paid only on the
LAND's value. The building is not taken into account - it could be an empty
plot. They soon get the building profitable. The laws relating to land
were forced through by landed vested interest over the centuries.

In message , at 16:42:36 on
Thu, 30 Aug 2012, Optimist remarked:
With only about 7.5% of the land settled,
7.5%? Where did you get that figure from?
I'd like to know that as well. Seems a bit high to me.

Do farms not count as settled?
In this context, only the part with the farmhouse on it.
Why? Settled land means that thats lived on. That doesn't just mean
the house it means all land under the same deeds. Otherwise you can't
count gardens as settled land either.

As I wrote, then only 2.5 % of the UK is under masonry.

So it's 2.5% under a house or concrete, and 5% in people's gardens?

Those who think that fields can just be built on ad lib should ask themselves where the food is to come from.

I'll ask questions like that when we get closer to understanding what
the percentages mean.

Land is also required for recreation and nature (unless you want to destroy national parks), transport, schools
and hospitals, shops, offices and factories, mines, reservoirs.

Are all that lot included in the 2.5% (or the 7.5%) genuine question.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 15:46:41 on Thu, 30 Aug
2012, d remarked:
Do farms not count as settled?

In this context, only the part with the farmhouse on it.

Why? Settled land means that thats lived on. That doesn't just mean the house
it means all land under the same deeds. Otherwise you can't count gardens
as settled land either.

You can count the farmhouse's garden (if it has one), but not the
fields, because they are a business.

So? Don't office blocks count as settled land then?

I was merely remarking that a farmer's fields probably *aren't* within
this definition of "settled".

Whether office blocks etc *are* within is a good question. Over to the
man who first produced the numbers...
--
Roland Perry

d wrote:
On Thu, 30 Aug 2012 13:56:50 +0100
"News" wrote:
d wrote:
On Thu, 30 Aug 2012 12:29:10 +0100
"News" wrote:
Urban, villages, towns, cities. Kate Barker report. This may help
you: http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/watercity/LandArticle.html
The Supporting Links are excellent.

# Settled land - 1.8m hectares. 7.65% of the land mass.
# Agricultural land - 10.8m hectares. 45.96% of the land mass.
# Semi-natural land, with much uses as agricultural land - 7.0m
hectares. 29.78 % of the land mass.
# Woodland - 2.8m hectares. 11.91% of the land mass
# Water bodies - 0.3m hectares. 1.28% of the land mass.
# Sundry, largely transport infrastructure - 0.8m hectares. 3.42%
of the land m ass.

I'd count agricultural as settled

I fallow field has people on it? Boy you are slow.

If people own the land

snip total senile drivel

Graeme Wall wrote:
On 30/08/2012 14:04, News wrote:
Graeme Wall wrote:
On 30/08/2012 12:36, Tim Roll-Pickering wrote:
Graeme Wall wrote:

Cities have a natural footprint limit. The generally accepted
limit is that if it takes over an hour to travel from one side
to the other its expansion naturally tails off.

Explain supercities then.

London, New York, Tokyo might give you a clue. Keep looking.

Try getting across any of those in an hour.


London developed largely by expansion of its sattellite towns and
villages in the commuter belt to the point that they fused into one
another before the limits of the greenbelt were set, and then later
local government reorganisation came along and fused them together.
It's somewhat different from a town expanding outwards until it hit
its limit.

London expanded outwards and absorbed towns and villages around it.
Those towns and villages largely expanded as dormitories dependant
on London as a source of jobs rather than the expansion being
driven by internal activity. It is debatable as to whether it has
yet hit it's limit.

No. There are still pouring money into the place at the detriment to
all else.

There are what still pouring money in?

Fool!

Graeme Wall wrote:
On 30/08/2012 14:12, Optimist wrote:
On Thu, 30 Aug 2012 10:29:51 +0100, Graeme
wrote:

On 30/08/2012 08:57, Optimist wrote:
On Thu, 30 Aug 2012 08:00:04 +0100, Roland
wrote:

In , at 07:37:29 on Thu,
30 Aug 2012, Martin remarked:
Unless the UK indulges in another round of building "new
towns", the national housing shortage is actually only
solvable at the local level. In other words build homes where
the people and jobs are, or move the people and jobs.

Unfortunately the policy for most of the country seems to be to
build new estates on largely brownfield and rural sites, in
places where they get the least objection. Correlating it with
workplaces is the last thing on the agenda.

An added irony is that they are often paraded as "eco" towns,
when the residents would all need cars to get to jobs.

The aim of eco-towns is to get car journeys down to 50% of all
trips. I'm not sure if that counts very local trips, but they
should be provided with enhanced public transport in order to
qualify for the name.

Policy should be to get the hundreds of thousands of empty homes
back into use, rather than consuming more countryside.

Very laudable in theory. In practice many of those empty
properties are in areas no one wants to live.

Like central London, you mean? There are loads of houses in the
most expensive areas which have been boarded up and the sanitary
fixtures destroyed to make them uninhabitable.

For "loads" read "some".

NO! Read loads.

d wrote:
On Thu, 30 Aug 2012 14:07:09 +0100
"News" wrote:
d wrote:
On Thu, 30 Aug 2012 13:00:59 +0100
Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 10:37:59 on Thu, 30
Aug 2012, d remarked:

With only about 7.5% of the land settled,

7.5%? Where did you get that figure from?

I'd like to know that as well. Seems a bit high to me.

Do farms not count as settled?

In this context, only the part with the farmhouse on it.

Why? Settled land means that thats lived on. That doesn't just mean
the house it means all land under the same deeds. Otherwise you
can't count gardens
as settled land either.

As I wrote, then only 2.5 % of the UK is under masonry.

Its not how much is physically buried under concrete that matters -
its how much is used. And there is VERY little land in the UK that
isn't used.

Read what I write you fool! This one is a total idiot. It bad enough with
the senile ones.

Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 14:07:09 on Thu, 30 Aug
2012, News remarked:
With only about 7.5% of the land settled,
7.5%? Where did you get that figure from?
I'd like to know that as well. Seems a bit high to me.

Do farms not count as settled?
In this context, only the part with the farmhouse on it.
Why? Settled land means that thats lived on. That doesn't just mean
the house it means all land under the same deeds. Otherwise you
can't count gardens as settled land either.

As I wrote, then only 2.5 % of the UK is under masonry.

So it's 2.5% under a house or concrete, and 5% in people's gardens?

Does it matter! The percentage is still miniscule.