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Old 03-14-2012, 08:33 AM
 
690 posts, read 1,199,582 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sunshineleith View Post
While much of what you said is true, I respectfully disagree with the above.

I live in a big 5 bedroom house in the East Midlands, a 1 hour commute into St Pancras station. We paid just over £200,000 for our house - did I mention the huge garden we have? We are not super rich, not by a long shot. We ARE an average middle class family. Outside of London there are many affordable places to be found with a commute that is not "punishing" .

Of course London and the cities are crowded - but the Midlands? There are miles and miles of green rolling hills and country lanes everywhere.
indeed.
The funniest/most tragic thing is you consider £200k cheap in country where the median individual income in the UK is about £20k individually, or about £30k for a household.
(We really should ignore mean income stats, as the income gap has grown massively in the last 15 years, as the super-rich skew 'mean' averages upwards)

£200k is a lot of money. I dont know when you bought, but if its £200k in todays money, thats probably 200% more expensive than it was about 15 years ago, despite wages barely rising 50% in that time. I dont know where in the East Midlands other than Peterborough and Northampton you can get (and it'll be in a pretty crappy suburb at those already too excessive prices) a 5 bed home, but even in those 'cheapest' of areas, its still x6.5 typical family income (against a long term average of x2.5) and x10 typical individual incomes(against a long term average of x3.5). We now have the most unaffordable housing of any major economy. http://www.demographia.com/dhi.pdf
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Old 03-14-2012, 08:37 AM
 
690 posts, read 1,199,582 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dragonborn View Post
That's exactly it. Green belt laws are there for the exact reason you stated. As far as space goes, perhaps more should be done to regenerate derelict or former industrial land to convert to mid rise residential areas? I noticed that in London, there was something of a residential (and commercial) high rise boom going on.

The beauty of the English countryside is that it's so accessible and doesn't feel as crowded as it might look from looking at a map. The fact that stuff is so close together in the UK can be seen as an advantage, rather than the glass half empty mentality. You don't have to drive far to either find yourself in a bustling town or city or the middle of the countryside, patchwork fields and ancient hedgerows and woodlands. Can't beat it!
Green belt laws simply sacrifice one persons 'green space' for another. Look at one particularly overzealously enforced green belt (Cambridge) and how Cambridge city has avoided the burden of having to provide any housing, instead forcing Towns around it (Ely, Huntingdon, St Neots etc) to double in size. It simply protects some fields at the expense of others. Oh, and forcing everyone to commute by car in doing so.
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Old 03-14-2012, 08:39 AM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Glucorious View Post
Alright, I've heard quite a few people complaining about the perceived population density in the U.K, and how it's "overcrowded" and what not. Someone also said immigration has to be slowed down because it's getting "too much".
In contrast, 73% of Japan is not inhabitable and they have 127 million people at 377,00 km^2. Now, of course the U.K. is smaller. It's 244,000 km^2. But, again, 73% of Japan is inhabitable (see wikipedia ), and it seems like they are doing just fine. The U.K. could probably hit the 120 million mark and it would still be ok. Especially now that the architecture is much better than it was 200 years ago, and adding 4-5 more Londons would not take away a lot of space. It's 1,500 km^2 out of 244,000.
So, I think it's kind of funny when people say this. And, yes, I do know and realize that the U.K. can, technically, get "full", but probably not until they get north of 160 million or so. Needless to say that's not gonna happen any time soon.
OP-why dont you consider Japan overcrowded? Its every bit as overcrowded as the UK. I guess they dont need as much farmland as they have a highly seafood based diet, but they still need to import vast amounts of raw materials, and would die within weeks if ever these imports were halted, for whatever reason.
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Old 03-14-2012, 10:01 AM
 
Location: Yorkshire, England
5,586 posts, read 10,621,724 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dragonborn View Post
That's exactly it. Green belt laws are there for the exact reason you stated. As far as space goes, perhaps more should be done to regenerate derelict or former industrial land to convert to mid rise residential areas? I noticed that in London, there was something of a residential (and commercial) high rise boom going on.

The beauty of the English countryside is that it's so accessible and doesn't feel as crowded as it might look from looking at a map. The fact that stuff is so close together in the UK can be seen as an advantage, rather than the glass half empty mentality. You don't have to drive far to either find yourself in a bustling town or city or the middle of the countryside, patchwork fields and ancient hedgerows and woodlands. Can't beat it!
Very true, and that's exactly why I don't want another 60 million people to come along and spoil it!
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Old 03-14-2012, 10:04 AM
 
Location: Leeds, UK
22,118 posts, read 29,517,076 times
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The UK needs to curb immigration for sure, but I don't think we're ever gonna get full. Future governments need to plan vast infrastructure projects/improvements to cope with an increase in population. I'm glad the current government is already moving ahead with transport projects across the UK, the biggest being HS2, which, sure enough, should have been done ages ago, but better late then never.

As well as chronic over-population, I think chronic population decline and aging populations is also an issue that countries such as Japan and Germany will also have to deal with.
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Old 03-14-2012, 10:44 AM
 
589 posts, read 755,323 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by paull805 View Post
Britinparis the central belt of Scotland (where most of the population live) is actually pretty densely populated. Glagow, Paisley and Lanarkshire over to Edinburgh and the Lothians with Falkirk, Stirling, Perth etc inbetween. And Dundee, just north of Edinburgh, is the 2nd most densely populated city in Scotland after Glagow. Large parts of Scotland are sparsely populated with most of Scotlands citizens living in and around the central belt.

Good point. Perhaps the UK Government could encourage new immigrants from North Africa and Pakistan to move to Scotland since it has open space. It would help Scotland in several ways to:

-Diversity is the first huge gain for the Scotish people. England is 90% White but 10% "other" so it has a decent amount of diversity [it still needs much more though]. Scotland is 98% White...Pretty much there is no diversity there at all.
-Nationalism. Scotland has some groups that are trying to break away from the UK and become independent. Immigration would kill that in its tracks since the population would become to diverse to accept it.
-Declining population, Scots have a negative birth rate so the population is dropping...That hurts the economy, so immigrants can replace the population over time.
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Old 03-14-2012, 10:57 AM
 
Location: Yorkshire, England
5,586 posts, read 10,621,724 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jonaos View Post
Good point. Perhaps the UK Government could encourage new immigrants from North Africa and Pakistan to move to Scotland since it has open space. It would help Scotland in several ways to:

-Diversity is the first huge gain for the Scotish people. England is 90% White but 10% "other" so it has a decent amount of diversity [it still needs much more though]. Scotland is 98% White...Pretty much there is no diversity there at all.
-Nationalism. Scotland has some groups that are trying to break away from the UK and become independent. Immigration would kill that in its tracks since the population would become to diverse to accept it.
-Declining population, Scots have a negative birth rate so the population is dropping...That hurts the economy, so immigrants can replace the population over time.
Lol this is the trollest post ever! Scotland is too Scottish and not Pakistani enough!! Evil!!!
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Old 03-14-2012, 11:54 AM
 
690 posts, read 1,199,582 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dunno what to put here View Post
The UK needs to curb immigration for sure, but I don't think we're ever gonna get full. Future governments need to plan vast infrastructure projects/improvements to cope with an increase in population. I'm glad the current government is already moving ahead with transport projects across the UK, the biggest being HS2, which, sure enough, should have been done ages ago, but better late then never.

As well as chronic over-population, I think chronic population decline and aging populations is also an issue that countries such as Japan and Germany will also have to deal with.
I just find the whole HS2 thing symptomatic of bigger, deeper problems. No one wants to commute 90 mins from Birmingham on a train now, or 60 mins with HS2. The only fact they do is because housing is unaffordable around London. Release land for families homes to be built in London and very few would be forced to live over 100 miles away from their place of work, we wouldnt need billions of taxpayers money to be spent building HS2, and people could afford to live near where they work.
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Old 03-14-2012, 12:01 PM
 
Location: Purgatory
2,615 posts, read 5,388,391 times
Reputation: 3099
Quote:
Originally Posted by LondonAreaWeatherSummary View Post
I just find the whole HS2 thing symptomatic of bigger, deeper problems. No one wants to commute 90 mins from Birmingham on a train now, or 60 mins with HS2. The only fact they do is because housing is unaffordable around London. Release land for families homes to be built in London and very few would be forced to live over 100 miles away from their place of work, we wouldnt need billions of taxpayers money to be spent building HS2, and people could afford to live near where they work.
HS2 isn't being built for people to live in Birmingham and commute to London. I would imagine the costs of doing such a commute would be ridiculous. It will make rail travel between the 2 cities more marketable though, thus reducing the number of cars on the road. I believe the HS network should be extended to link all major cities, if it proves to be a success.

Road building may become necessary too in the future. I'm not talking about massive scale road building, but the motorway network has several missing links (e.g. Newcastle to Edinburgh) that would benefit from being bridged. This would take a lot of traffic away from the M6 and away from the heavily populated West Midlands & north west areas. I would not want to see Britain's cities blighted by urban motorways though, although the M8 in Glasgow is one exception (hate to think of how traffic in Glasgow would be without it).
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Old 03-14-2012, 12:08 PM
 
Location: Leeds, UK
22,118 posts, read 29,517,076 times
Reputation: 8819
Quote:
Originally Posted by jonaos View Post
Good point. Perhaps the UK Government could encourage new immigrants from North Africa and Pakistan to move to Scotland since it has open space. It would help Scotland in several ways to:

-Diversity is the first huge gain for the Scotish people. England is 90% White but 10% "other" so it has a decent amount of diversity [it still needs much more though]. Scotland is 98% White...Pretty much there is no diversity there at all.
-Nationalism. Scotland has some groups that are trying to break away from the UK and become independent. Immigration would kill that in its tracks since the population would become to diverse to accept it.
-Declining population, Scots have a negative birth rate so the population is dropping...That hurts the economy, so immigrants can replace the population over time.
Asian immigrants go where there are a lot jobs available. I don't think the Shetland Islands really offer what an immigrant from India is looking for, such as tech industry.
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