Originally Posted by
Waterways
Raw data is well...raw data. Pablo is dismissing raw data. Well he is refusing to disbelieve what he has been believing for most of his life. They countryside is largely empty....
Academic my back-side! You wouldn't know reasoned debate if it slapped you in the face.
There is no point in debating the accuracy of your percentage paved area; even less so whether it is too much or too little. More usefully, there are any number of academic studies demonstrating the harmful environmental effects of urban sprawl, the effect on carbon footprint and ongoing and real damage to our position on the planet.
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The time for denial of climate change is over. It is happening (ask anyone in Cumbria about the number of '1 in 100 year' rainfalls since 2002). You can debate whether it is down to mankind if you like but it is beyond reasonable doubt to say that deliberately increasing the amount of commuter travel and surface water run off seems at best, foolhardy and actually downright irresponsible. It certainly makes matters worse. Even if we largely eradicated the car and moved all commuter transport to highly efficient trains, it is self-evident that the further you travel the more environmental damage you do.
It is therefore more useful to look at how to provide sustainable communities in the current precarious circumstances; communities that are
"socially and economically diverse and that provided residents with 'a sense of place' and 'celebrated local history, climate, ecology, and [best] building practice'" ie. great places to live, and thence to work out whether that is best achieved in the 'empty' countryside or the 'empty' bits of existing cities.
It makes sense to work out how much land is needed and which land is best placed. It is misleading to say that the overall density of London is similar to the overall density of Liverpool. Liverpool is a doughnut city with largely empty inner wards (if you doubt it, have a walk around the North End or look at the population of Liverpool Northshore for example ie. the 800Ha of the Liverpool portion of the Atlantic Gateway Strategic Investment Area - the population is nil; yes, nil). Therefore a more valid comparison is to compare Liverpool (not Merseyside) with Inner London (not Greater London). On this basis, Inner Wards of London are twice as dense as Inner Wards of Liverpool.
On this basis, it?s plain as a pike staff that developing the 67,000Ha of inner city brownfield sites at this benchmark density can provide great places to live while being hugely preferential to building more stuff further out in the countryside and extending the lines of public transport and/or road network to suit - irrespective of your highly partial views/class hatred of the ?landed gentry?.
In short, I couldn?t give a stuff that you?ve got a chip on your shoulder about farmers and the CAP when we are either sleep-walking or worse, deliberately planning our way into global catastrophe and there is a significant alternative contribution to the solution directly on hand - ie. re-establishing sustainable communities in the inner cities.
If you want more information, you could start at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...e-urban-sprawl
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