Let's lift the restrictions and see if that holds true, shall we?
I think you vastly underestimate the suffering millions of people in the UK are enduring as a result of the housing crisis, and the range of alternatives that would be considered an improvement for those people.
Utter nonsense. Vast swathes of the green belt around London are within walking -- or a short bus journey -- distance of rail stations providing very reasonable commute times into central London.
You mention the failure of private builders to meet demand for new houses. Why do you think that is?
Do you think it might be something to do with inflated land prices and onerous planning restrictions? The green belt, for example?
No I don't think that's true. If you look at the number of privately built units of housing it has been remarkably consistent at about 200,000 units a year since the second world war. Now are you going to tell me that the regulatory regime has been the same the entire time?
I'd have more sympathy for your arguments if the biggest complaint from councils about new housing was that they give planning permissions and then developers just sit on the land and send in further speculative planning applications.
The urban developments this pieces glorify, like New Islington, compound the problem by being completely unbalanced towards the young and childless: small flats built for profit, not for people to live in with kids. Medium- and High-rise are also very much at odds with typical English individualism, and people simply won't live in them if they can afford anything else. A lot of these fancy new towers around Manchester are half-empty.
What we need up North is a serious policy of brownfield cleanup. Give local authorities more money to dispose of all shit resulting from 200 years of environmental abuse, instead of enabling more abuse on what little good greenfield is left.
When you view it like that then you see how silly this whole article is.
Because it certainly isn't the rest of us, who have no prospect of ever buying a home, or getting a pension, but are still expected to pay hundreds of thousands in taxes to subsidise over our lifetime the retirement of the aforementioned baby-boomers, while listening to their lectures about how we don't work hard enough, and don't value the precious green belt that keeps their house prices buoyant.
England is ~10% urban[1]; the figure is even lower in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The green belt isn't about protecting some dwindling remnant of unspoilt land, it's about propping up the house prices of people too stupid and selfish to even admit to themselves how stupid and selfish they're being.
It's curious how the 0.1% can mysteriously grow fabulously wealthy, cut pensions that older people rely upon, cut NHS funding which older people rely upon, jack up tuition fees, jack up rail prices, trigger the largest financial crisis in decades, price younger people out of the housing market and yet still manage to convince the younger generation that their own parents are obviously the ones who ripped them off.
Hectares of barren grassland don't magically cleanse the fumes.
You can already build in the city. In fact, New Labour put in subsidies and incentives to build multi-storey houses, which are probably still in place. So why don't developers just go and replace low-rise with high-rise? Because nobody really wants to live in flats in England if they can avoid it. It's a cultural thing and it has nothing to do with land scarcity, it's probably a result of the failed '70s projects mixed with the hardcore individualism that emerged since then. This drives down prices of flats to the point where it's not appealing for developers to build new ones (except in the immediate vicinity of SW1 or other areas that are attractive to singles and childless couples, who can be persuaded to fit into tin boxes). What sells is low-rise suburban, for which they are running out of space; hence the push for greenfield liberalisation. Everything else is divide-et-impera rhetoric, boomers vs impoverished etc etc.
We need greenbelt, even the crap that PEOPLE don't like, wildlife does, especially on the stuff that dog walkers avoid. It's full of rabbits, badgers, invertebrates etc.
Is this a real, widespread, problem, or does this only apply to a small number of expensive properties in the most desirable parts of London?
I can't afford a house in the city I work in. Everyone I know lives outside and commutes by car which is a waste of time for everyone (add cost of petrol, pollution etc.). This is stupid.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/09/ec...
https://andreaskluth.org/2008/11/20/why-the-economist-has-no...
Generally, I imagine they're reputable enough that they should disclose any conflicts of interest, but who knows...
Personally I think raising taxes on second homes, rentals, etc would free up a lot of housing to purchase. Do we want to do that? Are people happy renting and not buying? I'm not sure.
Why would they be trying to advance these policies?
