|
|
| Re: London news (63775) | |||
 |
|||
| Home > SubChat | |||
|
[ Read Responses | Post a New Response | Return to the Index ] |
|
||
|
Re: London news |
|
|
Posted by Fytton on Tue Mar 15 08:23:34 2005, in response to Re: London news, posted by Peter Rosa on Mon Mar 14 12:59:28 2005. 'Anyway, your comment about the trains to London got me thinking ... London's Greenbelt development limits work well in part because of the massive commuter rail network. People who live beyond the Greenbelt nonetheless can commute into central London quite easily thanks to all the trains. If you had a similar development limit around an auto-oriented American city,* people who couldn't afford to live within the development limit, and therefore had to live in outlying areas, often would be faced with unacceptably long drives into work.'A very percipient analysis, Peter. In effect, many other UK cities *do* have green belts without the train services, and do have bad rush-hour traffic problems as a consequence. The reality is that you can't really divorce town-planning policies from transport policies. Available transport links will determine which remote towns and villages will get suburbanised (or at least commuterised) and which won't. They will also determine house prices - other things being equal, accessible places will cost more than inaccessible ones. One English reality that seems to distinguish us from our continental neighbours, and even from the Scots,is that most people don't want to live in cities. They want to live in villages or country towns, but of course when too many of them move there, the villages and country towns lose their rural character! Whic is what James means when he says that green belt policies have been bad for both city and country. However, James says 20 million people wqould like to live in London. I doubt it. Certainly, more than live there now would like to, which is why house prices are so high there. And possibly 20 million (or their breadwinners, anyway) would like to work there. But, as Max says, a lot of them like living away from the big city and commuting to it. The green belt policies that James disagrees with aren't there by the action of a dictatorial government; they have been left in place by successive governements of both main parties, because they are popular! |
|
|
|