To detest people that think they own beautiful parts of the world?

That sounds really interesting. Your country obviously has some very strict, top-down rules. My country makes it easy to build new houses/flats and has relatively few rules about this (except that in practice, making somewhere into a holiday let is hard because you have to get a special license, which involves a long convoluted process). Seems to me like both of these approaches can potentially work and satisfy the people in these areas.

I think the problem with the UK, perhaps, is that the rules/laws seem to be an awkard mix of too-strict and not-strict-enough. There are few laws stopping the sale of buildings to outsiders or stopping places being turned into holiday lets, but there are very rigid and inflexible planning laws that stop places being built. The result will be acute housing shortages for ordinary residents, as they can neither build new homes nor stop existing homes being taken out of circulation.

I agree with you. We used to go to a lovely beer festival in a village about 40miles away. It happened over a bank holiday and lasted Saturday to Monday. It obviously kept the 6 pubs going, as well as some local shops. The locals hated it. I remember one man telling me that he wanted the festival to stop because it caused so much disruption. Eventually the festival was restricted, the council held back on permission until so late that bookings could not be made for various additional attractions. Several years on and the event has disappeared - I imagine the 6 pubs might have disappeared as well, and some of the shops.

I live in a tourist area - not in the UK.

There are very strict rules regarding housing developments here, administered and strictly monitored by the local government authorities.

Housing and developments are "zoned" or classified - i.e. there are different classifications of housing such as "Residential housing" which is only available to people who live permanently in the property; "Second Home housing" which is available, as the term suggests, to be owned as a second home or holiday home; "Tourist Accommodation" which means primarily holiday apartments that may (and in some cases must) be rented to tourists; Hotel Accommodation; and "Employee Accommodation" which is required if the shops, hotels and other businesses are to be able to accommodate their seasonal employees at a reasonable cost.

These categories are strictly controlled and breaking the rules can result in heavy fines. For example, a "Residential" house cannot be bought and used as a second home - and as there is a mandatory requirement here (and in most of Europe) to register one's permanent address, anyone found to be abusing this will face prosecution. Planning applications take into account the balance between tourist accommodation and accommodation for local residents and for the staff who will work in the tourist businesses.

The impact is that there is generally a good balance between the number of tourists and the number of local residents and the availablilty of seasonal staff accommodation. Locals are not priced out of the housing market - there are rent controls and only people officially living in the property can buy or rent a "Residential" property, which caps the value of such properties.

As for the OP wishing to move to this type of tourist area - this is entirely possible. There is no restriction on who can buy or rent, as long as they are living permanently in the property - which generally requires them to have a job or other income and to make the location "the centre of their life" (to directly translate the phrase used).

I didn't know about the Traffic in Towns report, so thanks for that. I always knew Beeching was a bad 'un though and hate the fact that so many branch lines were closed down.

Interesting film, and interesting that they lacked the vision to build cities that didnt need cars so much rather than trying to accommodate the growth of car ownership

Interesting, TBF my Dad agrees with you about Beeching and he's 77! I think near me they want to reopen the Wealden line that connects Uckfied and Lewes, this was one of his culls.

Maybe it's time to reopen some of those branch lines that buffoon beeching closed

Could you get a train

Traffic in Towns - The Buchanan Report | Urban Design Library | Urban Design Group (udg.org.uk)

On the contrary! Dr Beeching was starting his cuts at about the time that the Traffic in Towns report came out. The Traffic in Towns report was full of projections of how traffic was likely to grow that turned out to be surprisingly accurate, as we look back from 2024: they also predicted (again, very accurately) what the social effects of ever-increasing traffic would be. They actually knew pretty much what would happen.... but chose to do it anyway.

There is a good 30 minute documentary which was produced on the report, and it makes very interesting watching, especially the projections of future traffic growth.

Did you grow up in Britain as although it is a very good idea in today's heavily populated Britain, I suspect the roads of Cornwall in the 1960s were not very busy and he couldn't have imagined the population growth and car ownership numbers that we see today. I grew up in West London and my Dad regularly drove us around central London in the late 1980s, it just wasn't as busy.

I agree. My parents moved to coastal region (after having lived in a rubbish town most of their/my life)
To listen to them rant on about tourists, when five years ago they were one of the very people they now detest...urgh

There are still quite a few branch lines left though- St Erth- St Ives, Truro- Falmouth, Par- Newquay and Lostwithiel- Looe. They are all very well used (the St Ives one is rammed in the summer, they encourage people to park and ride from Lelant).

But I agree upgrades are needed- it would be great if the mainline could be high speed, and capacity could be increased everywhere. There are currently plans for a Mid Cornwall Metro- basically, through trains from Falmouth- Newquay.

This is only part of the problem though- IMO every popular beach could do with a shuttle bus and a park and ride, and beach car parks should be blue badge only.

The assumption that you can just drive everywhere in Cornwall should be challenged- I wince every time some muppet on here bangs on about neeeeeding their massive Range Rover because they drive down to Cornwall twice a year and have to fit in their excessive piles of stuff, because these are invariably the ones you see blocking the lanes, rigid with stress, unable to reverse or manoeuvre in their planet killing behemoths...🙄

Cornwall's railways; Beeching branch line closures (cornwallheritage.com) Cornwall used to have a network of railway lines. If the UK had had more foresight, it would have maintained these and upgraded one or two of the lines to high-speed ones.

As it is, dear old Dr. Beeching decided to close most of them down, so Cornwall's tiny roads are clogged in traffic. You'd think that would have occurred to Beeching, but....

I've got an idea. Lots of office blocks are being converted for residential use.

Lets make them holiday homes instead and leave the actual houses for residential use.

I can understand the Cornish getting completely fucked off by all the tourists blocking up the tiny roads and Londoners buying up all the property so I can understand where the irritation comes from

I repeat - those buying up second homes in the West Country do not all come from London! I doubt even a majority do.

You don't need to be Cornish to get fed up about the roads - I get fed up with all the people heading for Cornwall on the A303. Can they please be banned so those of us trying to get to Devon (not for holidays) and other destinations don't have to sit in queues behind all the people going to Cornwall.

Dear everyone - there are other places in the UK that are equally nice to visit and don't involve blocking up the A303 for the rest of us. Thanks.

In AONB the charge is to preserve the landscape at all costs

Up here it's the Cheshire Set.
https://x.com/setcheshire

To an extent, but the UK planning system tends to give a lot of weight to locals' opinion - it is relatively easy for residents to block things they don't like. I have no doubt that the systemic aspects need reform, mind you.

You make it sound as if locals have all the say in what's developed, but they don't. Areas of outstanding beauty have management plans that are usually against development in accordance with the NFPP.

Not really, yes in theory. But in practice it doesn't really happen as neighbours notice the presence of outsiders and often these places have one road in and one road out so the police would very quickly catch up with anyone daft enough to not realise this. House burglaries and car theft are unheard of in most areas around me.

At the bottom of this lies the need for hard conversations and talk about the dreaded "trade offs."

As I said in a previous post, I'm sympathetic to the inhabitants of Cornwall, the Lakes and so on, but I think it's also fair to point out that the residents can be their own worst enemies sometimes, and are often extremely reluctant to admit that there are trade offs in life.

If you want your settlement to exist, it has to have means of providing jobs and incomes.

If you don't want to do tourism you have to do something else; that also requires building 21st century stuff like infrastructure, roads and factories. That won't be pretty and people complain when this happens.

If you want to preserve more of a charming fishing village etc. feel, tourism can be a good industry, but you still need to build enough accommodation for the people to stay in.

Accommodation takes up space. I see people in these areas getting angry about any building on greenfield sites, but also getting the rage about any building more than a couple of storeys high. Accommodation has to go somewhere!

It's possible to restrict cars (there are some "ultra-low-car villages" in Europe where cars are mostly garaged on the peripheries and motor vehicles within the village are mostly prohibited other than the odd genuinely unavoidable journey, which makes it far easier to handle tourists), but that means residents will have to abide by these rules too. Are they willing to do this?

If an area is serious about "doing tourism," it needs to ensure that jobs and incomes are provided year round by creating year-round facilities (eateries, spas, indoor pools etc.), yet I see residents in these areas getting the rage about facilities, swanky restaurants and the like: "Why can't people just be contented with what's here naturally?" Well, if you refuse to allow anything to be built and insist that "tourists should just be contented with what is here naturally," don't turn round and complain when tourists only come in the summer and the place clears out in the winter.

Basically, every settlement needs to have an economic point (or stop existing).

The choices, for coastal and lakeside areas, are:

1. Go in for something other than tourism (for example, build a fish farm and fish processing factory instead). That will make all the holiday home owners go away, and will provide income and jobs from other sources. That will, however, probably involve a lot more intrusive building on a lot more land than tourism will.
2. Go in for tourism, which means that both the tourists and the locals (who are needed, to actually work in the tourist industry) will need places to live or to stay. This means you either need to:

a) Build outwards, by building more houses with gardens (both as holiday homes and for locals) and accept that this means some green space will get built on; or
b) Build upwards, by allowing taller buildings - a shift towards a higher rate of living in flats for locals, more hotel tourism for tourists. Like, if the UK is all "We are a densely populated country! This isn't Germany!" then fine, but maybe start acting like a densely populated country and building upwards?

Because the current situation - long term residents in pretty areas living in ramshackle caravans or moving away altogether, while holidaymakers say "Dear me! It's impossible to find anyone to clean or cut the grass! The local restaurant is barely open these days and there's a sign up saying they can't get the staff. Gee, it's such a mystery! Why aren't there local people available to work in this tourist industry that they're supposed to have in this part of the world??" is dysfunctional and makes no sense.

But it is no measure of how much you trust your community unless your community is fully protected from outsiders as anyone can drive into the loveliest of communities to rob them - so locking doors does not mean they don't trust their neighbours or village.

The UK is the most densely-populated large country in Europe. If a German family have a lodge in Bavaria it has much less of an impact.

You said some people help each other. That's the bare minimum for any community surely? But you all still lock your front doors. A high trust community is one where nobody feels the need to. It's a much better indicator, and you know it.