What Will Happen Once We've Concreted Over the Land?

[itsnotmeitsu]

I can't sleep because of the noisy rumbling of construction, and it's nearly one in the morning. I'm slightly set back from the road, so god knows what it's like for those directly on the road.

I live in a house that's bordered by an ex-school playing field which has around 143 properties being built on it and, on the other side, an area which previously housed a bungalow now has nine properties being built on it.

We will never be able to get the original environment back that the developers are being allowed to build on. I just hope the wildlife I sustain will be able to survive. I'll miss them very much if they go.

Where the hell do you expect people to live? There is a major housing crisis in this country, young people stand no chance of getting on the ladder and they are shelling out a small fortune every month to rent a bed in a room in a house alongside half a dozen strangers.

A tiny proportion of land in the UK is built on.

It's so sad. Huge housing developments are happening up and down the country. Then we have hs2 destroying nature reserves and ancient woodlands.

A school playing field and a bungalow aren't ancient woodland. People need housing. Dense housing on previously built land protects the wider environment.

Flooding quite simply is the first issue you'll find. If there are no natural soakaway the drain system won't cope.

Flooding quite simply is the first issue you'll find
This.
If it's anything like the development not far from me, floods at the mere hint of rain. And these were not built for any housing crisis - unless the crisis is a lack of 4-bedroom detached.

Are you a nimby? If not, do you also complain about the housing crisis? Because people generally have habit of complaining about the worlds ills but don’t want any solutions to effect them.

2% of the U.K. is built on land. I’d like my children to be able to afford somewhere to live, so great that they are building, I wish they would near me

Op that is why we now have something called "Biodiversity net gain" built into to all our building regulations and all construction has to employ people like myself as an ecologist. Most green fields are mono culture having limited species of grass and limited use to wild life. What a majority of people fail to realise often brown field sites (abandoned yards land) have higher biodiversity but no one says anything. With biodiversity net gain developers are required to increase biodiversity of any land take with mitigation, planning and replacement so any loss has to be given back with an increase. There is a hell of a lot of planning and care taken by people like myself even on HS2 that ensure nature will benefit in the long run it's just the public expect to see immediate results and are often miss informed and have a lack of understanding of ecology which is a science within its own right.

Joni Mitchell was concerned about this too, apparently. Fifty years ago. joni

Definitely flooding.
There used to be a little funfair near us in Yorkshire.
It closed and they built houses.
Some of them flooded before the new owners moved in.

@Flavabobble those 4 bed homes allow the people stuck in first time buyer type houses to move on. Of course they help with the housing crisis!

@Wingutyoy I do enjoy when people who actually know what they are talking about come along.

OP YABU brownfield land being redeveloped rather than green belt is a positive.

Flooding for sure, it's happening in the closest town to me where they have built hundreds of new homes where there used to be trees and green fields.

The sad thing is most of them aren't being bought by locals as they are too expensive so it's a lose lose situation.

It's very sad when a green area that you've loved and watched support wildlife disappears, only to be replaced by concrete and endless cars. My experience is that you will get flooding too. If only the properties they built did go some way to alleviate the housing crisis, they never do though. Just more very expensive properties that most people can't afford, it's all about vast profits, sad.

I agree that we need more affordable housing. Unfortunately, near me in the South East, the developers get planning permission for X% of council/affordable homes and then once granted they apply for, and receive, dispensation for reducing the %age of affordable homes as the poor developers would be losing money and then we end up with 300 £500k houses that don’t sell, on a flood plain, with no extra infrastructure or schools or healthcare in the town. There has to be a better way.

In Knowsley they are building on woodland and green belt land. Yet we have lots of brown sites and disused factories in Kirkby. But it isn't a postcode that people want as much as Prescot and Rainhill. The local wild deer population is at risk, as well as other wildlife, including foxes.
As said some of the developments are 4+ bed detached houses, they aren't filling the housing need. There won't be a school primary place for the children and the local GPs are already struggling.
It isn't popular but our population growth needs to be slowed down.

I think OP has a point. All these arguments of we need housing is also valid but flooding is a problem and the infrastructure the schools and the GP surgeries are not there to support all these new houses.

To add it's just been announced that part of TJHughes in Liverpool city centre will now be affordable flats. People are against the development. But smaller, affordable housing is what's needed and our retail won't ever recover enough for us to need the building. We need to look to convert more ex retail units.

I know we need more housing,

but construction happening at 01:15 isn't acceptable.

I guess the same thing that happened when the land that your house is on was first built on, whenever that was? Sitting in a house next to green space and bemoaning building is like people who think that they're in the traffic rather than that they're part of the traffic: you count too and if you want somewhere to live rather than rewilding your land then surely you can see why others might feel the same? (and a school playing field is hardly an unspoilt piece of wildlife anyway)

I think you're being dramatic tbh...... The UK as a whole is very green. All houses at one point would have been built on a field, it's how we built the country up.

And there's absolutely nothing wrong with building on green spaces in urban areas. Especially when we have such a big housing shortage.

I think there is better regulation and approach to building new houses, nowadays, to some extent. Green areas are usually planned into large estates and some trees are planted. I grew up in a city with seamingly endless urban sprawl, built during the late 19th through to late 20th century. Terribly planned, little access to green spaces etc.

Housing design is atrocious, however. We should be building houses that are very low energy use, with a living roof etc. We know how to do this. But we are chucking up the same old tat, with massive margins, obvs.

I’d be with you 100% if you were talking about woodland but a former school playing field and a bungalow on an oversized site are fair game. School do not use those massive fields anymore anyway (even if still in use they tend to use the same football pitch sized bit all the time) and far better to build there than on virgin land.

Having said that I think it’s a massive shame that we are pushing everyone back into offices. A better way to keep cities vibrant would be to turn the endless office space into living accommodation.

@DoesHePlayTheFiddle

Joni Mitchell was concerned about this too, apparently. Fifty years ago. joni

I love that song

They’ll put all the trees in a tree museum and charge you a dollar and a half to go see them….