Build on brownfield sites in cities

[PoliteCritic]

This is the cry of people fighting against the building of new homes in the countryside. I think they are wrong.

I live in a City. Over the last five years lots of green areas have been built on. I went to Surrey at the weekend and they have lots of green spaces in between houses as well as proximity to green belt space. It felt leafy and green. In my City with all the odd bits of green spaces being built on, the City feels more and more concrete like.

There has to be a limit to building in cities. If you build on every green space except small parks serving enormous populations, then you make cities very unpleasant places to live. Why should places like Surrey live in far greener surroundings with access to large green spaces, and yet call for ever more building in Cities?

We need to build on these green spaces as well and in pretty ordinary fields to expand villages. You can't keep your view and expect those in cities to be left with virtually no access to any green space.
AIBU?

I live in a town I feel like a complete nimby at the moment because I've objected to planning permission on a piece of land behind us that used to be a very large garden to create an infill development of 8 houses. I wouldn't have objected if it was 4 houses, but looking at the space I can't fathom how you would fit 8 on it, but clearly it's all about the profit to be made. Pile them high, sell them for overinflated prices.

I have a massive worry that the government are not looking at minimum standards for what is getting built and we're going to end up with a lot of very overpriced tiny houses that are unpleasant to live in, poor quality and eye wateringly expensive.

What we need is a proper strategy for funding and constructing good quality council houses like in the postwar period, not a green light to developers to start a feeding frenzy.

I'm guessing the government will at some point expand the help to buy schemes so people can be saddled with an insanely huge mortgage with a tint deposit, which people will take up because they have no other choice, house prices will keep going up and there still won't be anywhere near enough council houses because that's not what developers want to build.

Brownfield sites are not green spaces though. That's the point.

I don't believe we really need as many homes being built as there are. It's appaling. We are a small island. So kuchen needs to change. More flats for council properties, make council and housing association residents downsize.

Making use of empty buildings already in existence.

Work to encourage more family stability so we font need 2 houses per "family" to pass the children between.

We absolutely must not build on more green spaces. Its abhorrent that our countryside is being eaten up in housing.

Yes!

We have so many derelict, abandoned buildings around here that imo should be developed before we start tearing up fields.

We have so many abandoned buildings that are just an eyesore - a whole holiday park that shut years ago and is never going to reopen, the grounds of an old unused prison, etc, etc. My local town has dozens and dozens of empty shops, with empty flats above them that have been allowed to fall into disrepair.

And when we do build whole estates on fields, we need to look at what we’re building - 2-3 bed family homes, flats, affordable housing. Not 5 bedroom ‘executive’ houses that no one local can afford to buy so they get bought up as yet more second homes.

But they could be.

When was the last big park established? We will all be boiling hot and flooded because of endless development.

We need parks and green spaces. We will be paying the price for the overdevelopment we allow.

@Piggiesinblankets do you live in a house or a tower block with kids?

And councils already encourage older people to downsize from council houses. But there is alack of places to go. Warden aided complexes have a large service charge, but lots of people do not need wardens just because they are in their sixties and seventies.
Lots of those executive 4 bedroom homes are occupied by a single person or couple. That is the real over occupation happening.

Build flats with smaller footprints and you'll be able to preserve more of the green belts.

Brownfield development should not mean building on urban green spaces. The main targets should be things like car parks, deindustrialized zones and similar.

These discussions always end up framing things in terms of “building flats on a car park vs building a housing estate on meadows around a village.” Probably both those things will have to happen to an extent, but we are forgetting the other way of adding more housing—densifying some existing areas by demolishing some of the small two-storey buildings and replacing them with taller buildings. The UK has the oldest and heat-leakiest housing stock in Europe - a lot of it needs rebuilding anyway, quite honestly. I understand preserving the odd extremely-beautiful Georgian townhouse, but a lot of older British housing is not that lovely and not fit for purpose.

I come from a northern city with acre after acre of small 19th century terraces - they are “sweet,” but are impossible to insulate and very small. If you replaced these with neighborhoods consisting of four-storey buildings (a three-storey house with more space for a family, plus a small flat at the top for a single person) plus some mid-rise apartment buildings of 5 or 6 storeys, that would actually solve much of the housing shortage.

I’m inclined to agree. The city where I live is starting to look like a real dogs breakfast, with piecemeal blocks of flats or new build houses going up on every tiny scrap of land, completely out of keeping with the vernacular.

It’s such a pleasant surprise when a developer actually tries to make the new building look like the existing houses, and they do look great.

I don't think it would because people don't want flats with the issues that come with them and the lack of communal outside space in a lot of towns.

Ben Pentreath comes from a privileged background but much of this speech rings very true to me - we no longer build for the long term

It's quite a long read but worth it I think.

pentreath-hall.com/blogs/inspiration/for-the-long-term

Presumably all of the 'build flats' brigade would be the first to volunteer to move Into these new flats with no garden and no parks within walking distance?

Thought not

I completely agree.

Every patch of brown land has been built on in my area - rightly so, it's makes sense to get denser - but we're getting to the point that developers are trying to build on unsuitable land. One site, which is right underneath the motorway, had plans rejected by the council because it didn't pass the threshold of being suitable for residential sites because the air quality is so poor. The developers have applied again and looks depressingly like it might be approved now.

It's build.out or build up, you can't object to both. There is a desperate need for housing and if we don't suck it up and accept building on the green belt I worry we're going to start seeing a more and more bad developments in cities.

Both my sets of grandparents were working class people born and brought up in slum conditions. They moved to new build council estates in the 1930s that were semi detached on individual plots with decent sized front and back gardens, on spacious well-planned estates. It’s such a shame that the next generation won’t have that.

we have just had an appeal granted locally for 400 houses to be built on the side of the suburb in green belt which has about 4000 homes 99 % of which were built in the last 100 years

All the locals kicked off and fought it all the way despite it originally being the councils idea as they hadnt a local plan in place for over 20 years and have a quota of housing needs to fill

The planning inspector pointed out that the lane had no public access and was mostly not visible to the vast majority of the suburb , flanked on one side by a railway line and an industrial estate the other . the developer only put fwd plans to build on half of it , not touching the woodland and creating the other half into a wildlife area etc

Not all green belt is rolling countryside and I think it should all be looked at on its own merits

The local objectors were all foaming at the mouth in anger about it all , failing to realise their hypocrisy as they all lived in were all built on a green field at some point in the last 100 years

Everyone agrees that we need more houses , but just not here !!!

Why aren't they developing empty shops/warehouses? There's loads in our local town since they built a retail park on the outer edge. The big shops have moved onto there leaving whole swathes empty.

Surely these sites would be ideal to help with the housing crisis - close enough to walk to retail park/bus station/train station etc, yet they're left to go to ruin.

It’s not even full of local people. It’s overspill from Essex.

🙄

I’ve always wondered what is the point of bricking up/boarding up old houses, either make them habitable again or demolish them and build new houses.

YANBU

The amount of crappy malls, run down flats we have in cities and instead of demolishing….they encroach further and further out taking up green space.
We have a Mall that has been half empty for 15 years now- Debenhams, BHS etc ….huge stores all closed down and never replaced. This mall has a prime centre location. Its madness. The council should have powers to acquire these sites if underused and assign the space for housing

So you want people to live in smaller flats with no gardens so you can preserve your view?

To be fair small flats aren’t this issue. It’s that they aren’t fit for purpose. The spaces aren’t designed properly, very little storage space. You have the same furniture that would fit in a large house.

You see the amazing storage solutions and planning in tiny homes and you think with a bit of imagination, flats even small ones could be so much more pleasant to live in.
It’s not the size, it’s what you do with it!

@Pleaselettheholidayend Where I live houses have been built on wasteland right next to a dual carriageway, so 4 lanes of traffic. They are small family sized houses with a car park space in front. I would hate to live there. It should have been left as wasteland, or at most planted some trees there.

Having worked for the council planning department

I know that the Tory's have been pushing and forcing councils to use any site going that was previously refused to build homes where the ugly plans were also previously refused

Brown sites the lot

They plan on using allotment sites once there's nothing left

The councils are saying no to lots of unsuitable sites but the government says you have to use them we don't care.

Labour might change this but probably not