Is it time to rethink Britain's green belt?

[JonathanGRR]

^
Stealing London's parkland for development is the terrible idea.

[mrnyc]

i dk why you quoted me for that but ok.

[nito]

Originally Posted by Qubert

Why are the areas in the Thames river basin heading east so recently developed compared to areas to the west? Is it a matter of conversion from industrial to residential? I do realize the east end was the manufacturing heartland, but I would have thought much workers housing would have been built in the same area as well.

Most of this area was dominated by the sprawling Port of London (once the largest port in the world) and its network of docks. The arrival of containerisation made the docks redundant and that released a vast amount of land for redevelopment, quite a lot of which is yet to be developed. Most docker housing was located away from the riverside to the north and south.

Canary Wharf is probably the most famous redevelopment project in the area, which has evolved to become London’s third CBD, but in terms of residential there are a handful of giant projects under construction or planned such as Wood Wharf, Silvertown Quays, Royal Arsenal Waterside, Royal Wharf, Greenwich Peninsula, etc… which will deliver tens of thousands of units.

[muppet]

Also that small Blitz/WWII thing happened. London at it's pre-war population height (still larger than today's at 8.6- 9 million) was a much denser place both residentially and physically. Inner London for example had about 80% the density of today's Inner Paris, but covered 3x the area.

It's densest districts all went the way of the bomb, including the old City of London heart. The cathedral was saved by a suicidal fire watch :










As Nito mentioned all that East End was industrial (about 1/8 of the city's land fell derelict in the 1980s), but that was also built on existing industrial Victorian fabric, and the huge working class districts (that would have been a good contender for London's Old Town if they had survived). The gaping hole punched out of the centre marks the 1/3 of the city destroyed in the war.



the East End burns on the first day of the Blitz, whereby the city was hit by mass raids every night for 3 months


http://psykologisk.no


bomb map of the old centre


www.technobuffalo.com

[10023]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

it does. hudson river park. much better than decent and not even done yet. oh and the highline. more to come on the east side, too. you shouldn't have cut & run so soon

Only someone who doesn't understand the purpose of parks (and lives somewhere without any) would think Hudson River Park is up to standard as parkland. It's an area for activities, sure... but that's different. A patch of grass or a jogging path or a basketball court is not a "park".

And I say this as someone who ran along it 3x per week for years and occasionally played tennis there, so it's not as if I'm not familiar with it.

[mhays]

I'd say you don't understand the purpose of parks.

The first rule is there's no single purpose. Parks can be for a bunch of things -- strolling, court/field sports, relaxing in quiet, festivals, jogging, injecting green into the landscape, making a capitol building look good, study of botany, and so on. If it's green and open to the public, and serves at least a couple of those items, it's probably a park.

[10023]

Originally Posted by mhays

I'd say you don't understand the purpose of parks.

The first rule is there's no single purpose. Parks can be for a bunch of things -- strolling, court/field sports, relaxing in quiet, festivals, jogging, injecting green into the landscape, making a capitol building look good, study of botany, and so on. If it's green and open to the public, and serves at least a couple of those items, it's probably a park.

But a tiny strip of land like Hudson River Park serves few of those purposes. It certainly doesn't provide urban residents with some facsimile of the country, as great parks do. It's more of an esplanade.

There is no real park in Manhattan south of 59th Street. Madison Square Park probably comes closest. There are public spaces, but they are not true parkland.

[mhays]

Some parks give you a wide-open, scenic feeling by being large. Others do it by overlooking the water, or a city view. You can be a three-foot parking strip and do well in that regard. The amount of land you're standing on being large enough to be considered a park is semantics.

Replace the Hudson and East Rivers with chunks of Brooklyn. Manhattan would have a tremendously different feeling. That's what waterfronts (and their parking strip parks in some cases) can do.

[10023]

I agree that it provides an open vista. But it's not the same as having a chunk of nature in the city.

[fflint]

Originally Posted by 10023

I agree that it provides an open vista. But it's not the same as having a chunk of nature in the city.

"Nature" is a loaded word. What do you think it means?

[dc_denizen]

I would put the hudson/east river parks ahead of Battersea park, though or the south bank (although it has nice cultural attractions). the thames waterfront is a bit less interesting than the NYC waterfront, mostly because its a smaller river.

Where London shines is the smaller, immaculately kept parks scattered around everywhere in the CBD and beyond.

[10023]

I don't think anyone would mention the Southbank as an example of open space in London. It's a tourist packed esplanade with a few museums and cultural attractions. There are so many people that you can barely move on weekends.

Look, obviously everyone here will try to argue with every fucking thing I say, but I lived in lower Manhattan for the better part of a decade, and there are no significant parks. The city was built up before this was something which people thought about.

[JonathanGRR]

All the small squares scattered around the city really make walking and living in London pleasant. But the occasional massive park (I live between Hyde Park and Regents Park) is really nice too. You get a different sort of feeling when you're in the middle of Hyde Park unlike anything else you can get in other parts of the city.

[10023]

^ Exactly. I run in Ken Gardens/Hyde Park two or three times a week. I walked across the park to go shopping over the weekend, and occasionally walk to work in Mayfair on nice days. You can picnic or play sports in a large park, or let the dog run around. You can't really do that in pocket parks and squares.

In a big city, you need big expanses of green... personally I want to be within walking distance of a place where it's possible to feel like one's not in the city at all.

Best in the fall when it's gotten a bit colder and most of the tourists and London's summer residents are gone:

[10023]

As for the original article... it's about what one would expect from the (very liberal) Guardian. Lots of focus on "fairness" and housing affordability and none on overall quality or aesthetics. Not to sound like a NIMBY, but there are good arguments for not ruining a place just so more people can afford a piece of it.

The comparison to the Netherlands is apt, but it's not favorable to the Netherlands. Housing there is cheaper for a number of reasons, but much of the country is also covered in a form of ugly, mid-density sprawl. It's not the exurban subdivisions you get in the US or Canada, but it's not very nice either.

Personally, I think one of the best things about this country is the proximity of open space and rural land to cities. You can live in an actual village, with horse stables and grazing sheep, and be closer to an actual city center than most American suburbs. To me that's worth more expensive housing.

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Commentators usually point to the fact that cities with expensive housing prices are those that restrict growth through regulation: London, San Francisco, Boston, Vancouver, etc.

But are prices high because these places are restrictive, or are prices high because those places are good, and their quality attracts people with money? The strict regulations on land development may actually be symptomatic of the fact that those cities value a certain quality of life, and the wealthy people who are attracted to these places are also the kind to place restrictions on how and where land should be developed.

For these reasons, I think that suggesting that the Green Belt should be 'lifted' so that house prices will decline is kind of missing the point.

Precisely.

To use another example, it's been suggested on this forum that if only the NIMBYs would allow it, one could build lots of residential highrises in expensive NY neighborhoods like the West Village that are in high demand. But to do so would destroy much of what people love so much about the West Village.

[SHiRO]

Originally Posted by 10023

The comparison to the Netherlands is apt, but it's not favorable to the Netherlands. Housing there is cheaper for a number of reasons, but much of the country is also covered in a form of ugly, mid-density sprawl. It's not the exurban subdivisions you get in the US or Canada, but it's not very nice either.

Much of the Netherlands is covered in mid-density sprawl? Not really.

[chris08876]

Although the topic of sprawl has been debated amongst urbanists when it comes to the Netherlands. Are the areas that tend to sprawl as bad as the ones in the U.S.? Of course not. Nothing beats U.S. sprawl when it comes to the frequency, the mundane nature, and poorly planned. At least the Netherlands tends to design such places with smart growth concepts versus in the U.S. where its just a nightmare.

[SHiRO]

Originally Posted by chris08876

Are the areas that tend to sprawl as bad as the ones in the U.S.?

And which areas would that be?

The NL is very densely populated and planned to the extreme (maybe most in the world). There's no room here for sprawl. New developments tend to be very compact, but there's not alot of those because again there is no room and the land is already peppered with historic villages and towns that act as suburbs and satellite cities.

Densely populated is not the same as sprawling and cities and towns in the Netherlands are more compactly planned than those in England/the UK.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...meenten-50.jpg

Now Belgium, that's an example of uncontrolled ugly sprawl.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by 10023

^ Exactly. I run in Ken Gardens/Hyde Park two or three times a week. I walked across the park to go shopping over the weekend, and occasionally walk to work in Mayfair on nice days. You can picnic or play sports in a large park, or let the dog run around. You can't really do that in pocket parks and squares.

In a big city, you need big expanses of green... personally I want to be within walking distance of a place where it's possible to feel like one's not in the city at all.

Best in the fall when it's gotten a bit colder and most of the tourists and London's summer residents are gone:

oh for pete's sake. if you wanted big greenswards so badly, you should have had the sense to live next to central park, prospect park, riverdale or city island where you could have had the same.

[mhays]

True. Cities have "space budgets" much like a person has a financial budget. Do I want a 200-acre forest and lawn? Sure. But space is tight. So we attempt to strike a balance. If 70% of the benefit can happen with 10 scattered acres instead, and we get to use the other 190 acres for other stuff, it's probably a good idea.

Lower Manhattan has Battery Park as well as Battery Park City, the City Hall area, and so on. It's not Valhalla from a park standpoint but it does pretty well.