Blame Ide for America's problems

[Valmy]

We have "green belt" issues that try to address sprawl as well, they're just incredibly localized and not at the national government level like England.    Plenty of regions in America where all the well-off people (read: white) left the cities, built nice homes and schools in the countryside, then promptly passed lots of local laws to prevent anybody else (read: blacks) from following them out to their idyllic sylvan landscapes and golf courses.   We're just so big, it's not really a problem anybody cares to do anything about.

Really?  Interesting we have major black flight over here.  It creates a funny cycle of white flight-black flight-urban decay-gentrification.  For fun I checked the home prices in a neighborhood that 10 years ago was one of the poorest and oldest black neighborhoods in Austin.  Price for a little run down shack?  $550,000.00.  Yep.

[CountDeMoney]

We have "green belt" issues that try to address sprawl as well, they're just incredibly localized and not at the national government level like England.    Plenty of regions in America where all the well-off people (read: white) left the cities, built nice homes and schools in the countryside, then promptly passed lots of local laws to prevent anybody else (read: blacks) from following them out to their idyllic sylvan landscapes and golf courses.   We're just so big, it's not really a problem anybody cares to do anything about.

Really?  Interesting we have major black flight over here.  It creates a funny cycle of white flight-black flight-urban decay-gentrification.  For fun I checked the home prices in a neighborhood that 10 years ago was one of the poorest and oldest black neighborhoods in Austin.  Price for a little run down shack?  $550,000.00.  Yep.

Oh yeah, there's a  massive demographic reversal in the east of the urban-suburban dynamic at work as well;  we're seeing a return to the cities by white professionals and hipsters after so many minorities got a chance to get out of Dodge with the housing and mortgage boom of the 1990s.  Hell, Baltimore City's population and tax base actually just increased for the first time since the early 1950's, and they're building out shitty old neighborhoods that were once heavily minority, since they've already moved out to the suburbs. 

But I wasn't referencing the suburbs when it comes to the "green belt" anti-sprawl stuff;  I'm talking much farther out, where public transportation isn't allowed to go.

[Valmy]

I like the commenters suggesting the problem is that Britain just has too many people and people need to stop having babies.  In that case the easy solution is simply to do nothing because people will flee the country to find a place to live.

[Berkut]

Plenty of regions in America where all the well-off people (read: white) left the cities, built nice homes and schools in the countryside, then promptly passed lots of local laws to prevent anybody else (read: blacks) from following them out to their idyllic sylvan landscapes and golf courses.   

[/quote]

Could you cite me some examples of these laws prohibiting black people from "following them out to their idyllic sylvan landscapes and golf courses."?

I am very interested in how that would work.

[Valmy]

Small towns out here are generally right wing anarcho-liberal type of political culture so that would not fly out here.  But I could certainly see East Coasters fighting to keep their idyllic landscapes intact.

[Viking]

I think I brought this up before. The missing spite is related to the Second Great Awakening, the second spike is Abolition, the third spike is Prohibition and the fourth spike is civil rights. The other missing spike is the one of 1770, related to the First Great Awakening. I suggested in a post earlier that there is a three generation cycle of despair-idealism-radicalism-conflict-despair.

In a sense, the doughboys despaired, the greatest generation was idealistic and the boomers were radicalized. 70s-80s despair, 90s-00s idealism, 10s-20s radicalization?

[CountDeMoney]

Could you cite me some examples of these laws prohibiting black people from "following them out to their idyllic sylvan landscapes and golf courses."?

I am very interested in how that would work.

Scads of community zoning laws prevent Section 8 designations, subsidized housing vouchers and the construction of low-income housing.  They work themselves in and out of the court system all the time.  Exclusionary zoning practices is a long-standing, cherished American tradition.

[Agelastus]

But the rural councils around it are doing everything they can to stop it - central government could step in to help Stevenage. This reluctance is probably worse because the Tories heartland are precisely the sort of councils most likely to object to any new building.

While true, it's not always quite as simple as "we don't want it here". The latest plan for my local town is generally opposed, but not just by the "not here" community. It's opposed because it on its own is an example of terrible planning, even compared to the previous plans.

My small town is built on a slope rising up out of the Ise Valley. The last two expansion plans have involved building houses at the top of the hill. The latest involves extending the town towards the Ise. The land in question is boggy already and basically beyond the point where the more locally planned developments of the Seventies and early Eighties stopped for good reason.

Concreting over a huge chunk of land where the water table's so high already is not a clever idea. It's even less clever when you remember the flooding issues that Northampton and other parts of the South of my County have had in the last decade. But because of the "we need more houses" mantra that's the vogue these days that's where they want to build them.

My town has no railway station (nor can it get one since it's on a 2 lane section of the Midland Main Line), few jobs (even before the last two rounds of expansion it was a commuter town), and limited leisure facilities (the leisure centre we had being closed down and replaced with a smaller facility in the new housing projects on top of the hill...the old one being in the same boggy area they now want to build houses on.) It's always puzzled me why they want to build more commuter houses while demonising car drivers.

As an aside and a sign that previous housing plans haven't been adequately thought out - ever since they built the new estates at the top of the hill the sewers at the other end of town lower down the slope have suffered overflow problems (presumably because sewers don't need expanding when a town does - OK, that's probably evidence-less paranoia, but since this is the same planning department that thinks a larger town needs a smaller leisure centre... )

Suffice it to say that the new plans are not entirely opposed due to a kneejerk reaction against anything new.

Anyway, we need to end the "house is good" mantra and start building more flats. We need to look more into why there are so many empty homes in the country (at least the ones empty for more than six months, less than that is just part of the buying/moving merry-go-round.) As Shielbh said, we need to improve the houses that are built, and not just in terms of their energy efficiency; modern housing estates are terrible, with weirdly curved streets substituting for individuality and style - living as I do on a street where the houses have been built up over time and are all different styles a modern housing estate looks as soul-destroying to me as the flats built in the Fifties and Sixties were supposed to be.

[derspiess]

Could you cite me some examples of these laws prohibiting black people from "following them out to their idyllic sylvan landscapes and golf courses."?

I am very interested in how that would work.

Scads of community zoning laws prevent Section 8 designations, subsidized housing vouchers and the construction of low-income housing.  They work themselves in and out of the court system all the time.  Exclusionary zoning practices is a long-standing, cherished American tradition.

Maybe people are just worried about crime?

[CountDeMoney]

Maybe people are just worried about crime?

Then perhaps they should pass zoning laws prohibiting teenagers.

[Sheilbh]

Suffice it to say that the new plans are not entirely opposed due to a kneejerk reaction against anything new.

There's always an exception to prove the rule. And I've no doubt that 99% of the people who oppose new developments in their area do so for reasons that seem entirely sensible to them and sometimes, as in your case, they're right. But the cumulative effect is a shortage of homes and a growing population.

As Shielbh said, we need to improve the houses that are built, and not just in terms of their energy efficiency; modern housing estates are terrible, with weirdly curved streets substituting for individuality and style - living as I do on a street where the houses have been built up over time and are all different styles a modern housing estate looks as soul-destroying to me as the flats built in the Fifties and Sixties were supposed to be.

I think the easiest way to improve the quality of new houses is to tilt the market back in favour of the buyer.

Here's a blogpost by Sir Peter Hall, mentioned by Lord Adonis above, on what should be done:
http://architizer.com/blog/sir-peter-hall/
A relevant bit given your town's situation:

And these places were not randomly scattered across the Dutch countryside: national guidelines and local masterplans put them next to established cities – with brilliant train or tram or bus links that connected them to those cities, and to the jobs and services they offered, in a very few minutes. When the Dutch Railways complained that they were being asked to build a new train station at Vathorst, years in advance of most of the passengers that would use it, the local planner-developers simply came back and said: we'll pay you to build it now, because we don't want everyone getting the habit of car dependence. Similarly, in Ypenburg they put in a new tram line from the city very early on, and for good measure followed it up with another line connecting in another direction to the university city of Delft.

The difference, compared with the way we've been doing things the last thirty years, is that in the Netherlands everything follows everything else in logical sequence. First, develop a nationwide strategy to determine where you're going to build the new homes – but only in consultation with local authorities, who fully share on the decision process. Then, ensure to build the transport links and basic facilities like shopping and schools. Then, masterplan neighborhoods to the highest standards, with bikeways far from traffic and with generous open park space everywhere. Then, and only then, invite the developer-builders in. Make deals with them, involving some element of compromise – the Dutch are good at that – but preserving the essential features of the plan. And the builders go along with it, because people like the result and buy their houses.

[Berkut]

Could you cite me some examples of these laws prohibiting black people from "following them out to their idyllic sylvan landscapes and golf courses."?

I am very interested in how that would work.

Scads of community zoning laws prevent Section 8 designations, subsidized housing vouchers and the construction of low-income housing.  They work themselves in and out of the court system all the time.  Exclusionary zoning practices is a long-standing, cherished American tradition.

Ahhh, so in other words, no you cannot provide any such examples?

I suspected as much, but still, a little disappointment here.

[CountDeMoney]

Ahhh, so in other words, no you cannot provide any such examples?

I suspected as much, but still, a little disappointment here.

Racism: If You Don't Link It, It Doesn't Exist!

[garbon]

Ahhh, so in other words, no you cannot provide any such examples?

I suspected as much, but still, a little disappointment here.

Racism: If You Don't Link It, It Doesn't Exist!

Yeah better to just accept as truth the rantings of a man who cries racism 24/7. He's gotta be right at some point, right?

[CountDeMoney]

Yeah better to just accept as truth the rantings of a man who cries racism 24/7. He's gotta be right at some point, right?

I just blame Ide.