'Ouses, Greenbelt and stuff

First.Aspect said:

briantrumpet said:

rjsterry said:

briantrumpet said:

Pross said:

briantrumpet said:

@rjsterry Have you ever looked at the blog Demolition Exeter? It's well worth a look.

I'm sure the theme could be copied for most cities, but it's horrifically eye-opening on how little value was placed on 'old buildings' in Exeter from before the Victorian times onwards by town planners. I can only assume the general public didn't have any particular regard for the old buildings either, given how much has been destroyed in the name of 'progress' with nary a word of dissent, as far as I can tell.

If you take away sentimentality it makes sense for housing to be regularly demolished and rebuilt to suit the demands of the current generation. Far too much stuff seems to get listed and basically impossible to adapt to modern use. I find old buildings far more interesting and aesthetically appealing as a rule but from a practical point of view demolition and rebuilding regularly is the way to go. I suspect if we started again even the location of many towns and cities would change.

Hmm, a good one for debate. Exeter is certainly constrained by its layout: radial roads still based on Roman roads converging on a single river crossing. The contrast with 'modern' towns based on grid layout couldn't be starker. Taken to its extreme, your suggestion would suggest that flattening and rebuilding (probably not on a river) would the logical solution.

Actually, Exeter centre would have looked similar to old York, had not much of the medieval city been half-timbered houses which had degraded into slums by the 19th century. They didn't take much tearing down. The Roman/medieval gatehouses were rather more resistant, I suspect.

The trouble with the flatten-&-rebuild strategy is that you then get stuck with stuff that itself dates quickly... Hitler did his bit in Exeter, and it got stuck with very utilitarian brick buildings of the 50's, and think Birmingham's Bullring or Bristol's Broadmead for large-scale soon-hated rebuilds.

Bristol nerdery: Broadmead is an interesting one. The main shopping area used to be around Castle Street in what is now Castle Park, centred on the original medieval crossroads where the streets connecting the bridges over the Avon and Frome intersect with the streets connecting the docks to the long demolished castle.
The area was actually very mixed with a school, two churches, housing, a brewery and various other industries all crammed in around narrow streets. From a town planning you can see why having everything cheek by jowel in buildings of variable quality was thought to be less than ideal. It was severely damaged in the blitz and the local authority took the opportunity to tidy things up. There was significant resistance from shopkeepers but the decision was taken to create a new shopping precinct in Broadmead, surrounded by the newly completed inner ring road. The Castle Street area was promised as a new cultural quarter but after years as car parking was eventually landscaped as a park. With only shops and only easily accessible by car, Broadmead was almost deserted after 5 o'clock and on Sundays, so it's not that much of a surprise that it was somewhat less loved than the old Castle Street area.

Thanks for the nerdery. Given that two of my 4x grandparents carried on trades in central Bristol (inc Broad Street) and a great grandparent at Temple Street, I ought to have done more reading about pre-war Bristol.

I do remember the smell of the Courage Brewery wafting over school in the 1970s... it was where they carried on brewing real ales Courage Best and Directors.

Thanks for confirming that you have 4x grandparents. If it was 3x grandparents, or 2x, I'd be concerned about 6x toes on one foot.

First.Aspect said:

briantrumpet said:

First.Aspect said:

briantrumpet said:

rjsterry said:

briantrumpet said:

Pross said:

briantrumpet said:

@rjsterry Have you ever looked at the blog Demolition Exeter? It's well worth a look.

I'm sure the theme could be copied for most cities, but it's horrifically eye-opening on how little value was placed on 'old buildings' in Exeter from before the Victorian times onwards by town planners. I can only assume the general public didn't have any particular regard for the old buildings either, given how much has been destroyed in the name of 'progress' with nary a word of dissent, as far as I can tell.

If you take away sentimentality it makes sense for housing to be regularly demolished and rebuilt to suit the demands of the current generation. Far too much stuff seems to get listed and basically impossible to adapt to modern use. I find old buildings far more interesting and aesthetically appealing as a rule but from a practical point of view demolition and rebuilding regularly is the way to go. I suspect if we started again even the location of many towns and cities would change.

Hmm, a good one for debate. Exeter is certainly constrained by its layout: radial roads still based on Roman roads converging on a single river crossing. The contrast with 'modern' towns based on grid layout couldn't be starker. Taken to its extreme, your suggestion would suggest that flattening and rebuilding (probably not on a river) would the logical solution.

Actually, Exeter centre would have looked similar to old York, had not much of the medieval city been half-timbered houses which had degraded into slums by the 19th century. They didn't take much tearing down. The Roman/medieval gatehouses were rather more resistant, I suspect.

The trouble with the flatten-&-rebuild strategy is that you then get stuck with stuff that itself dates quickly... Hitler did his bit in Exeter, and it got stuck with very utilitarian brick buildings of the 50's, and think Birmingham's Bullring or Bristol's Broadmead for large-scale soon-hated rebuilds.

Bristol nerdery: Broadmead is an interesting one. The main shopping area used to be around Castle Street in what is now Castle Park, centred on the original medieval crossroads where the streets connecting the bridges over the Avon and Frome intersect with the streets connecting the docks to the long demolished castle.
The area was actually very mixed with a school, two churches, housing, a brewery and various other industries all crammed in around narrow streets. From a town planning you can see why having everything cheek by jowel in buildings of variable quality was thought to be less than ideal. It was severely damaged in the blitz and the local authority took the opportunity to tidy things up. There was significant resistance from shopkeepers but the decision was taken to create a new shopping precinct in Broadmead, surrounded by the newly completed inner ring road. The Castle Street area was promised as a new cultural quarter but after years as car parking was eventually landscaped as a park. With only shops and only easily accessible by car, Broadmead was almost deserted after 5 o'clock and on Sundays, so it's not that much of a surprise that it was somewhat less loved than the old Castle Street area.

Thanks for the nerdery. Given that two of my 4x grandparents carried on trades in central Bristol (inc Broad Street) and a great grandparent at Temple Street, I ought to have done more reading about pre-war Bristol.

I do remember the smell of the Courage Brewery wafting over school in the 1970s... it was where they carried on brewing real ales Courage Best and Directors.

Thanks for confirming that you have 4x grandparents. If it was 3x grandparents, or 2x, I'd be concerned about 6x toes on one foot.

OOI, what would you call great great great great grandparents (other than very dead)?

Your Highness, statistically.

Pross said:

Just to show how you'll never find a site everyone is happy to develop for housing. There is a Brownfield site being developed in Newport for 500 houses. A high proportion of these will be affordable or social including over a hundred shared ownership and the site includes a new school and local centre. The site was previously a steelworks that has been demolished and remediated and has acted as a temporary staff car park for the hospital for a few years. A large part of that hospital's function has now been replaced by a new hospital about 5 miles away so the previous parking issues have been eased significantly. It's located alongside one of the main routes through the city with lots of bus services including the route into Cardiff. The city centre is about a 15 minute walk with two retail parks a similar distance away, the bus station is also around 15 minutes away and the mainline railway station serving Cardiff, Bristol and London is about a 20-25 minute walk.

You'd be hard pressed to find a more sustainable, Brownfield site but people are still moaning that there'll be too much traffic (the factory would have previously generated a lot of traffic as would the car park and the main road is actually probably carrying less than it was 30 years ago due to a relief road), there's a lack of infrastruture (there's a new school on site and a couple of comprehensive schools within walking distance plus a couple of hospitals within a 10 minute walk) and that the land should continue to be used for parking.

briantrumpet said:

Pross said:

Just to show how you'll never find a site everyone is happy to develop for housing. There is a Brownfield site being developed in Newport for 500 houses. A high proportion of these will be affordable or social including over a hundred shared ownership and the site includes a new school and local centre. The site was previously a steelworks that has been demolished and remediated and has acted as a temporary staff car park for the hospital for a few years. A large part of that hospital's function has now been replaced by a new hospital about 5 miles away so the previous parking issues have been eased significantly. It's located alongside one of the main routes through the city with lots of bus services including the route into Cardiff. The city centre is about a 15 minute walk with two retail parks a similar distance away, the bus station is also around 15 minutes away and the mainline railway station serving Cardiff, Bristol and London is about a 20-25 minute walk.

You'd be hard pressed to find a more sustainable, Brownfield site but people are still moaning that there'll be too much traffic (the factory would have previously generated a lot of traffic as would the car park and the main road is actually probably carrying less than it was 30 years ago due to a relief road), there's a lack of infrastruture (there's a new school on site and a couple of comprehensive schools within walking distance plus a couple of hospitals within a 10 minute walk) and that the land should continue to be used for parking.

Two main things in people's minds:

"Can I drive door to door easily?" (Any walk of more than 100m is totally unacceptable, obvs.)

"Why do they have to build new houses anyway?"

And from that they come up with all the reasons any new development is a bad idea.

Pross said:

briantrumpet said:

Pross said:

Just to show how you'll never find a site everyone is happy to develop for housing. There is a Brownfield site being developed in Newport for 500 houses. A high proportion of these will be affordable or social including over a hundred shared ownership and the site includes a new school and local centre. The site was previously a steelworks that has been demolished and remediated and has acted as a temporary staff car park for the hospital for a few years. A large part of that hospital's function has now been replaced by a new hospital about 5 miles away so the previous parking issues have been eased significantly. It's located alongside one of the main routes through the city with lots of bus services including the route into Cardiff. The city centre is about a 15 minute walk with two retail parks a similar distance away, the bus station is also around 15 minutes away and the mainline railway station serving Cardiff, Bristol and London is about a 20-25 minute walk.

You'd be hard pressed to find a more sustainable, Brownfield site but people are still moaning that there'll be too much traffic (the factory would have previously generated a lot of traffic as would the car park and the main road is actually probably carrying less than it was 30 years ago due to a relief road), there's a lack of infrastruture (there's a new school on site and a couple of comprehensive schools within walking distance plus a couple of hospitals within a 10 minute walk) and that the land should continue to be used for parking.

Two main things in people's minds:

"Can I drive door to door easily?" (Any walk of more than 100m is totally unacceptable, obvs.)

"Why do they have to build new houses anyway?"

And from that they come up with all the reasons any new development is a bad idea.

Exactly - "I have a house so why do we need to build more?"

briantrumpet said:

Pross said:

briantrumpet said:

Pross said:

Just to show how you'll never find a site everyone is happy to develop for housing. There is a Brownfield site being developed in Newport for 500 houses. A high proportion of these will be affordable or social including over a hundred shared ownership and the site includes a new school and local centre. The site was previously a steelworks that has been demolished and remediated and has acted as a temporary staff car park for the hospital for a few years. A large part of that hospital's function has now been replaced by a new hospital about 5 miles away so the previous parking issues have been eased significantly. It's located alongside one of the main routes through the city with lots of bus services including the route into Cardiff. The city centre is about a 15 minute walk with two retail parks a similar distance away, the bus station is also around 15 minutes away and the mainline railway station serving Cardiff, Bristol and London is about a 20-25 minute walk.

You'd be hard pressed to find a more sustainable, Brownfield site but people are still moaning that there'll be too much traffic (the factory would have previously generated a lot of traffic as would the car park and the main road is actually probably carrying less than it was 30 years ago due to a relief road), there's a lack of infrastruture (there's a new school on site and a couple of comprehensive schools within walking distance plus a couple of hospitals within a 10 minute walk) and that the land should continue to be used for parking.

Two main things in people's minds:

"Can I drive door to door easily?" (Any walk of more than 100m is totally unacceptable, obvs.)

"Why do they have to build new houses anyway?"

And from that they come up with all the reasons any new development is a bad idea.

Exactly - "I have a house so why do we need to build more?"

The wife of a friend of mine apparently was moaning about all the new houses around Exeter, so my friend pointed to her out that all the houses she'd lived in were on estates built in the 20th century on green fields. Not sure how well the observation went down...

Like I said, they’re not building houses where people need them. By far.

I'm not sure that reflects housing planning applications. Tunnel. House. Not the same.

Going back to the FT picture, does the article define "enough"? Because there are places adjacent to one another that are red and blue respectively, and equidistant from the nearest city.

Just took a quick look at a site my colleagues have been working on since 2014 for around 500 houses. It's an allocated site which as you'll know will have already taken a huge amount of input to effectively show it is a site suitable for residential development. A second Transport Assessment has reecntly been issued that runs to nearly 300 pages with the appendices. We have then also submitted a series of technical notes and other documents so that is already probably in excess of 500 pages for a single discipline. When you add on design & access, ecology, environmental impact, flood risk / drainage, site investigation, archeology etc. I'm actually surprised for a scheme of the magnitude of Lower Thames Crossing the amount of pages isn't significantly higher than stated.

Not sure the merger of two of the biggest housebuilders, Barratt and Redrow, is a good thing for getting more built and for keeping prices of new builds down.