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Overcrowded Britain


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We come to Shetland to get away from the poo hole that lies south of the Fair Isle, the population doesn't need another town, doing what?

and theres enough prats on the road in any case.

It will end up with no open spaces left down south, and if your a Toonie and hate the outdoors ,why would you want to live in Shetland, theres always Glasgow, Aberdeen, etc.

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You could have a town that produces so much wealth that it could afford to help nearby areas by building such things as low cost housing, tunnel links..

 

I reckon an industrial originated town (But done eco-friendly, eg. no black belching smoke stacks!) of that size could see its surplus wealth be around the £500 million mark per year.

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Where would this new Toon be located?

10.000 new people ,from where?

What jobs would they do?

Costs of new schools to educate the 2.500 approx?....kids.

New leisure centres to cope with extra demand.

 

Or perhaps this new Utopia shouldn't involve kids, working couples only, with a minimum deposit of £250.000 per couple to invest in the new Toon?

ETC...ETC...ETC. :wink:

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Located wherever it was welcomed :-)

 

Though land price would have something to say on this too, would be much better to build it someplace where land is £500 an acre than £4 million.

 

I reckon there is enough surplus people in the UK to round up 10,000 hard workers from among them. (Well, hopefully..)

 

Manufactoring jobs would play a big part I reckon, as one of reasons why our costs are so high is the cost of our housing, reduce that and you could then afford to pay workers less. (Though if you ran it like a cooperative, they would actually get more!) Teleworking could be a good way to start as there is an awful lot of web/programming work out there which is being outsourced to other countries at the moment due to their lower living costs.

 

Transport costs are also very high, and as such a port based town would be more able to compete on a level playing field in world markets than a town based inland. (That and if you built your town around the idea of ultra cheap transport links, perhaps free public transport, electric vehicles, the taxibus approach looks promising. (Basically free taxis for all.))

 

I wasn't thinking of any deposits at all, as another reason why our country is having such difficulties is ease of labour movement. There might well be jobs 100 miles away, but unless you can easily move to them, your a bit stuffed!

 

Just turn up for work!

 

Children would be an important part to help maintain the population, otherwise you would end up with all old folk and no one to look after them!

 

Other countries are building successfully such towns, I reckon its about time we copied them!

 

Huaxi in China is a good example in many ways.

 

Greensburg US is perhaps not..

 

 

For those interested, related links:

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/may/10/china.jonathanwatts

 

http://www.greensburgks.org

 

 

http://www.oycf.org/Perspectives/7_083100/nanjie_model_and_its_vitality.htm

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Well the place with the most infrastructure is Lerwick, so to build a new town with the least expense would be first build a tunnel to Bressay, and create the new town over there. It would never be allowed though!

Building on the North Isles would involve massive undertaking of new infrastructure, just to transport materials up there. Carbon footprint of bringing stuff up here to build a town bigger than Lerwick and Scalloway combined, would be huge!

But that wouldn't bother the council, footprint of mega wind factorys and all that !

I say build it on Orkney. :lol:

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> You're Calamity in disguise and I claim my £5.

 

:-) I suppose we have some aspects in common, maybe its because we both came from Essex :-)

 

If you built it earth sheltered style, you could avoid wrecking the countryside, sticking the buildings underground and leaving topside for enjoyable countryside, even plant a few trees here or there.

 

In time, one might be able to afford to buy up the existing ruined countryside with buildings on (Estimated to be around the 160 Trillion pound mark in total if you want to convert the entire UK..) and turn it into a nice earth sheltered place. After all, we have built on how much land already, 10% ? so if we used another 1% only make a better job of it this time that would be ok ?

 

But you really need to start someplace fresh so you can design it better and not just repeat the same town planning mistakes we are currently making over and over again. As mentioned I tihnk in another thread about the lack of affordable housing, due to private ownership pushing prices ever higher, what we need is plenty of social housing with low rents for all, and not sold off to the highest bidder. We need housing close to where you work to reduce commuting time. Well designed buildings to last hundreds of years out of fireproof materials, rather than the shoddy structures thrown up of late by developers intent on squeezing every penny of profit from a development before creating another unproductive housing estate on a greenfield site..

 

We do need to figure out just what is and what isn't too much development for an area, I reckon small towns of 10,000 population each with sizable countryside belts between them would be far better than a stonking great city of millions and not a patch of grass for miles.

 

What level of population would anyone say was suitable for around here, especially Fetlar as that looks a good place to start with, 250 max there, or 2,000 ?

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