Tim Watts wrote:
Doctor Drivel wrote:

"Tim Watts" wrote in message
...
hugh wrote:


And about 75% of the people who live in the countryside are city
dwellers who have moved out and ow protest vociferously about relaxing
planning laws ti enable more people to do the same.
The problem with the planning laws are they have this bee in their bonnet
about town/village development boundaries.

If you let people buy a bit of farmland and stick 1-4 houses on it with
the
condition that build-build distance was say 1/4 mile, the countryside
would be preserved
Only 7.7% of the country is settled. How much do you want preserved?

Exactly my point. Planners are so obsessed with containing development, that
we get the situation of villages being developed into towns and rabbit-hutch
crap housing - when in fact, as you rightly spotted, you could spread people
wide and thin and I do not think it would have any negative impact on the
feeling of the counryside.

It would.


However the real issue is to study the economics of cost of living in
various settlement types.

You will find its a balance between the movement of goods to people,
people to goods (shopping) and people to work and goods to work etc etc.

No one scenario fits all situations.