"Andy Hall" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 16 Feb 2004 15:35:42 -0000, "Owain"
wrote:

"Mike Mitchell" wrote
| The only thing that will bring the price of houses down is to
| increase the supply of dwellings (not necessarily houses alone;
| flats both to buy and rent are a huge source of supply
| across mainland Europe).

The real thing to bring the price of houses down is to deflate the
economy
in London and the South-East and rejuvenate depressed areas. There are
streets and streets of perfectly good houses being demolished in parts of
the North-East of England, plenty of rural areas suffering depopulation,
and
other rural areas where a huge proprtion of houses are second homes.

The problem is not dwellings, it's land (as IMM would say) and the answer
is
not (as IMM would say) to abolish planning controls, it's to even out the
population and the economy across the country. A better and cheaper mass
transport infrastructure would help by rducing businesses' "need" to be
in
London and the SE and other city centres and increasing the magic "1 hour
commute" area for housing.

Owain

I see what you are saying, Owain, but I'm not sure about the
practicality of mass transportation over large geographical areas.

The time factor becomes very significant. From where I live to
where my kids work is about a 10-15 minute drive. By bus it involves
two buses and a journey of an hour or so, and connecting buses only
run at peak times. This is basically from one town to the next.
Why would I want to take the bus? It's way too inconvenient, plus I
can only take what I can carry. That's before one starts thinking
of issues like personal space.

If you never had a car your kids would have got jobs locally, like they did
40 years ago.

Originally the large conurbations like London happened because of
naturally available transport. This attracts a concentration of
people who in turn attract more infrastructure.
Certain industries require people to be grouped together to make
something. Others require face to face interaction, although if you
think about home working, that was not much known 10 years ago.
Nowadays it's commonplace largely because of telecoms technology.
I think that is likely to be things that reduce the need for people to
move around that will open the way to more even population
distribution. The more obvious things like transport I don't think
will be able to do that.