Expressions of Discontent

There's been stuff in the news lately about the government's plans to build ten new "eco towns", designed to be carbon neutral, and to show the way forward to a more environmentally friendly and sustainable Britain. It plans to do this via the private sector. Developers will submit their proposals, and if government officials deem them sufficiently "green", they will get the planning permission.

Some people object. Aside from nimbies who live near prospective sites of these developments (how come they always live next to prospective developments – do they do that deliberately, or is it coincidence?), there are others who seem simply to object to such projects being built by the greedy, profiteering private sector. Well, to those, I offer this reminder:

Greedy, moneygrabbing, private sector property developers gave us Bath – and built on green field land, natch. Here's a picture:









A famously beautiful city, now officially a "World Heritage Site", according to the U.N. Or is it the E.U.? . Well, someone important.

Links to more pictures of Bath:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Aerial.view.of.bath.arp.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Royal_Crescent_in_Bath%2C_England_-_July_2006.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Royal.crescent.aerial.bath.arp.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Pulteney_Bridge%2C_Bath_2.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Clevelandhouse.JPG

Professional government planners gave us Cumbernauld New Town. Here's a Picture:

Cumbernauld is reputed to be a decent place to live, but it is ruined aesthetically by the disastrous brutalist architecture put up in the 1960s, in one of those "New Town" developments that were supposed to bring about Utopia. How disastrous? Well, the building in the picture above was recently voted Britain's Ugliest Building in a national poll, and there have been continuous grass-roots efforts to persuade the authorities to pull it down since it opened.

More pictures:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:South_Carbrain.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cumbernauld_Town_Centre1.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cumbernauld_Town_Centre.jpg

They say it all, really -- when it comes to uglifying the landscape, it's not the private sector one should be worrying about. Govt-led developments should scare us far more.