[The Weeping Angel]

Ha, Ha, Ha

https://vancouversun.com/opinion/column ... evelopment

Three local First Nations have expanded their plans for the Jericho Lands, with a new vision unveiled Friday that is less like a typical real estate development and more like an entirely new urban neighbourhood.

The new concept by the xwməθkwəy̓ əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱ wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), collectively known as the MST Partnership, and the Canada Lands Company, envisions 13,000 homes for the property, which takes up about a third of a square kilometre.

[Tubby Isaacs]

This is a cracker. Shows how the "brownfield first" thing is just a reflex against any housing.

Lots more stuff like this would be good.

[Youngian]

The sort of thing you’d expect a ‘serial entrepreneur’ to know.

[Tubby Isaacs]

[Tubby Isaacs]

[The Weeping Angel]

My all time favourite is where they object to a devlopment because the dark materials used would ruin the street scene.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The planners recommended acceptance.

Unless this is a bit of tactical hardballing, this looks like a very bad decision.

[The Weeping Angel]

Some letters in the Gaurdian

https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... ing-crisis

There's this corker

Could I encourage the Guardian to avoid “nimby” as a blanket term for those who object to plans that will erode or destroy green spaces (Fewer than one in five UK voters are ‘hard nimbys’, finds survey, 15 September)? Nimby has long been used to disparage serious environmentalists whose concerns, far from being restricted to their immediate surroundings, are based on an understanding of the dangers besetting the planet as a whole. I might add that, far from stopping the exodus, Labour’s ill-advised yimby/nimby discourse will propel many more of their erstwhile supporters into the Green party.

Don't call us NIMBYS says a person advocating NIMBYism.

[Tubby Isaacs]

This is also good.

Keir Starmer’s policies seem to be a developers’ charter, unleashing a rash of identical estates of four- and five-bedroomed houses on choice agricultural land, due to be swiftly bought up by landlords, keen to cash in on sky-high rents.

Or, as we used to call them, homes for families with a couple of kids, where they want to live. Greater supply makes buy to let less attractive as an investment. Nice Simon Jenkins line in snobbery too. Ooh, these awful houses that all look the same.

And the homes don't all have to go on "choice agricultural land". Councils will have to build homes, but that could be densification of urban bits. The Man from the Ministry won't send them a snotty note saying "sorry, Green Belt destruction only!"

[Youngian]

Don't know where all this development land is even for a small single storey dwelling. Near empty regions without crops like west Cumbria aren't brimming with offers either.

[mattomac]

Thing is, the reaction to getting rid of buying your own council home ended up in screaming outrage from the Conservatives.

Labour just might as well do it, they won’t be getting 10 years if this hatchet job continues.

[Tubby Isaacs]

This is a genuine letter from the Guardian. The author lives in London, so has no skin in these games, but has come up with the most extreme anti-development position I've ever seen.

Rachel Reeves needs to redefine “growth”. We are not the US, with swathes of land to host servers. Tourists visit Oxford and Cambridge for their historic cities and beautiful surrounding landscapes, not to see small nuclear reactors generating power for AI. People come to East Anglia for its vast beaches and birdlife, ancient trees and farmland, not to see a high-rise substation the size of Wembley or two nuclear reactors surrounded by concrete.

What we have as islanders is resilience, inventiveness and creativity – and these qualities we should harness to be at the forefront of green technology and work with nature to slow down climate change, not against it. We have wind, we have wave, we have floods, we have sea. Now all we need is the political will. Think again, chancellor.

Oxford and Cambridge aren't actually that near each other. I think both will survive as tourist destinations if there are some more buildings on the horizon, Oxford has pretty extensive suburbs already. I've used to bus to London a few times, and didn't notice anyone jump off the bus in Headington saying "They told us Oxford was an isolated village! Fuck that!"

But that position (no significant development between Oxford and Cambridge) is moderate compared to no development anywhere at all in Norfolk. I've visited Snowdonia a few times. I actually liked seeing Trawsfynydd in the distance, found it very dramatic. Even if you hate the building, there's a fair bit of Snowdonia you can visit without seeing it. Same with Norfolk and a nuclear power station.

God know what "islanders" has to do with anything and all. Britain is a pretty large and highly populated island. We're hardly St Kilda.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

I've been to Oxford many times, supervising work at Oxford Brookes, just inside the ring road.

Picturesque it ain't.

[Killer Whale]

Is there still a factory complex assembling Minis?

[Crabcakes]

I lived in Oxford for 5 years. Outside the parts owned by the colleges, or the parts near the colleges, or the parts gentrified by very wealthy student digs, it’s as shitty looking as any other midlands town built on a literal swamp. Only with added resentment that many of the nice bits are shut away at the whim of the colleges. I also worked for 3 years near where Malc describes, and Cowley is about as far from dreaming spires as it gets. You could drop Sizewell B in there and it wouldn’t look remotely out of place.

People think it all looks like Inspector Morse and its numerous spinoffs, but they were all shot in a remarkably small area in terms of bits of town.

Cornmarket street in particular is as tacky, commercial and packed with chain shops and tat peddlers as (funnily enough) Oxford Street is.

Cambridge, however, is genuinely much prettier - and in attitude less arrogant - on average. But doesn’t have much nearby and much of what is nearby is just flat, empty fields. So ample opportunity for building without ruining anything - unless for some reason you want an unobstructed long-distance view of Huntingdon Life Sciences.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Bit harsh on Cornmarket. It's a lot nicer without the buses and it has got a Saxon church tower and a medieval house in the middle of it.

There are about 30 colleges, so the "Morse" area is a decent size, I think. Try taking a relative round them in a day. And there's also North Oxford which is big houses. East Oxford used to be a fairly cheap area, but I guess it's long become like Jericho, very fashionable "urban" professional living (with help of an inheritance). West Oxford was more ropy. Maybe it's got better but at the moment it's being terribly blighted by an overrunning Network Rail scheme.

I've never been to Cowley, Blackbird Leys or Barton, which are poorer areas some distance from the centre.

[Crabcakes]

The tower is OK but the coffee stall in front of it has gone, so now it’s popular for pissed people to hang out in front of. The medieval house is a Pret and (I kid you not) a straw boater shop. Which sums up Oxford nicely - stuff for the colleges and commercialisation.

It’s depressingly poor use of what admittedly could be a very nice pedestrianised space with pavement cafes and the like. But no, best cram in (at last count) 3 “Oxford gifts” type crap shops. Can never have enough tea towels of a teddy dressed as a beefeater after all…

[Youngian]

I remember non university Cambridge having a weekly cattle market as a kid before it's remarkable hi tech boom in the late 80s. A sleepy country town with little comparable to Oxford's expansive industrial suburbs.

[RedSparrows]

Wolfson has a minibus, most useful.

I once heard aboard that, a US DPhil student remark 'it's like Hogwarts'. Literally said it.

I then picked a hire car up from beyond the ring road.

hahahahaha

Whenever I visit now I'm seeing people in a square between Port Meadow, the Cherwell, and the High.

It's really not a normal place in that area.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The tower is OK but the coffee stall in front of it has gone, so now it’s popular for pissed people to hang out in front of. The medieval house is a Pret and (I kid you not) a straw boater shop. Which sums up Oxford nicely - stuff for the colleges and commercialisation.

It’s depressingly poor use of what admittedly could be a very nice pedestrianised space with pavement cafes and the like. But no, best cram in (at last count) 3 “Oxford gifts” type crap shops. Can never have enough tea towels of a teddy dressed as a beefeater after all…

Some particularly scary drunks with Alsatians used to sit there in the early nineties.

Don't think it's surprising that a town with lots of tourists has some touristy shops. Where would you expect them to be? Like anywhere, online shopping will have had a big effect.