BUILDING housing on brownfield sites is all very well, but where are all the businesses going to live?
Mr Prescott boasts of meeting his target for building 60 per cent of new homes on brownfield sites. But in truth he has managed it only by displacing commercial development — for which there is no corresponding target — on to virgin sites.
The Government’s targets on ‘sustainable’ housing developments aren’t just a scam but a positive threat to the environment. While new homes are being built at what . . . would have been considered slum densities, there seems nothing to stop wasteful land use by commercial development.
Some of the great Oxford Street department stores are seven or eight storeys high, and highly efficient with space; yet these kinds of shops are increasingly being replaced with the likes of PC World: vast, single-storey tin sheds surrounded by acres of parking.”
