... being built, unfortunately for those needing a home in Wales, the homes are being built in Shanghai ...
... I was astonished when Andrew Marr made the announcement in his new series called "Megacities" (if you missed the first episode it is available on the BBC iPlayer), in the series he looks at how people live in five of the world's largest cities of London, Dhaka, Tokyo, Mexico City and Shanghai.
Of course it is much simpler to provide mass housing when you are developing a new city like Shanghai and the government is China, planning is pragmatic, a means to an end; would our politicians at Cardiff Bay emulate the Chinese please, pragmatism please.
Could it be the solution is "build it and they will come", not so much a megacity, more a mega-Cardiff, or mega-Swansea, or "mega-somewhere-with-good-links" to London the megacity of Great Britain. Might the answer be to join Cardiff with Newport in the East and Bridgend in the West, a massive urban adventure to create the thousands of homes needed; forget the rural idyll of Wales past, it didn't exist, there was only hard graft, poor living and the Chapel on Sundays. It is time to start building, forget the Plaid model that is preventative, look across Offa's Dyke for HA solutions that work for people of all parts of society, Jephson is a particularly good example of a holistic approach to housing, Shanghai is the proof of the "housing needs" pudding.
Get building Carwyn, and they will come, in their droves with their approval, who needs a damp house in perpetual shade when we have award winning architects and builders aplenty.
... I was astonished when Andrew Marr made the announcement in his new series called "Megacities" (if you missed the first episode it is available on the BBC iPlayer), in the series he looks at how people live in five of the world's largest cities of London, Dhaka, Tokyo, Mexico City and Shanghai.
Of course it is much simpler to provide mass housing when you are developing a new city like Shanghai and the government is China, planning is pragmatic, a means to an end; would our politicians at Cardiff Bay emulate the Chinese please, pragmatism please.
Could it be the solution is "build it and they will come", not so much a megacity, more a mega-Cardiff, or mega-Swansea, or "mega-somewhere-with-good-links" to London the megacity of Great Britain. Might the answer be to join Cardiff with Newport in the East and Bridgend in the West, a massive urban adventure to create the thousands of homes needed; forget the rural idyll of Wales past, it didn't exist, there was only hard graft, poor living and the Chapel on Sundays. It is time to start building, forget the Plaid model that is preventative, look across Offa's Dyke for HA solutions that work for people of all parts of society, Jephson is a particularly good example of a holistic approach to housing, Shanghai is the proof of the "housing needs" pudding.
Get building Carwyn, and they will come, in their droves with their approval, who needs a damp house in perpetual shade when we have award winning architects and builders aplenty.
Rubbish. The Chinese are building ghost towns with nobody moving into them. This, like all other bubbles, will burst and cause massive bank losses.
ReplyDeleteRegarding Wales, there are plenty of houses, but unfortunately, so many have been taken up as second homes not to mention those that lie empty. But nobody wants to tackle this.
... ghost towns in China would be soon filled if transplanted to Wales me-thinks, in any event it is Mr Marr you should be taking it up with, is he misrepresenting China.
ReplyDeleteHow do you tackle the second home syndrome without a jackboot, if indeed it is a problem. The take-up of rural homes as second homes would not be an issue if there were well paid rural jobs, there are not, so an answer could be to transplant the people towards large urban areas where commerce is more likely to become established.
Empty properties, these belong to people unless you are referring to long term empty social housing where there might be good reasons, who knows.
It looks like Cardiff will be getting 55,000 new homes over the next 20 years so your comment isn't too far from the truth
ReplyDeleteThere was a paper published a few years ago, where there was a proposition that failed communities, failed in terms of work, should be abandoned, the populations encouraged/sponsored to move to areas that held opportunities.
ReplyDeleteJohn said...
ReplyDelete"How do you tackle the second home syndrome without a jackboot, if indeed it is a problem. The take-up of rural homes as second homes would not be an issue if there were well paid rural jobs, there are not, so an answer could be to transplant the people towards large urban areas where commerce is more likely to become established."
If somebody earning 15k per year is unable to buy a property say in Ceredigion because he or she has to compete with somebody buying a second and who is earning many multiples of 15k then it is a problem is it not? Also, communities which are ghost towns most of the year because of second home ownership is a problem.