Planners

[harry]

Have you noticed, the most attractive towns/parts of towns are unplannned? Places like Shrewsbury, Oxford etc.

[tabbypurr]

ditto buildings. Council estates are fully govt planned, historic town centres aren't.

NT

[Capitol]

Locally, a new health centre is being built. The planning rules recommend 176 car parking spaces. Permission was given for 131 spaces. The planning consent should have reduced the amount of building space to compensate for the car parking shortage, but that didn't happen. However

60 secure bicycle spaces are provided! I have only seen about 1 pedal powered organ donor a year using the health centre! The building is too large for the planned occupation, so the spare space is being rented out for some other purposes. The plans also limit the working hours in the building, so there is no hope of a 24 hour x 7 day health service. This is being built on green belt land and the residents of a local housing estate, will lose their open green views. The old health centre is being sold for housing in a area which is already overbuilt. I just know politicians are brain dead when it comes to planning sensibly.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

You think somewhere like Trafalgar Square just happened?

[dennis]

Which historic town centre wasn't planned?

[Andrew Mawson]

Most brown tourist attraction signs point to places and buildings built without planning permission !

(Unless they point to former top secret underground military bunkers, that when I visited for work back in the '70's and '80's I had to have armed escorts even when going to the loo! )

Andrew

[Nightjar]

Most ancient towns and villages were planned, although the original plan has often been obscured by later changes. Building regulations have been around since about 1189.

[Bob Eager]

Not brain dead, just making sure where their next bung is coming from.

[Bob Eager]

Never had that, but for a few days I had to take a Geiger counter to the loo!

[tabbypurr]

They go back far further than that. But ones so pervasive as to specify nearly everything are a modern phenomenon.

NT

[Tjoepstil]

yes, but not by socialists

[stvlcnc43]

They're not brain dead when there's a back-hander going.

[Bob Eager]

No, I had a radioactive implant.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Wonder who this new sockpuppet actually is? I know most of my stalkers.

[Brian Gaff]

That depends on your lack of planning. If you allow anyone to build anything anywhere some places will get high rises in inappropriate places. I suggest what you really mean is soft touch planning. also nowadays central Government has a bigger role as councils have to prioritise places to life which can be affordable. Round here near a quaint old church thy want to put up housing made from something called Y cubes which sound like glorified prefabs to me. Brian

[Nightjar]

I can't find anything before the rules controlling building nuisances in London, usually dated to 1189, but certainly in force by 1216. If you have something earlier, I would be interested.

Collecting all the regulations under a single umbrella is, but the mid-Victorian era saw a huge expansion in controls under many different Acts.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

An old town high street can be very attractive. But not all.

Larger areas - like say Trafalgar Square - were planned. Not necessarily by a council, of course.

But then good present day planning can make use of existing features like trees and older building too.

[tabbypurr]

I've read of earlier regs but not finding a ref at the moment.

NT

[tabbypurr]

Today's govt BRs are only concerned with avoiding the worst quality housing , which of course used to be built, and much of which is now demolished or has been rectified. They do this by specifying so much detail that it makes it largely impractical to do all sorts of extras that used to be common, a nd now are painful to add if not impossible. The result is a lot of very hu mdrum housing & very little nice new housing.

The other aspect is cost. BRs exist to avoid the cost of problems, but by e xisting they multiply the cost of the housing severalfold, so the snake bit es its own tail. Too much fear becomes counterproductive.

Some BRs are vital, some are a mixed bag and some are just rules for no goo d point at all. Eg use of 11" joists instead of 6", limiting ceiling deflec tion to 3mm, requiring 50mm waste where 40mm copes fine, etc.

Then there are the style rules. New builds in this area must all be built w ith a certain type of brick. The result? A swathe of yawnful houses with br ickwork creativity rendered illegal. Completely senseless, and a direct cau se of the crap looking new build estates.

The prime problem is that there is no mechanism for tackling rule-cruft in this country.

NT

[Andrew]

Chichester telephone exchange was massively extended in the 70's but now most of it is empty space.