Further to this post on population increase, it’s useful to remember that despite the undoubted pressures population growth causes for public services and other facilities, it is not accurate to suggest that Britain “is full”. In fact there’s ample room for more people as even a cursory comparison of urban population density demonstrates. Chart?
Would it be disastrous if English (and Scottish!) cities were as densely populated as Boston or Chicago (12.75)? I suggest it would not. Indeed there’d be advantages to this. But that means reappraising planning and zoning regulations and permitting developers to build up as well as out. Otherwise there’s little alternative to suburban sprawl. Now sprawl is not universally a bad thing but it comes with trade-offs of its own. Not everyone will want to live in crowded cities but since it’s cities that drive ecoomic growth, increased population density in our major urban areas is not, per se, a dreadful thing either.
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