Re: Re: Urban Sprawl destorying economy

Jimg – Very good point. London developed about its previous outlying towns and villages. I’m writing this in Streatham which is a case in point. Much of Dublin – particularly <WW11 developed in a similar fashion. As was mentioned previously there is a great deal of horrible sprawl around East and South East London that developed between the wars and then again in the 60s. Much as Dublin ex-urban explosion today. Unfortunatley we never learned the lessons.

DublinLimerick – You make an excellent point re the management of flats / estate complexes. A combination of off site management, absentee landlords, high proportion of leaseholder to rented accomadation (in UK / Ireland), weak or non-exisitent residents associations and arcitecture (poor quality and choice of inflexible space) results in such complexes deteriorating at depressingly quick rate. This is as true of private complexes as it has traditionally been of social housing in both the UK and Ireland. The continent does offer mangement models that need adaption. Perhaps this is teething problems on our part. We’ve been on a very steep learning curve here. I speak from some experience here in that I am a residnet of a high density housing estate in Brixton Hill. Until recently all of the above problems have been in place and the estate was in a very poor state. In the past 4-5 years the residents management committee has completely turned this around – to the extent that we ambitions of buying the freehold. If you’re in London for Architectural Open Week the estate is well worth a look – Grade 2* modernist classic: http://www.pullmancourt.org.uk/