Building more houses

New housing will soon fill with extra people, just like new roads fill with extra traffic.

Perhaps better than 20 to a household, ten to a garage, five to a potting shed. But they won't fill up with new people if there are no new houses or the build is constantly 50% under requirement - as in the last 40 years. Almost all the ills of the present generations stem from no-where decent or affordable to live. All governments from the past 50 years have failed the population in their duty of care in the most standard of their duty to the people - shelter -. End of -.

Building your own house with mud and straw looks quite practical, but you need somewhere to do it and a bit of skill.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG1V5uq0Fwk

I used the same method (although not with personal treading) on a few hundred houses in Rochdale during the 1960's. The 'mortar' was milled at the Cleansing Department on Entwistle Road and collected daily for immediate application. It was used for internal and external plastering and especially for lath and plaster ceilings. All the terraced house had the same mixtures that were built before 1920 and included horse-hair as opposed to goat hair as it was in greater supply. So - there's nothing new under the sun when it comes to eco-friendly - just done slightly differently.

There is a lot of work in building your own house, straw bale, cob, mud or earth, or whatever. Before investing all that time, effort, and probably money, people must need a sense of being in the right place, of permanance, staying put and building for the future. Modern life may be good-ish, but the mood is generally transient, uncertain, changing. People seem to aspire more towards huge camper vans now.

Indeed. Returning to their Bedouin roots - although it's not practical or even desirable.

The oncoming deluge of automation and the need to keep people 'busy' or 'active' will inevitably iron out many of today's perceived ills. House occupation and consequent 'erection of same' will from necessity force governments to find solutions if they are to avoid the 'shanties' of the Third World. Smart governments will come up with the answers -. How smart is ours????????

Government now might find it politically difficult to apply changes that would reduce demand and provide sustainable housing.

It's a 'turn the oil tanker' problem, the solution needed to be applied well in advance. The closer we are to the 'crunch' of under-housed
over-population, and it's implications, the more urgent and problematical it appears.

Is our government smart enough? They would need to be smarter than me. How about quickly building two or three huge, high-rise, futuristic mega-cities, where people could live a highly automated leisure lifestyle.

Sounds a bit like 1984, still, better late than never.

1984 is already with us and has been so for some time - ever since the advent of the Internet and mobile phones. If you're 'flagged' then you are 'surveyed' automatically. That's Big Brother in the round. CCTV is another way of permanent scrutiny.

The answer lies in the robotic construction of low-cost housing - the problem lies in local councils and planning. Legislation is required to enforce 'housing need' and as such would need government funding or grants to councils to enact the required powers to 'build' as a matter of social need and cohesion. Money for the people has always been a problem in a capitalist society that believes primarily in the law of the jungle and not in the law of social accountability. The 'real' truth and the way forward is a mixture of the two with natural justice regulating it all. But some would call that 'Utopia'. Surely not -

A lot of new housing is built small scale, they make special scaled-down furniture to fit in for photos and show houses.

Time to substitute HS2 (approx £60 billion) and commence HB21 (approx £60 billion) - Defend the people, feed the people, house the people and you won't go far wrong. It's not rocket science - but it is social science.

The snag with a house building program of traditional suburban sprawl or 'estates', is the 'build a road and get more traffic' effect, more houses means more people, means more houses, and so ad infinitum, and then all the transport and other infrastucture needed to go with it. There has to be some limit to the number of people and houses, unless the idea is to build a self-sustaining futuristic super-mega-city.

No, seems the plan for north of Manchester is to build more 'urban sprawl'. Probably just as well, recent history shows the UK isn't able to safely build high rise housing.

The snag is - no houses and suffer the consequences. You want the shanty town to develop then continue to build far less houses than are required and watch the sprawl begin. You want the outskirts of Johannesburg or Mumbai on your doorstep keep ignoring the problem.There is no legitimate excuse for ignoring the 3rd covenant in a country as rich as ours. Since the Heath government of the early 70's the people have been taken for granted and left to the vagaries of the 'free market' system which as everyone with half a brain knows only profits the most able. Such leads to the obscene picture of 'the able' building mansions and conurbations and fencing them off with security fences and guards from the 'morons' beyond. Someone needs to get a grip or the first thing that will happen will be the Corbyn effect - which will ultimately destroy everything.

Urban sprawl, many little boxes made of ticky-tacky, makes for a dispiriting environment, and the landscape that was is lost. If policy is to carry on building urban sprawl ad infinitum, the end result will be, what? The future I suppose.

There are millions of acres of brown and grey land sites across this country. There are acres and acres of unused, empty buildings throughout the towns and cities - all of which could be renovated or built upon for domestic housing. Any government worth its salt would enact powers to compel the owners of these to either 'use' or 'lose' these vital sites - and all without impinging too much on green-field sites (as is often the cry). Land-banking and box-hoarding are the bane of this country's grotesque lack of enough affordable houses. Free-market in this area does NOT work. It never did. Big profits for the few who then off-shore those profits will destroy the country's inner fabric if somebody doesn't get a grip of it soon. (Not that it will be my worry as it will take another 30 years to get it right if they started tomorrow).

Does it matter what happens to the landscape, with the loss of the world of nature. It is sad to see things like that fade away into the past, in order to house more people, but, is it just nostalgia, happy memories and nothing more? Geology shows five previous mass extintions of life on earth, so does another one matter, or just part of the cycle of things.

I have no problem whatsoever regarding 'mass extinctions'. Whatever will be - will be. Man is such a puny article in the greater scope of things and will without doubt be eradicated from this planet in due course regardless. His ingenuity may protect him for a while. But not against everything natural that resides here and beyond. Such is inevitable. The secret to man's survival is to find another basket or two in which to put his eggs. Sounds very 'Alien' doesn't it. But that's the way to prolong the agony if he so wishes. (And he will ).

Meanwhile - back with reality. Off the wall thinking can protect most of what is left of our natural landscapes if the drive for 'money' is removed from the equation. That is down to governments and their obligations to protect its citizens. I rest my case -.

The mass extinction event we are in at the moment is mass extinction of species, there are millions of species, insects, fish and so on, but the number is dwindling rapidly. Meanwhile, more and more people.

As it's the higher qualty of life we have that is damaging the natural world, it seems things may get better and better (apart from being overcrowded) for humans, in terms of having more consumer goods, until it reaches a balance point, where nature is effectively 'all used up' ecosystems collapse and we have to live on fungus, algae, insects and synthetic food.

And there's an interesting thought -! Science and technology will go some way to 'protect' our species always and providing we can 'see' with vision into the planets anticipated future - but - - .
It won't be for 'all'. The mass will have to wither on the vine and die for the few to continue forward in order to protect the species as an entity. The whole 'exercise' is in the end result futile as the whole universe has a limited life within itself which will extinguish all forms of life throughout. However - the interest lies within the bands of one's own existence and we will of course be exempt from the perils and toils to come. So - have a happy life and be thankful for small mercies.