Earlier today I did a a piece for UK Transport, in which I had a go at the idea that we live in an overcrowded country. I said the only reason people think it’s overcrowded is because the crowded bits are the bits that most people spend most of their time looking at.
UKT boss Patrick Crozier linked me to another explanation, and maybe a better one, for this daft idea:
We wonder if those who claim the country is being ‘covered in tarmac’ are looking at small scale maps of large areas on which the width of roads is grossly exaggerated to make them obvious. On a 1:10000000 scale wall map of the UK, a motorway may be shown as being 1mm wide. This equates to 1km, when in reality motorways are only about 32m wide – 1/30 of their apparent width on a map. Surely no-one could be so stupid as to believe that thick lines on a small map represent real tarmac on the ground?
Well, no, not when you spell it out like that. But if people have spent their lives looking at the maps and not thinking … And since this overcrowded thing is such an important anti-progress meme, I think this is a very good question. It comes from the Association of British Drivers.
My big brother did a tour of accountancy duty in Hong Kong a few years back. “Overcrowded?” says he to the greenery-sodden English, “You don’t know the meaning of the word.”
All true, but I think we have a higher population density (people per square mile) than any European country. No doubt someone will correct me.
No-one’s literally suggesting the country’s “covered in tarmac”, but some of us like to get out to places where roads and cars are not audible/visible. This is quite a tricky thing to do in many parts of England. Liking a bit of undiluted natural peace doesn’t make me anti-progress.
I, however, am resolutely “anti-progress”. For me these islands became over-crowded & covered in tarmac at the point when urban living became the norm.
Andrew, not even close. From the CIA Factbook at http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/
Britain 59,647,790 inh / 241,590 sq km area= 247 inh/sq km
Netherlands 15,981,472 / 33,883 = 471 inh/sq km
So you’re much less densely populated than Holland, and roughly comparable to Germany:
83,029,536 / 349,223 = 237 inh/sq km
There’s a nice map at http://sedac.ciesin.org/plue/gpw/index.html?europe.html&2
qsi: Can the CIA tell us what the score is for England, as opposed to Britain? Scotland is pretty big and mostly empty, and if you take Scotland and Wales out of it, maybe England gets more crowded, to near Dutch levels.
But this is all quite beside my original point. Fly over Holland (my original way of putting it on UKTransport) and you’ll observe that Holland isn’t “overcrowded” either, although I quite agree that these things are subjective, and that there were no doubt pre-Captain-Cook native Australians who regarded the Australian outback as being far too full of people for comfort.
The answer to subjective differences of taste of this sort is the price system. Let those who want to enjoy totally unspoiled countryside – whatever they mean by that exactly – pay the true cost of it.
Brain, that is a good point. England is indeed a lot more crowded, and vast open spaces of Scotland will depress the UK score. For England, I found an area of 130,422 sq km, putting population density at 375 inh/sq km, quite a bit higher than the UK, but still well below Dutch levels.
I still agree with your basic point though: Holland isn’t all that overcrowded either. I spent way too much time on aircraft, so I’ve seen quite a bit of Dutch countryside from the air, and there’s plenty of space to build, if the government would allow it. We have a “Green Heart” policy for the western conurbation of the Randstad (Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and Utrecht), meaning that the government prohibits people from building in the center of this ring. This is had of course led to huge rises in house prices, since there is a housing shortage, and supply is being kept artificially low by regulations.
See also my blog entry at http://qsi.cc/blog/archives/000019.html about Dutch road building policy.
Overcrowding is how you feel and indeed where you live in a country. Some people in Alaska – a state roughly the size of a third of the other 48 states – could claim to be feeling overcrowded if they live in Anchorage home to about 90 percent of the 500,000 people.
A rough estimate of the dense population there is less than 1 person per square mile. Sweet.
The dense population your average comprehensive school is considerably higher however when you factor in, well, the teachers. 🙂 I jest.
Addendum: A 10-year-old boy living with his eight brothers an sisters in a cabin in the middle of nowhere gets to feeling a little overcrowded too. “It’s all relatives,” he can be heard to reply. He is often misheard as – It’s all relative.
C’est la vie.
Overcrowding is not merely the number of people per square kilometer but the division of resources between the people such as NHS beds, roadspace or seats on the train. I lived many years in Holland where we had to share a tiny amount of public, recreational space between many people. The North where I now live is not too bad but I could never live in my native London anymore I would lose my mind.
Surely it’s the quality of life that counts…… but the culture of today has to build and build and build until all there is left is concrete buildings and roads for the gas guzzling monsters, and only then will England be overcrowded according to you… what balderdash…. We live in England, or we used to, because of the green and pleasant land of our native home. What ever happened to that land? We had a beautiful dream of a life where we could relax with birdsong and flower perfumed air in our own garden, instead of hearing traffic noise and breathing polluted air? Thank goodness I now live in the American midwest where my beautiful dream has come true and my eye sees miles and miles of wide open spaces, instead of ugly concrete.
What about maintaining & raising one’s children in the culture and values of their heritage? Vast multitudes of immigrants flooding into Britain having no concept of our way of life is not a good idea – unless the goal is to turn the county into some sort of multi-ethnic soup. Maybe that’s the goal. Sharon Burns
What about maintaining & raising one’s children in the culture and values of their heritage? Vast multitudes of immigrants flooding into Britain would naturally have no concept of, or interest in preserving what made Britain great. This is not a good idea – unless the goal is to eradicate the culture by overwhelming and extinguishing it. Maybe that’s the goal. Sharon Burns
Having lived in both France and Ireland Britain feels very overcrowded. A half hour out of Dublin
one is deep countyside. In France one can cycle for miles without meeting a car. Being in the countryside in Britain feels more like being in a small national park. Villages are now linked to one another one can never be in the dark, the orange glow of street lamps can be seen for miles. And this is my native Cornwall!
Having lived in both France and Ireland Britain feels very overcrowded. A half hour out of Dublin
one is deep countyside. In France one can cycle for miles without meeting a car. Being in the countryside in Britain feels more like being in a small national park. Villages are now linked to one another one can never be in the dark, the orange glow of street lamps can be seen for miles. And this is my native Cornwall!
Having lived in both France and Ireland Britain feels very overcrowded. A half hour out of Dublin
one is deep countyside. In France one can cycle for miles without meeting a car. Being in the countryside in Britain feels more like being in a small national park. Villages are now linked to one another one can never be in the dark, the orange glow of street lamps can be seen for miles. And this is my native Cornwall!
Very nice blog