Reply to: Would you like a house in a Eco-town?

[BrilloPad]

Out of interest, does the town plan involve lots and lots of low-cost public transport?

Didn't think so.

Failure-in-joined-up-government, thy name is Mandelson-Brown.

Whats wrong with going everywhere by bicycle? Its great : even with a family of 4 and trying to do the weekly shop......

[Menelaus]

http://www.ecotownforleicestershire.coop/

So where do I park my car? - Oh I rember now - you are going to build 14,000 houses and provide just 1 car parking space for every two houses that you build . Moreover each parking space will have a yearly rent of £13K great idea that.

So... I park my car miles from my home in an "eco" car park and then catch the low carbon footprint "tram" to my house. Meanwhile my car is subjected to chav abuse from all the "affordable" housing that the eco town brings.

I know the area in Leicestershire that they were going to build this on - you can't tell me that all the low flush wather saving toilets in the world is going to make up for building a housing easte on pristine green Englsih country side.

Another goverment spin idea that has down the pan.

Out of interest, does the town plan involve lots and lots of low-cost public transport?

Didn't think so.

Failure-in-joined-up-government, thy name is Mandelson-Brown.

[Sysman]

http://www.ecotownforleicestershire.coop/

Keeping up with the Jones's

Like most families the Jones’ are a very busy family and their life revolves around the community window. This is a touch sensitive screen in the house and they cannot now imagine how they ever lived without it.

Every house has the community window facility and every house sets its own favourites page to suit its own needs. The Jones’ mainly use it to organise and co-ordinate their busy lives, to display bus times and car share availability, for news downloads and for the community diary where they can find out what is going on in the town. They also use it to find out what local seasonal produce is available from the town farm that can then be delivered to the house.

...

The new “sell by date” software that transfers the shopping delivery bar code details to the fridge display to inform you what is going out of date has become much more useful now it can be downloaded onto Helen's mobile. This means she can now check the sell by dates in the fridge whilst on the bus and plan the daily meals. Although she has not measured it Helen feels she is wasting much less food.

Sounds worse than Winston Smith had. Store all your shopping habits on a central server, and Tesco will do the rest.

Mike can recall one of the earliest debates in the design and development panel was about providing housing with annexes for the now more typical extended families. It was decided to put a number of the larger houses back to back with starter homes to allow these to become annexes in future. This has worked out brilliantly for the Jones' as Helen has been able to move her elderly mother, Sarah, into the community, into the starter house behind theirs.

Heavens to Murgatroyd! I thought back to back housing had been banned years ago.

I know the area in Leicestershire that they were going to build this on - you can't tell me that all the low flush wather saving toilets in the world is going to make up for building a housing easte on pristine green Englsih country side.

Another goverment spin idea that has down the pan.

It seems to me that they want us all to live in a town or city, where we can be monitored and controlled 100% of the time.

[BrilloPad]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8152985.stm

Looking at the local news, the "locals" seem to be dead set against the idea. There again they seem the type who would be dead set against anything new.

I would prefer a luxury house thank you. The permies can live in the eco houses.

[HairyArsedBloke]

Back in the 60’s & 70’s in the glorious days of the British socialist republic, when HAB was a young shaver, there was a boom in the numbers of a job called ‘Town Planner’. ‘Beardy-weirdies’, my long departed dad used to call them. These are the people who created wonderful things such as by-passes to nowhere, road layouts where you can see you destination but cannot figure out how to get there and all those wonderful council estates that have been so successful. It looks like they are making a comeback to the big time. Oh happy days.

[GreenerGrass]

Can't see the carrot-crunching pasty-munchers buying into the idea at St Austell. They set up roadblocks when the Eden Project wanted to install a single wind turbine!!!

The thing is, china clay country is one of the most skanky parts of Cornwall, the "Cornish alps" is basically china clay slag heaps the oldest of which have gained some vegetation. It's hardly an area of outstanding national beauty.
No one should really object to building eco housing there, especially affordable housing as the average wage to average house price ratio is probably the worst in the whole country.
And the new eco town can't be any worse than St Austell.

[wxman]

http://www.ecotownforleicestershire.coop/

So where do I park my car? - Oh I rember now - you are going to build 14,000 houses and provide just 1 car parking space for every two houses that you build . Moreover each parking space will have a yearly rent of £13K great idea that.

So... I park my car miles from my home in an "eco" car park and then catch the low carbon footprint "tram" to my house. Meanwhile my car is subjected to chav abuse from all the "affordable" housing that the eco town brings.

I know the area in Leicestershire that they were going to build this on - you can't tell me that all the low flush wather saving toilets in the world is going to make up for building a housing easte on pristine green Englsih country side.

Another goverment spin idea that has down the pan.

[Halo Jones]

The problem with labels such as “Eco Homes” is that it is too ambiguous. There are many ways of making a home Eco in the sense of energy efficiency and recycled materials in construction.

But the Eco town is a totally different matter – then you are looking at service locations, transport links, employment opportunities and the such.

“some sites were picked where conventional developments had failed to get off the ground." Would have been nice to know why they failed, was it finance, planning or plain muppetry?

As for green belt: realistically its going to start being used soon, the majority of the brown field sites have gone & there is still need for development, unless we start converting all the empty offices into homes then bye bye green bits.

[Menelaus]

I've got long hair, don't have a proper job and I recycle jokes. Sounds perfect!

Yes, but your long-hair is utterly forgiveable.

[landl]

And for the ultimate irony...

...the building regulations imposed on homes in these "eco" towns will mean that they are actually less eco friendly than "ordinary" homes being built elsewhere at the same time (and that's before considering the lack of public transport and travel to work distances)!

Heard this on Radio 4, I think PM, so must be true...

[shaunbhoy]

Can't see the carrot-crunching pasty-munchers buying into the idea at St Austell. They set up roadblocks when the Eden Project wanted to install a single wind turbine!!!

[Not So Wise]

"But the zero-carbon developments - some earmarked on open countryside "
"some sites were picked where conventional developments had failed to get off the ground."

Basically whole thing sounds like it is an attempt to make failed housing estates sound nicer and to build a few more in the cheap land in the middle of nowhere (greenbelt)

[Zippy]

I've got long hair, don't have a proper job and I recycle jokes. Sounds perfect!

[Menelaus]

Given that Bordon (named Bordon because "sh!t" was already taken) is an absolute sh!t hole that should've been nuked from orbit years ago...no thanks.

[EternalOptimist]

everything will be so expensive, they will have to drive to the next town to buy cheap chickens, thereby making it a non-eco town