The Government imposed Code For Sustainable Homes is aimed at reducing the environmental impact of new housing on an already fragile environment. As much as I support attempts to make builders and their buildings more eco friendly the very title 'Sustainable Homes' leads people into thinking that we are half way to Utopia.
The very word 'sustainable' when used in the context of most modern building is misleading. The quality of mass built houses is at an all time low and they are crammed into spaces that are inadequate. In the South East they are building homes on every bit of marginal land they can get hold of. In my area they have built houses right next to a high speed railway line in an old goods yard. On one side they have trains and the other side are gasometers. The tiny balconies of the occupied flats are crammed full of bikes, buggies and folding chairs. In modern homes there is next to no storage spaces, hence the emergence of storage warehouses such as Big Yellow.
The open communal areas of newly laid turf are already rutted with wheel marks where people park their cars. As pretty and eco friendly as planners try to make these homes anyone who lives in one for even a short while knows that they are not fit for purpose. They are homes that people move through on a ladder rather than live in. Building so many homes in such a small space also means that the infra structure is now all but crippled by the influx of people. Traffic doesn't move,commuter trains are packed, water is scarce and there are no school places. Yet there persisists this notion that a washing line, a bike space and a solar panel somehow makes our homes sustainable and eco friendly.
There is no doubt that we need more homes but calling them sustainable fails to acknowledge the reality. We can't sustain them nor them us. Britain needs more homes because we are living much longer and the longer we live the more we consume and the more we pollute. Nobody can deny that.
The Optimum Population Trust is onto something when they say that somewhere down the line we have to come up with an agreed figure for the 'sustainable' population of the UK and try to cap it. To just keep building homes for an ever increasing population is anything but sustainable.
With the U.K population growing by 1,250 people every day we cannot possibly keep pace with housing needs, let alone schools and hospitals. The fact that we aren't even meeting our current, let alone our future needs, means that we either have to build like never before or accept the inevitable fact that extended families will have to live together. The most eco friendly and economical arrangement is grand parents, parents and children all living in a single dwelling. That is sustainable but try selling that idea to people.
The following statement is from The Optimum Population Trust
'The amount of land available to each inhabitant of the UK - to provide for our ecological needs and to absorb the waste products of our consumption - has shrunk to nearly a tenth of that available in 1750. The UK is slightly smaller than Oregon, a single state of the USA. We have a surface area of 24 million hectares of land and inland water to absorb the environmental impacts of all our consumption - that’s less than half a hectare (one acre) each - and this environmental space is shrinking every year.'
Add to this the fact that, if the polar ice caps continue to thaw at their present rate, a great deal of our available land will be under water. Without substantial investment in flood defences even parts of London will be uninhabitable and East Anglia won't even exist. Yet in all these areas we are still building thousands of so called 'sustainable' homes. At the very least they should be on pontoons.
If predictions turn out to be only half true then much of the rest of the world will be in even worse trouble with millions starving and populations along rivers being displaced by floods. We can send them aid and put on a few pop concerts but if their land can't sustain them they will either perish or have to move in search of a new sustainable home.
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