Three more photographs by Sergio Belinchón –
[Images: Sergio Belinchón].
– of sports facilities in the void, rules agreed to in the middle of nowhere, and some kind of outlined space I can’t quite figure out.
If you can’t tell already, I think this guy’s a genius; and these aren’t even the only photos I want to upload. Alas, I’ll stop here.
Sprawl in the UK – and with variations on the same theme across the EU – is limited by planning laws, and by things like greenbelts around 14 of Britain’s cities. New Towns are also part of the response to growth pressures – with Milton Keynes expected to more-than-double in size. Furthermore, the development of satellite cities and sprawling suburban bedroom communities is limited by the fact that people already live in the countryside, have strong representation in government, and object to their communities being swamped by new-style houses – even in the New Towns! Part of the upshot is that infill and brownfield developments are popping up everywhere, and houses seem to be shrinking and/or becoming more vertical. I am anticipating the return of “Habitat 67” construction any day now….
I also suspect that publicly-traded housing firms, such as Wimpey and Barratt, are already responsible for most of the housing in the UK – but I haven’t checked this against any report of who builds what, nor do I know the patterns across Europe – particularly in the boom towns of the Mediterranean.
I do think there’s a lot of pressure to build in unsuitable areas – places that would have recently been rejected as too close to factories, motorways, airports and the like, while, simultaneously, new development on brownfield sites has longer-term residents talking about loss of identity and character. Some attempt is being made to give these developments a more interesting and hopefully longer-lasting appeal – with people like Wayne Hemingway and FAT throwing the odd spanner into the works.
So the giant earth-scraping exercises shown by Belinchón would be limited to mining and major commercial developments, airports, and road-building. But there’s always underground and subterranean bunker-cities.