So more street trees please. People with gardens could be encouraged to plant fruit trees – not too big and healthy local fruit. Runoff rates would be reduced, and thus flooding, sewage works would have less excuses for pumping shit into our rivers and seas. Obviously grouse moors and moorland grazing would have to be restricted in water catchment areas for towns and cities. Car parks could be forced to create permeable sections to absorb water.
Research should be done to investigate different road surfaces and colours (obviously with would be impractical, but the impact of different materials and colours could make a significant difference (I read once that 40% of Los Angeles surface area was roads and parking lots. Our cities tend to have more green space than that, but it is still a large chunk. Creeating chicanes in urban housing areas with trees would have beneficial impacts.
Free, or cheap, public transport would also reduce the need for street side parking and traffic congestion and pollution. Ban intra-UK flights, as has been done in some European countries.
Housing needs to be energy efficient, but also well aired – engineering know how needed.
There is already a tax of sorts commuting (sky high train prices and parking), could more incentive be given to small firms moving into more rural areas. Several hundred houses have, or are being built in Winscombe, Sandford and Churchill, with possibly 1500 in Banwell with a new by-pass. Number of employment facilities = zero. It might need a little help from government (obviously not this one), but working from home is not always brilliant, commuting for a couple of hours plus a day is also tremendously inefficient. Surely low level office blocks with all top speed communication and facilities in a rural area would preferable to a trek to the office everyday. Jobs would be created locally as cleaners and maybe catering. Parking could be charged for, thus encouraging cycling or walking. Obviously this change in behavioural patterns would take years, maybe decades – so start now. When I was little – a very long time ago – football clubs provided housing for players. Similar schemes could be recreated. A firm would provide you with a property you could buy, and agree to repurchase if you left your job, at an agreed, competitive rate. Not rocket science.
Food supply – Market gardens formerly surrounded our towns and cities. Now it is garden centres! I am no expert but (oh shut up jam jam!). Ok start again, comments on farming. With a growing population it has become ever more important for farms to become more efficient, which they have done wonderfully. However this appears to have come at a cost to our wildlife and environment in some areas. Surely more local farming for appropriate crops would be sensible. How is New Zealand lamb cheaper than Welsh lamb? Why are chickens traded in large numbers between here and Europe? Get some common sense into our economic system. How is a containership carrying cheap Christmas tat, then returning with it as landfill in any way sensible.
So we need to encourage sustainability and longevity in our products. Thus they need to be well designed and made. Scandinavia sussed out decades ago that they were not ideally placed geographically, so they concentrated on design and quality (Volvo, Bang and Olson). Whist our money grabbing capitalists went for chaepand stack em high (Tesco), the embarrassment that our mass produced motor industry became.
We need a new initiative with a store space in every major city to showcase British Design – this is not nationalism, just common sense. If a product such as papaya or a laptop cannot be grown or made here that is ok, but surely we can make quality Xmas decorations – and develop the concept of keeping them not just for the following year, but as heirlooms?
What else – energy supply. I am fairly certain that most local areas (I am not sure about cities) could produce their own energy for most of the time (Wind, solar, heat pumps, HEP) – not necessarily big schemes but local ones. Battery power is increasing and is likely to solve most day to day problems soon. At present it seems likely that we will need the national grid for a few decades more. So one, maybe two nuclear power stations might be sensible? The government of course will hate the idea of local independence from the grid and the profits that creates for the city.
Basically I am just about self sufficient with energy, a heat pump and maybe a small wind turbine, a couple more solar panels on the garage and I would definitely be an energy producer. I live in a 3 bed bungalow with a smallish garden – so no country Manor House. So if even the privileged people like me got fully geared up we would cut energy demand on the national grid substantially.
Social aspects. We definitely need to do more with new developments (and old) to create more public space. And shared facilities – but also develop the habit of looking after them, and stop spreading litter.