Building

[drplokta]

So, England has 35,000 square miles of countryside. How much would you say that it needs for farming, wildlife habitats, recreation, scenery, and all the other things for which we need open space? That's a fairly fundamental question while we're deciding how much of it we can afford to build things like houses on. Do we need 35,000 square miles?

Comments

[voidampersand]

In land use policy the details matter. For farming, it's not just how much land, but the quality. For wildlife habitat, it's what ecosystems it preserves and its connectedness to other habitats. Some forms of recreation involve building - there's a big difference between a golf course or a marina and a wilderness trail. For scenery, the aesthetics of the landscape matter. And then there is countryside that is useless for all purposes. None of this is captured by a statistic such as "35,000" or "45,000".

[akirlu]

It's a dumb question. It's the wrong question entirely. So much more depends on what land, and what's on it now, and who has access to it. And there are values other than "need" that factor into whether turning, say, a national park or a working orchard into row houses is a desirable move. So your "you should have no problem" conclusion is nonsense, because "how much do we need" isn't at all the only notion that might factor into someone having a problem with converting open land into a Tesco's.

[del_c]

I made a bet with myself that this would be the twist, and I was right.

The trouble with it as a debate society device is that it works exactly as well for either proposition. Just as you used it to "demonstrate" nobody needs the green-field land you need to develop, I can use it to "demonstrate" you don't need any green-field land at all: you've already got enough brown-field land you can redevelop.

[hazelchaz]

I pick D. Not qualified to answer the question.