Only once people give up the fantasy that they can and should have their own 'castle' of a detached home will this sort of travesty no longer happen. They could have fitted in hundreds more families in that area in houses that could even be larger than what they have now if they had done it properly.

Oh no, the 'castle' bit is the fact that one's house must be detached and has four walls and a roof of its own. This is despite the fact that these 'detached' houses are sometimes mere centimetres away from one another. On the same site, they could have fitted in either more houses or enlarged the houses if they had built them as terraces, preferably with more stories as well. Well-designed terraces can be much more energy efficient (2 walls rather than 4) and can still provide the same privacy and noise protection as these rabbit-hutch detached homes. Medium-high density living with large amounts of communal parkland and strong public transport provision is the best way to build homes.

If there is something that I hate above all else it is not the 'rabbit hutch' homes but the new-build £1.5m+ homes built using the same parts. Large homes require everything to be scaled up in proportion and these homes, apart from the areas used for entertaining guests, have rooms, ceilings and windows no larger than the hutch houses. It is the absolute worst of nouveau riche, resulting in ungainly homes that were not as much designed as plonked together by an uncaring builder making obscene profits off of people whose idea of style consists of a spec sheet of how much shiny granite (less than a mm thin) is slathered over the surfaces of their home.

damo_ said:

Why should they give up such aspirations? Surely the problem is lack of supply; fixing the problem by reducing demand is the sort of thing they tried in the USSR and look how that ends up.

Given only 5% of the UK is build on what we need is lots more houses, with a minimum bedroom size, for a single of 9 by 14 feet and a double of 14 feet sq. Then the garden has to be twice the square footage of the entire house (not the footprint, the house across it's floors).

The reason more and more people want more bedrooms is very simple, and its why we bought a 7 bedroom house. I need an office, as I work from home at least two days a week. My wife sees patients in her office. My family live far away and visit often so a bedroom with an en suite where they can leave a small stash of clothes mean they can see the grand kids far easier. Oh yeah and the fact we have worked hard, saved up and bought a house we want.

Jobs a good un.

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Great Western Road runs from the 'centre' of Glasgow out to the west, becoming the A82 which then winds up the West Highlands to Fort William and thence to Inverness. If it had run to another city it would have been named after it. Brunel had nothing to do with it, I'm afraid. It's also important to remember that these developments you're salivating about are also some of the most expensive property in the city and to be perfectly honest I don't think anyone would be surprised. Glasgow suffers greatly from having a large population that was spread out far and wide with the slum clearances after WWII, meaning that rapid transit fell to the wayside while heavy rail commuter services and cars have flourished.