England has an overpopulation crisis on its hands. Almost 60 million people in half the space as Wyoming, a US state with a population of 500,000.
We're considered not only one of the most densely populated countries in the world, but also one of the msot nature-depleted landscapes.
Sure, our gentle, rolling hills in the countryside with carefully trimmed hedgerows and ancient buildings looks nice and 'natural' - but it's very much not. It's almost entirely farmland and monoculture.
I am not alone in having a memory of a time when, driving through the countryside with my dad at night, the windscreen would get battered by an endless wall of insects. Nowadays, this is no longer true. People are confused, where are all the bugs?
They're gone.
My solution to this is, on the surface, a joke. But in reality, I'm quite serious.
Destroy Birmingham
Let's face it, Birmingham is a shithole. A left behind relic of an industrial past, England has almost entire de-industrialised, to the extent that we can no longer produce our own steel, having exported those jobs to China and we become entirely dependent on everywhere else, in which case, if a war or strong disagreement were to break out, we'd be entirely f**ked.
So Birmingham has no place, as it stands, when London accounts for about 99% of the UK's entire wealth generation with its 'services' and corrupt holdings of Russian assets - leaving all the other major cities behind in the dust. Manchester is at least trying to keep up, bless it.
But Birmingham has no future, it has nothing to offer. It's just a city of bad smells, boarded up shops, and crime.
But what if we gave it a new purpose?
As I said, the UK is overcrowded. We are in a fantasy world if we think we can keep up with the population boom of migration and old people who refuse to pop their clogs due to better diets and lifestyles (although this is now on the decline).
We don't have enough hospitals and doctors, banks, houses, schools, or anything else.
And we can't build this infrastructure thanks to 'democracy' and NIMBY-ism ('Not in my Backyard'-ism. The idea that whenever we want to build something for the betterment of society, everybody is like 'yeah sure... just not where I live, because windmills are ugly).
London is a great example. It's fairly big, but it'll never get any bigger as long as the Green Belt exists surrounding it, an area of pristine farmland and nature that may not be encroached upon, a noble goal of preventing the outward expansion of mega-cities like Shanghai. The population increases, but never expands outwards. Any building that encroaches there, NIMBYS come out in full force and shut the whole project down.
But you also get this in cities. You can walk down london streets and see signs on lamp posts alerting the locals of the proposal and if they have issues with it, call this number and shut it down. Like... why??.
In the spirit of city life, something I have experienced my entire adult life, I say f*ck people who live in cities. Don't give them a reason to complain.
If you live in a city, you forfeit your rights to a life of birds tweeting at your windowsill as they smell the fresh apple pie you've laid out without any fear of it being robbed by a random passer-by.
That's not what a city is. A city is an ugly, dirty hell hole we all live in with the sole purpose of earning enough money so that we can escape the city. This is far from idea of course, but that's just the fact of life.
You go there as a spring chicken to enjoy the nightlife and accrue wealth. Once you're done, you move out to the countryside with all your protections and peace and start a family.
Now with all this in mind, what do I have in store for Birmingham
The Perfect Dystopian Landscape
One problem the UK have is their attitude on housing. Everybody wants a house. A two-story building with a garden. Well here's the truth, this ain't Texas. There's no space for that. You can feel it. The average size of a house in the UK is among the smallest in the developed world - and they're only getting smaller.
This expectation that everyone will have a big fat house is a kind of imperialist hangover, as if we all deserve so much because our ancestors were part of a powerful and significant empire.
But we're actually the outliers in Europe, really:
Most of Europe actually live in Flats (apartments), with the Eastern sections in detached houses because they have massive amounts of space.
Nobody in Europe complains. And besides, 'semi-detached' housing is awful. Sharing a paper-thin wall with your neighbours might sound preferable to sharing a floor, ceiling AND wall with neighbours, but I live in an apartment with that situation and I've never heard anybody. The infrastructure of tall buildings is extremely solid, with thick walls and soundproofing. This is compared to semi-detached which can in many cases be punched into rubble if you really tried.
I think the young, working class city dwellers are less picky about this, and far happier to live in apartments. I live in an apartment, it's great. It's over 110m2, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms with a bathtub, open kitchen plan with dishwasher and double-door fridge. Located right downtown, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking miles of architecture including the Shanghai Tower in the horizon.
Sure, I have to deal with perpetual construction noises. Sure, the elevators are perpetually in use and kinda take a while and need this stupid facia recognition to use. And sure, I have to take an almost 5 minute walk every time I take out the trash.
But at the same time, the construction is because things are being improved. The elevator system is for security and is so busy because it's a popular location, and the trash receptacle is open 7 days per week, rain or shine, no exception.
It's a gated area with two gyms within walking distance, an endless supply of restaurants with the entire world's cuisine at my fingertips, a subway station 5 minutes walk and 15 minutes walk, depending what you need, and an infinite supply of shared bikes and affordable taxis/buses.
But in the UK, there's a stigma about apartment buildings, about how they're for the reprehensible types, the antisocials, the criminals. Or simply 'no garden' So people don't like them.
People also whinge about them getting too tall. You see these apartment complexes that are like...5 stories tall. Wtf is the point in that?
Build Up, Stupid
Birmingham can become the new economic powerhouse of the North if we just give up on all these fantastical principles of gentle forests and hobbit-style countrysides. That dream is long dead, and no better is that evidenced by the existence of Birmingham. But if you want a hobbit-style countryside without city sprawl and endless housing projects paving over nature, then we have to accept that living in apartments 30-40 stories tall, isn't a bad thing.
In fact, it's highly profitable. In the space of one house and garden you can give substantial living space to, as I calculated roughly in my building, about 1,000 people.
Instead of Two.
Imagine the income stream!
With a population of about a million people, we could entirely house every single individual in about 1,000 tall buildings. For the entirety of the city.
Hell, I've seen more than that in a single complex I passed by on the train the other day through the city of Hangzhou.
I'm not exaggerating:
Yeah it's not pretty, but it's functional. And I bet if you went inside any one of these rooms you'd be pleasantly surprised. Fully air conditioned, community-based people, pet-friendly, air purifying systems, instant heated water, fast internet. CHEAP.
It just comes at the cost of no longer feeling like the unique individual you're not anyway.
In the meantime, you can go to your high paying job nearby and eat wonderful food, practically walk to a hospital with no appointment necessary because there's so much extra space now, you can easily and cheaply build this stuff without NIMBYS complaining.
If you want to remove anti-social behaviour, these places are gated and guarded, with maximum tenant capacity per rooms and frequent checks if needed. They can be mixed spaces like mine, which combines residency and offices. It's efficient as hell.
Just... Pave over the entirety of Birmingham with this in mind. We're not losing anything. There's no glorious history buried underground or native wildlife close to extinction. There's no pristine forests untouched by the hand of man. There's no beautiful architecture dating back 1,000 years (well maybe a couple but we can build around them).
Elevators means the elderly who still live in the city for some reason don't have to worry about falling down the stairs, and each building has its own representative guards at the door, with delivery boxes which can only be opened with the delivery code.
If we did this, we could not only triple - quadruple the population of Birmingham, freeing up a hell of a lot of pressure in London, but we would also decentralise the country from London, giving the north some meaning and representation once more. the more upwards you build, the cheaper it gets. Housing nationwide would plummet.
What does Chat GPT have to say?
- Water, sewage systems
Yeah, it would need an overhaul. I'm not saying it's not a lot of work, but there's no reason we can't just build that stuff. The Romans managed it.
- Traffic congestion
Public transport. Again, no issues here in China. It's busy as hell, sure, but it functions.
- Lack of green space
I don't care, save the green space for the countryside. Having said that, every single road I've ever seen in China is lined by trees, and there's still plenty of parks.
- Disruption of existing communities
What communities? Everyone is there to work and grind their souls until they can escape. If they're there because 'home is where the heart is' - get a new heart!
- Environmental implications, heat island effect, local ecosystems
Nonsense. By compressing everybody into high-rises you're being more efficient than ever. Meanwhile, the actual beautiful countryside we want to protect gets very much protected and emptied out of human interference.
- Regulatory/legal issues
Yeah I don't have an answer to this one. England is a powerhouse when it comes to unnecessary red tape and bureaucracy. This is, alongside NIMBY-ism, the greatest enemy of our success as a society. We spent almost a billion pounds merely planning a tunnel, one that hasn't seen a single brick laid and may get cancelled - and we don't get that money back. It's just spent. On nothing. Legal expenses or something.
If I were in power I'd get rid of it beyond the most immediate safety standards.
- Historical/cultural issues
Again, by piling all the soulless worker bees in one place, we maintain the rest of the country. Historical buildings can stay their course, culture can thrive.
I don't think GPT has a very strong case.
