Will Ebbsfleet be a Garden City a New Town or an overblown Housing Estate?

Ebbsfleet Garden City New Town Housing Estate

Ebbsfleet Garden City or New Town or Housing Estate?

George Osborne, the Chancellor, has announced that the government will pump money into residential development around Ebbsfleet Station on the High Speed 1/Channel Tunnel Rail Link line. It is a suitable site for sure – or rather it was made ‘suitable’ by allowing the former Blue Circle Cement Company to excavate the land without imposing adequate planning conditions to ensure its restoration or to provide for an afteruse. Since the Chancellor, rather than a Defra minister, made the announcement, let’s start with financial considerations:
1) will it, like the real Garden Cities (Welwyn, Letchworth etc) be an idealistic private enterprise project with an emphasis on gardens, parks and landscape development? No.
2) will it, like the post-1946 New Towns, be a central government project, making money by buying land at agricultural prices and selling some of it at development land prices? We have not been told – but I doubt it.
3) will it be a subsidised housing project with few objectives except ‘get ’em up in time for the next election’? Quite likely.
Now let’s consider the design aspects:
1) will it be a ‘city’ of houses with generous gardens and parks? I doubt it.
2) will it, like most contemporary residential projects in and around London, be a development of medium-rise residential blocks with no ground-level gardens, no green living walls and no roof gardens? Very probably.
So what should be done? I have no objection to using a development corporation to take the project out of local government control (until it is built) PROVIDING central government involvement is used to achieve public interest objectives. They should use development corporation powers to streamline and enhance the planning process. Then they should spend much of the promised £200m on green infrastructure. This would kick-start the project, as is desired, and achieve public goods comparable to those provided by the Garden Cities and the New Towns.
It is significant that the population of Ebbsfleet ‘Garden City’, at 15,000, will be the same as that of England’s best twentieth century housing development: Hampstead Garden Suburb. The Suburb (which is what Ebbsfleet should be called) was designed ‘on garden city lines’ using the transition concept developed on the great estates of the eighteenth and nineteen centuries.

42 thoughts on “Will Ebbsfleet be a Garden City a New Town or an overblown Housing Estate?

  1. Christine

    Is Ebbsfleet conceived of as a city (ie with an administrative centre), a suburb (with local facilities for the population) or as a housing estate (a collection of residential allotments)?

    15,000 sounds too small to be a city (usually 40,000 plus) and too large to be a housing estate. So on my estimate it is probably best conceived of as a suburb. If so, it will come under an existing borough’s administrative jurisdiction – if not pre-development – at least post-development.

    If this is so, some input or representation by the relevant administration would seem sensible?

    Reply
    1. Tom Turner Post author

      The cynic in me interprets ‘garden city’ as a marketing label in this instance. Ebbsfleet Garden City is to be built in a disused quarry around a Channel Tunnel Rail Link station – 15 minutes to Central London and a couple of hours to Paris. So it is going to be commuter suburb, probably lacking any private gardens, not remotely self-contained and sharing nothing with real ‘cities’.

      Reply
    1. Tom Turner Post author

      Yes, Ebbsfleet could be a good place but, again apologising for my cynicism, this would require lots of different kind of imagination and what they are likely to get is a government subsidy for building sufficient roads to allow a rash of dreary blocks to built for low- to middle-income commuters. Central London property is being sold off as ‘gold bars’ to Russians and Chinese investors who worry about what might happen to their totalitarian regimes. So the old Londoners, are having to move out and out.

      Reply
    1. Tom Turner Post author

      Ooooooooh yeeeeees – an elephant park. I love elephants. But there are a few problems, including the fact that the Wooly Mammoth is currently extinct, the fact that elephants like to walk about 30 miles/day and the fact that they do not like the cold and tend to get foot root in miserable weather. See http://www.elephantsincanada.com/frequently-asked-questions#TOC-ELEPHANTS-AND-COLD-WEATHER . But we can wait. Given time and space enough, they will surely re-evolve a cold weather edition of such a wonderful animal.

      Reply
  2. Christine

    This one looks like the baby cousin of the woolly mammoth and not too different from those types in Africa? (It would be good to know which was closer genetically the African or Asian elephant?) Do you know of any instances of re-evolution?

    I am thinking that it might be a good idea in the Park to remind people of animal extinctions of animals which don’t seem so different to familiar ones so that they take care with the ones they still have.

    Reply
    1. Tom Turner Post author

      Sorry I don’t know enough about evolutionary history but given the way it is said to work (chance mutations flourishing) I guess many species seen biological principles becoming vestigial and then, as environmental conditions change, recovering their importance. So if resistance to cold became important for elephants I guess there would be chance mutations which led to the capacity being recovered.
      For humans, I believe the age of puberty was much younger in the ancient world and that it is now dropping.

      Reply
  3. Christine

    I am wondering what has changed from Victorian times to make the age of puberty younger?

    “…a study by Dr. Marcia Herman-Giddens found that in 1860, the average age of the onset of puberty in girls was 16.6 years. In 1920, it was 14.6; in 1950, 13.1; 1980, 12.5; and in 2010, it had dropped to 10.5. Similar sets of figures have been reported for boys, albeit with a delay of around a year.”

    Some say diet, others point to factors in a child’s environment: stress, climate, light cycles and chemical exposures. These environmental links are not well understood.

    The elephants at Ebbsfleet existed during an interglacial when the climate was hotter.
    [ http://www.archaeology.co.uk/articles/the-ebbsfleet-elephant.htm ]

    Will humans get smaller in stature with increased temperature and animals larger?
    [ http://www.bbc.com/news/health-23896855 ]

    It is interesting that Hominins are said to have lived in Siberia 41,000 years ago – they are contemporaneous with indigenous Australian’s who have lived here for over 70,000 years!

    “Denisovans or Denisova hominins /dəˈniːsəvə/ are Paleolithic-era members of a species of Homo or subspecies of Homo sapiens. In March 2010, scientists announced the discovery of a finger bone fragment of a juvenile female who lived about 41,000 years ago, found in the remote Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains in Siberia, a cave which has also been inhabited by Neanderthals and modern humans. Two teeth and a toe bone belonging to different members of the same population have since been reported.”

    Reply
    1. Tom Turner Post author

      I don’t know where I got the theory from but I have long believed the causes were social, so that the age of puberty rises in Puritan conditions and falls in liberal conditions – this is why I gave it as a possible example of re-evolution.
      I think the poor elephants are going to have to perform some tricky mutations if they are to survive the pressures resulting from human population growth. I hate the thought of elephants being killed for their tusks – but if I had a starving family and could save them by killing an elephant then (1) would I do it? (2) would my action be right or wrong?

      Reply
  4. Christine

    The first question needs more clarification before it would be possible to answer it;
    (1) could you save them without killing the elephant?
    (2) is the elephant the only thing around to eat?
    (3) what happens after you have eaten it? Would there be anything else to eat or would you all starve anyway?
    (4) could you perhaps ride the elephant and get to a more hospitable environment instead?
    (5) or follow it and find an alternative food source?

    Reply
    1. Tom Turner Post author

      The ticking bomb scenario is most difficult when it is a big bomb, so I will give the following answers.
      (1) could you save them without killing the elephant? No.
      (2) is the elephant the only thing around to eat? The elephant is not for primarily for eating: the aim is to sell the tusks to the Chinese
      (3) what happens after you have eaten it? Would there be anything else to eat or would you all starve anyway? The profit from the sale(s) will provide sufficient dollars to buy an illegal passage to Europe for my family – and after that they can all have free housing, medical care, education etc. Or else I can buy enough food to keep them till they are ready to ‘leave the nest’ and poach their own elephants.
      (4) could you perhaps ride the elephant and get to a more hospitable environment instead? No.
      (5) or follow it and find an alternative food source? No.

      Reply
  5. Christine

    (2) Why do you need to kill the elephant when you could tranquilize it and cut off its tusks?

    (3) Why don’t you buy a legal passage to Europe for your family with the proceeds of the sales? You could probably also afford housing, medical care and education too when you are working after you have immigrated.
    [ http://www.elephant.se/ivory.php ]

    The downside is you might be in trouble for ivory poaching in Europe. [ http://www.bloodyivory.org/news/elephant-protection-initiative-poaching-ivory-illegal-wildlife-trade-london-conference ] At the very least you will be socially frowned upon.

    (4) Have you thought of starting a tourism enterprise with the elephants instead and charging European tourist big prices to ride on them? They seem to like that sort of thing.

    Before you know it you will have your very own wildlife safari tourism enterprise and all the housing, medical care and education not to mention food you could ever dream of. Best of all you can do this in your own country and culture and travel to Europe as much as you like!

    The children could then inherit and grow your enterprise.

    Reply
    1. Tom Turner Post author

      I have wondered about cutting off tusks but, for me, it is easy to get guns and hard to get anesthetics.
      I believe I would need over a million dollars to buy an EU passport and it would be hard to kill and de-tusk that many elephants.
      I’d love to get into the wildlife tourism business but to do anything like this in my country you need to bribe a lot of greasy officials.
      So I think the easiest thing is to kill a few more elephants. My grand dad learned how to do this in 1909 when he was working for Theodore Roosevelt http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/tr.htm

      Reply
  6. Christine

    Perhaps you could use your family’s historical Presidential connection to obtain some microfinance to begin your tourism venture?

    How about Tweeting a personal invitation to the current American president to become patron of the conservation side of your enterprise and to enjoy the first safari? If you then posted a ‘selfie’ with him on social media it would be great marketing.

    Another possibility rather than micro-financing is crowd sourcing. Perhaps a joint venture partner in the US would help you with another pathway for dealing with ‘greasy’ officials?

    To get started on your venture with maximum ease and minimum cost offer to pose for ‘selfie’s’ with the elephant and tourists. You and the elephant are ‘authentic’ natural and cultural heritage. This should be enough to get food for the children. (By the way children are naturally photogenic and would add to the charm of the ‘selfie’.) They could then afford a basic education.

    Reply
    1. Tom Turner Post author

      I think you are right that that as an active individual I could get myself out of the stinking mire in which we live but I would have to give my AK47, which we still call an Elephant Gun, to one of my many brothers and so the elephant would still get it in the neck. Another problem is my own kids all have kwashiorkor and I do not think they will live long unless I get them elephant meat and sell the tusks. We have a new Chinese store in town and Mr Wong says his brother can get a very good price for tusks.

      Reply
  7. Christine

    I am sorry to hear your children have kwashiorkor and can understand your dilemma. If we could get some large sacks of porridge to you quickly perhaps you could milk the elephant? [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jlj_rp0dQ60 ] Porridge is a good source of protein.
    [ http://www.howmuchprotein.com/foods/porridge-oats/ ]

    We have a very famous oak cookie (biscuit) which you may also find a valuable addition to your diet that the children would like to eat. It is called an ANZAC. [ http://files.exclusivelyfood.com.au/uploaded_images/anzacbiscuitrecipe3-768191.JPG ] They keep well and were used to keep our soldier’s healthy during the First World War. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anzac_biscuit ]

    Perhaps once the crisis is over you could establish an oat crop?

    Reply
    1. Tom Turner Post author

      My friend says I should plant biscuit trees but we only have a small garden. Do you know if Anzac cookie trees are available in Africa? My friend is not a very kind person and even suggested that since we have 12 children it might be an idea to cook one or two of them. I did not know about milking elephants. It looks like slow work and I still think hacking of the tusks for Mr Wong’s brother is a more practical solution.

      Reply
  8. Christine

    We are really hoping that you don’t eat the elephant or any of your 12 children.

    We might be able to get ‘Uncle Toby’s’ [ http://www.uncletobys.com.au/oats/the-farmers-story/oat-types/ ]to assist you with growing the oat crop…unfortuneately the biscuits don’t grow on trees and need to be baked. [ http://www.sbs.com.au/food/recipes/anzac-biscuits ]

    The recipe will probably need to be adapted to suit your local circumstances. Perhaps Uncle Toby’s may be able to extend assistance to cooking classes. Rather than cooking the two children perhaps one might learn to cook using oats and the other to milk the elephant?

    Reply
    1. Tom Turner Post author

      An alternative would be to sell a few of my daughters to Arab princes. Members of my family have been doing this for centuries. It is odd that although they were taken to Arabia there are no signs of African genes in that part of the world. Either Arabs and Africans cannot inter-breed or all of the children must have ‘died’.
      One of my 43 uncles had a go at milking an elephant but an old bull came and stood on him. He died quickly. I now think it is only possible to milk tame elephants.
      I would like to grow oats for Uncle Toby but do not have any land and my children have large swollen bellies. Please could you give the OK for selling the tusks to Mr Wong’s brother. I’d feel better about it if you agreed it was necessary. He is offering an extra $1200 so the time spent thinking about oats has not been wasted.

      Reply
  9. Christine

    It is probably not a good idea to sell your daughters to Arab princes. I am not sure that they are being well treated as wives and perhaps this is why there is no evidence of African genes.

    I am sorry to hear about your uncle. It is likely that the elephant was frightened he was a poacher and that the elephant felt it was in danger. Once the elephant comes to understand you are not a danger to him or the herd you will be safer. Apparently elephants like potatos so if you can offer this as a treat to them you may have more success.

    There are some precautions necessary in drinking elephants milk as it has “It has nearly 8-10 times the nutrition (i.e. FAT , Protein, Vitamins, Calcium) that cow’s milk has ,which is specifically for the growth of Elephant babies. We cannot digest Elephant’s milk, because our body don’t require that much amount of nutrition. By drinking it we might get loose motions or get obesity like disease” although I am fairly sure obesity is not something that you need to be concerned with at present. Wild elephant milk is less fatty than captive elephant milk is it is most likely to be preferred.

    The milk of the elephant is highly energy intensive so it is suggested that smaller amounts are needed than when drinking other milk (ie human or cow). The protein in the elephant milk may be sufficient that the protein from the oats is not strictly necessary to help your children with their swollen bellies immediately.

    Reply
    1. Tom Turner Post author

      I like potatoes – but if I had any then I would use them to feed my children. The kids also like cow’s milk and it sounds as though that would be better for them than elephant milk. Trouble is, there’s no spare grass except in what they call ‘national parks’. We call them ‘tourist parks’ and they have lions and tigers which eat cows. Our government prefers tourists to cows because they produce hard currency which can be spent on Gucci shoes and Prada handbags. The president’s daughter buys her stuff on the Rue de Rivoli and says it costs bucks and bucks.
      I’m sorry you don’t like the idea of selling a few daughters. If I had more sons I suppose I could send them to help build stadiums for the 2022 World Cup. Mr Sing, who runs our village store, has a brother in Mumbai who does recruiting for construction projects. Trouble is, they have to work like hell and are treated like slaves. Their passports are confiscated, they live in filthy compounds over 500 have died in the past 2 years. Those tusks are still tempting me and the East African Wild Life Society has published a handy list of Five Ways to Kill an Elephant. They seem to prefer hand grenades but what if the tusks were damaged? I reckon an AK47 will do just fine.

      Reply
  10. Christine

    Here are 7 ways to plant potatoes [ http://www.organicgardening.com/learn-and-grow/7-ways-plant-potatoes ] which I hope you will find more interesting than 5 ways to kill an elephant. Perhaps we could assist you with starting a potato crop? It would be useful for your family to eat and for feeding elephants.

    The president’s daughter is lucky to shop in Paris.[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rue_de_Rivoli,_Paris ] Is she a nice girl? Perhaps she would like to help you?

    Reply
    1. Tom Turner Post author

      Potatoes would be fine, though yams would be better. But I ain’t got no land to grow them on. My house is made of flattened oil cans and polythene. It is in a shanty town beside the National Tourist Park. The road is filthy mud and there are guards with machine guns and Land Cruisers. We can get into the Park through the jungle and we would bring the elephant out on a raft.
      I would not call the president’s daughter ‘nice’. She’s got some nice bazongas but is greedy as sin.

      Reply
  11. Christine

    I am not sure if elephants like yams or what association the have with elephants feet? It seems clear that you can not expect assistance from the president’s daughter. And of course, appearances can be deceiving and not necessarily an indication of personality.

    Does your house look something like this? [ http://wash.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/shanty.jpg ]
    [ http://www.nationalturk.com/en/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Ghana-Mole-National-Park-Africa-Tourism.jpg ] Are there other opportunities for the elephant to help you make money?

    Reply
    1. Tom Turner Post author

      No. Our house is in the town and its more like this http://www.african-hearts.org/images/slums.jpg
      The Tourist Park with the elephants is more like http://www.nationalturk.com/en/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Ghana-Mole-National-Park-Africa-Tourism.jpg but we tend to get shot if we go into the park. Police don’t like us. Bad for business.
      I’m going to have to get my tusks pretty soon because they are starting to use drones to keep us out of the Tourist Parks. Or maybe I will be able to shoot them down with my AK47.

      Reply
  12. Christine

    Ok. Is it possible for me to suggest a few improvements? (It is an area of which I am a little bit knowledgeable.) My first suggestion would be for you to get together with a few uncles and clear up the area in front of the houses so that it looks more like the road in the Tourist Park.

    It would be best not to risk your life going into the park however. I am not so against you using the drones for recreational target practice as it is much better than shooting elephants for recreational purposes. But the unintended consequences might be that the owners of the drones would get pretty cross as they are pretty expensive.

    Perhaps if your rifle practice was good enough you could disable one and sell it to your Chinese friend instead of the elephant tusks? It is a lesser moral issue if you are selling it for the purposes of feeding your children. (But remember my warning above about its owners.)

    Also you really need a long term solution. More soon…

    Reply
    1. Tom Turner Post author

      You are so right that we could improve our shanty town. One of my uncles has a very good job selling narcotics. He buys them from an Indian who gets them from an uncle who lives in Mumbai. The man is very rich but runs the business from a shanty town called Dharavi – you may have seen it in Slum Dog Millionaire. Dharavi is much nicer than our slum than ours. The big problem we have is lots of bad men with guns. As soon as anyone makes anything better they come and take it away. Even the girls get into trouble. If they are pretty they are raped. In fact I heard a conversation about the kidnapping of 200 school girls by Boko Haram. One of the big guys was saying that selling them was a really good idea but that he would want to have a bit of fun with them first.

      Reply
  13. Christine

    The only positive comment on your situation I am able to make is that if you make the road better – the bad men with guns are unlikely to be able to take it anywhere.

    So yes, you could improve the physical environment, but you will still have problems with neighbor’s with bad attitudes. This requires some thought…But yes the campaign to Bring Back Our Girls is worth everyone supporting.

    Reply
    1. Tom Turner Post author

      I will take your advice and start work on the road. But my little sister says that if I put stones on the road outside our hut then bad boys will throw them at her.

      Reply
  14. Christine

    Yes, good idea not to put lose stones on the road. I am still hoping we can come up with an alternative to elephant stew. Have you thought of putting a garden on your roof?

    Reply
    1. Tom Turner Post author

      I would definitely like to grow stuff on my roof. But where would I get the steel and concrete to take the weight? It was a tough job flattening the oil drums to make the roof.

      Reply
      1. Tom Turner Post author

        I think it depends where they come from and that it is the migrants from India, Pakistan and other Islamic countries which are keenest on their daughters marrying within their own communities. Historically, this has also been a strong wish in the Jewish community.

        Reply
  15. Christine

    I am assuming is a little bit different for the Jewish community, than for other ethnic communities because racial identity and religious identity are passed on generation to generation through the mother. (You would assume the Jewish community would be a little more flexible in their attitudes to the marriage of their sons). Perhaps there are other communities where religion and race are synonymous?

    Is it only migrants with Islamic faith that are particular about the marriage of their daughters in the UK?

    Reply
    1. Tom Turner Post author

      Difficult question, because there is no agreed definition of ‘race’. The most prominent example I can think of is the Hindus. Because caste remains such an important concept, and for other reasons, they much prefer their children to marry Hindus. I have also heard of Chinese people with this attitude – not for religious reasons. Oh yes, – and the Japanese.

      Reply
  16. Christine

    I am sorry to hear about your yams. Are there many gangs of bad kids in your neighborhood? Do you suppose they are bad or are they hungry too?

    Reply
    1. Tom Turner Post author

      They are hungry AND bad. I think girls are better than boys in my country. But it takes men to kill elephants and girls to make good stew.
      I heard on the BBC World Service that the King of Spain resigned today – and that he went on an elephant shoot a couple of years back. Must be OK.

      Reply
  17. Christine

    The King of Spain seems to be having a bad run of luck. Perhaps it is because he didn’t intend to make stew from the elephant? I am not sure whether his wife has ever tried to shoot an elephant. Although it seems some girls are good at shooting.
    [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Rhode ] Perhaps you could try out for the shooting team in the next Olympics?

    Are you saying that the bad boys don’t have any families to feed and were therefore being very selfish when they stole your yams?

    Reply
  18. Christine

    It would perhaps be useful to understand all the reasons why different groups feel they are restricted in whom they can marry or would prefer their children to marry.

    Reply

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