As I say Leonard, I don't actually know the specifics of this project. My point was simply that, from an environmental point of view, in general urban development needs to go up and not out.
This is not to say that all high-rises are a good idea, merely that when it comes to urban floorspace, it usually comes down to a choice between erecting a skyscraper on a brownfield, inner city site or else building yet more mixed-function suburbs on greenfield sites.
And that's not just a theoretical observation... for the past 15 years the economic boom in Ireland has seen urban development progressing at a horrifying pace. However, the refusal of Dublin's local authorities to grant planning permission for high-rise buildings has resulted in -- my opinion -- an unmitigated disaster. Previously fallow land, as well as vast tracts of agricultural land, have been gobbled up by an ugly two-storey urban sprawl. And because people are so spread out, it means everyone has to use a car almost every day (lots of money has gone into road-building projects, almost none into public transport).
The whole thing is a complete disaster, and now with the economy about to enter freefall, it'll be an even worse nightmare.
Once again, let me stress, I'm not talking about the Shoreditch project which may very well be misjudged, but a lot of the time when people object to high-rises (or, indeed, wind-farms) they are placing their own immediate interests above the interests of society in general as well as the wider environment and the need for sustainability.
Which is a perfectly understandable human reaction. We live in a culture that strongly encourages us to place our own personal interests above all things. In the long term, that's not likely to work out very well, though.
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Why Socialism?
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