Planning and Fuel Use: A Highly Critical Survey

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "Planning and Fuel Use: A Highly Critical Survey"

LSE: Public Lectures and Events
Date: February 25, 2013
Host: LSE Film and Audio Team
Guest: [Speaker primarily referred to as "B", an economist and planning expert]
Duration: Approx. 1 hr 15 mins

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Episode Overview

This lecture critically examines the relationship between urban planning, fuel consumption, and carbon emissions, with a particular focus on the commonly cited Newman and Kenworthy evidence linking urban density to fuel use. The speaker, drawing on professional experience in accounting, economics, and planning, methodically deconstructs prevailing policy narratives, challenges widely used statistics, and argues that British planning policies often address the wrong issues, sometimes aggravating rather than mitigating fuel use and emissions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origin of a Critical Attitude (00:49)

• The speaker connects auditing experience to a skeptical perspective on data integrity in planning research.
  • Quote: “Being an audit clerk for five and a half years kind of gives you a sort of cynical view about evidence. Evidence has to be checked.” (00:49)
• Early training influenced his “critical attitude” toward statistics and survey data.

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2. The Planning Narrative: Density, Fuel Use, and Panglossian Views (03:36)

• Explains how mainstream British urban planning is driven by the view that controlling density (especially via green belts and brownfield sites) can address externalities like CO₂ emissions.
• Summarizes policies inspired by the “Dr. Pangloss” optimism: believing existing planning approaches are ideal.

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3. Scrutiny of Newman and Kenworthy's Fuel Use Data (05:28)

• Newman and Kenworthy’s data (1980) is influential and widely reproduced; shows fuel use per capita declines as urban density rises.
• Controversially, their “adjusted” figures (for income and price) don’t align with economic logic. London, after accounting for massive fuel price and income differences compared to US and Canada, only shows a modest (~20%) increase in fuel use—seemingly inconsistent with expected elasticities.
  • Quote: “There seems to be something possibly somewhere wrong…” (06:38)
• Points to probable “fabrication” or at least misleading presentation of statistics.
  • Quote: “If they were going to fabricate the data completely, they should have fabricated the data in the second half of the book…so doing the fabrication in the way that it appears to have been done, it's always laughable to have frankly someone like me stumbling across the fact.” (13:01)

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4. Methodological Critique: Density, Price, and Data Definitions (17:50)

• Raises issues of data comparability: US cities’ density averages (over large SMSAs) are lower, while European ones are higher due to smaller political boundaries. This inflates observed elasticity of fuel use with density.
• Critiques neglect for economic factors such as price—often omitted from urban form studies.

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5. Counter-Evidence: What Really Drives Fuel Use? (21:31)

• Regression analysis (by Ian Gordon) shows price elasticity is more significant for fuel use than density.
  • Doubling urban density might reduce fuel use by ~15%, but a 20% increase in fuel prices achieves the same effect much faster.
  • Quote: “From a policy point of view and from a cost point of view, which would seem the more efficient process?” (25:26)
• Real-life policies focused only on density (without price) are much less effective.

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6. Case Studies: Policy Application and Unintended Consequences (31:00)

• Policies emphasizing brownfield, high-density development, especially in rural or disconnected sites, often lead to increased car use—contrary to objectives.
  • Example: Residents in new rural developments near Oxford used cars more after moving, despite “good” public transport provision.
• Significant proportion (40%) of new UK housing 2000–2004 was in rural locations, often infill or “brownfield,” not urban centers. (33:38–34:08)

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7. The Green Belt: Economic Logic and Function (26:31 & 36:30)

• The green belt increases urban land values and often pushes development and commuting further, raising fuel use.
• The public perceives green belts as “green and undeveloped,” but much is neither.

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8. Political and Policy Context: Why Density? (36:45)

• Politically, increasing fuel prices is unpopular, so density policies are preferred despite their limited effect on emissions.
  • Quote (C): “It seems to me that anything you do which will have the effect of reducing emissions is going to be unpopular. The great thing about density-based policy is that...doesn't actually have any bite.” (37:32)
• High density in the wrong location (suburbs) does not guarantee reduced car use. Urban form matters more than just a “density” number.

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9. The Importance of Employment Density and Travel Patterns (59:41, 60:33)

• Discussion acknowledges that analyzing employment concentration (not just population density) could more meaningfully explain travel and fuel use patterns.
• Internal spatial structure of city regions matters (“core and periphery”), and “concentration” rather than simple density correlates better with lower fuel use.

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10. Community, Perception, and Behavioral Factors (64:49)

• The paradox of the green belt: most British people visit only a few crowded countryside locations, so perceive the countryside as scarce and precious.
• Emotional and psychological aspects strongly shape policy support, often independently of actual land use or efficiency.

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11. Conclusion and Policy Reflections (71:32)

• The assumed automatic link between planning (as practiced) and reduced emissions is ill-founded.
• Speaker calls for greater honesty in public discourse and suggests:
  • Market-based tools (mainly fuel price) are more effective, but require political courage.
  • New towns and selected green belt development, with careful planning, could better match housing demand and sustainability.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On evidence and statistics:
  “This started off as a very simple survey…and you'll discover how very quickly which leads to the subtitle lies, ‘lies and statistics’—not Twain attributing: it's questionable as to use.” (01:34)

• On Newman and Kenworthy data:
  “The word propaganda is actually used [in JAPA review] for higher densities.” (13:53)
  “It's a fabrication of this evidence at best…deliberate, accidental, they have to say.” (14:24)

• On the green belt:
  “If, as I do, you go for walks around London green belt almost every weekend, you will actually find that it is for recreation. It’s for recreation of the beach. See, if you walk through London’s green north western setting, you will see more horses…what you won’t see is very much agriculture.” (27:34)

• On the political appeal of density-based policy:
  “It’s a nice easy option. If you increase a price, you’ve increased the price and that’s it.” (37:51)

• On the need for a positive planning vision:
  “If you want to win the argument for building on green belt, one way of doing it would be to come up with a vision for what a green belt might [become]…the sort of amenity value that you might create through the extra income that you needed.” (63:19)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:49–03:36: Speaker’s audit background, skepticism, and setup of talk
• 05:28–13:53: Dissecting Newman & Kenworthy’s data and its influence
• 17:50–21:31: Methodological critique: density, price, data boundaries
• 25:26: Price elasticity vs. density elasticity—policy implications
• 31:01–34:08: Rural high-density development paradox and car use; surprising distribution of new housing
• 36:45–39:51: Political discourse—why fuel price is avoided as an instrument
• 59:41–60:33: The importance of employment density in fuel use analysis
• 63:19–64:49: Building a positive narrative for green belt development

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Overall Tone

• The discussion is critical, often skeptical, with undercurrents of dry humor.
• Several participants refer to UK policy traditions with a mix of frustration and pragmatism.
• The speaker challenges both academic orthodoxy and policymakers to reevaluate cherished assumptions, seeking policy grounded in robust, honestly presented evidence.

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Takeaways for Listeners

• Urban density by itself is a blunt tool; fuel prices and travel patterns are more direct levers for reducing car use and emissions.
• Beware of “simple solutions” in planning—scrutiny of both data and underlying logic is always needed.
• Policies like green belts and brownfield targets often have unintended, sometimes counterproductive, consequences.
• Future planning should match policy tools to actual behavioral responses and market forces, not to comfortable myths.

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Transcript

[A]

It's week seven of our ten week series and this I think is probably the first one which is very specifically on plans as opposed to the more general issues of urban and transport etc. And other levels for University of Reading. So I think I've known for, well.

[B]

Both postgrads since we were Both postgrads.

[A]

Indeed 13 odd years and our Levant was while was taught on this course from our friends and a very, very knowledgeable person about the economic planning and.

[B]

Wishes to talk today about planning and.

[A]

Fuel use and I'm sure it'll be a very critical Sir.

[B]

Yeah actually the bit of my CV that you didn't mention is that of course when I first started out it's kind of relevant to write how I get to what I'm talking about. I spent five years training to be an accountant as an article clerk doing audits. So being an audit clerk for five and a half years kind of gives you a sort of cynical view about evidence. Evidence has to be checked. I actually do a lot of what's called incomplete records. So you know, you go down to the farm and the farmer would produce the box or something, you'd start doing the accounts and then you say what's this 203 pounds 16 shillings of tons for? So he said oh it's the invoice is in the drawer, I'll go and get it for you. So you say you learn, don't go and get it from it, tell me where it is because you never know what else you'll find in the drawer that you need apart from that in the box. So there's this sort of. I only realized very recently this early training had influenced the way my attitude towards data and certain critical attitude. Now this started off as a very simple survey and I sort of got waylaid and you'll discover how very quickly which leads to the subtitle lies them lies and statistics not Twain Attributing objective rare it's questionable as you use. I did think of actually another version which was a nation will believe a big lie more than a small lie and I thought that was quite relevant too. Then I realised attributing something to Adolf Hitler was kind of insulting. You can credit to Mark Twain but quotes are writing predictions Hitler taking this a bit too far. So okay, what we're talking about is land use planning fuel use and CO2 emissions and it seems to me that the planning view has been planning deals with externalities. Looking at it from an economic Point of view, CO2 emission is an externality. Therefore Planning can deal with it. All we have to do is the things like CO2 emissions etc. Fuel use for planning because that's what planning deals with. And I wrote a paper about this some 15 years ago called Dr. Pangloss Finds His Profession. Dr. Pangloss was Conde's tutor in Voltaire's Conde and believed everything was for the best in the best of all possible worlds. So we have noses to put spectacles on so we could put pictures on them. So what we found was that in the policy guidance which came out after that time what we need is simply increased density but we're working towards that and we have green belts and countryside protection. So all is for the best and the best possible planning worlds. And we don't actually have to do anything the whole thespace of saying well we've got exactly the right planning controls for this and what we can just do is ensure that we build on high density on brownfield sites. All the evidence that you need to justify this view is contained in the figure by Newman and Kenworthy which shows gasoline use per capita versus urban density for cities around the world in 1980. And Newman and Kenworthy are a couple of Australians on the west coast of Australia now in Perth and they spend about 10 years collecting all this data and it's regarded as the authority on this subject. That's the figure that they show cycles are tilt scandal didn't quite quite but anyway this is gasoline used per capita versus urban density in million joules per capita. I think the two relevant ones are obviously London which is down here in Munich just there and that's about 12 and a half thousand million joules per average per capita. And the other one I actually want you to note is Toronto which is up there with about 35,000 Joules NJ okay so just make a note of those. Now suspicious economists like me will think that actually even geographers like you will think that maybe there's something odd about this. Isn't it potentially price and income differences rather than different differences in density. So Newman and Kenworthy then published another graph which shows the same relationship adjusted US income vehicle efficiencies and gasoline prices in 1980. Now what you notice is London here has gone up from 12 and a half thousand to about 15,000 and Toronto is about 30,000. So Toronto is actually sorry I pointed at that, but it's Toronto's was about there and is now here. London was here at about 12 and a half thousand and now it's at 15,000. But this is slightly odd because they say they've adjusted it using certain elasticities. They've got their price elasticity of minus one in there and they stressed how generous they are with elasticity and an income elasticity of 0.6. So simply a 20% increase in fuel use in London does seem slightly odd, particularly when you know that the price US prices at that time were 1/3 of UK prices and incomes were 60% higher. If you reduce prices by two thirds and incomes rise by 60% and your fuel use only goes up by 20%, there seems to be something, something, something possibly somewhere wrong. And we're more familiar with this figure because this is the way it appears in Rogers report. So there we have Toronto, where's London side out here. And that appears in the Rogers report in that form, redrawn. And it also appears in the planning policy guidance in 2000 in that form. And it also appears actually in Kate Barker's report, but with a certain amount of. Well, I suppose this is what they're saying. So I suppose possibly we might actually believe it was rather more suspicious of it than Rogers or ODP error. So an even more suspicious economist like me and one who's done his auditing training might wonder what's happening if the gasoline consumption only goes up from 20%, if, as I've said, reduce prices by, by 2/3 of increased incomes, that does seem rather odd. The exact figure isn't given. They only give averages for most things and much of the data actually isn't given. But London's average income then increases from just under $5,000 to $8,000, the average for US cities by 60% and fuel prices drop by 70% to 23.6 cents per litre. So there's something, well, maybe it's a fall in fuel efficiency. So the fuel efficiency from 10.7 liters per 100 kilometers to the US average of 15.3. So fuel use is much higher because the Americans were driving much bigger cars at that time. But on the other hand, Newman and Kenworthy say that in the long run, of course fuel efficiency doesn't actually matter because everyone will adjust in the long run the cars they drive to the price of fuel. So it's a fuel use. Like you said, questions of fuel efficiency is relevant to short run changes, but not to long run. And I think we can kind of agree on that. So in the short run, assorted vehicles which already exist are important, but in the long run people will adjust to the fuel price in the cars that they buy.

[C]

As I just said.

[B]

Now the problem as I've also said is that they only give average and they only give figures for one city, the Canadian city of Toronto. Slightly to my surprise, they don't wrap it in as North American cities, but Toronto is in there separately. And so we actually know something slightly more about Toronto than we do about the others. So there the incomes would rise from $7,500 to $8,000. So incomes would rise by 7% and fuel China prices would be 23.5 to 23.6 cents per litre. So less than half percent change and fuel efficiency would improve because actually Canadians apparently drove less fuel efficient cars in 1980 than the Americans by 6%. But in the long run that works itself out. So what we have is that according to Newman and Kenworthy these changes should result in a fall in consumption from the 35,000 million joules in 1980 to 30,000 million joules in the short run and 26,000 in the long run. So 14% in the short run and of 25% in the long run. Now there is no way that those figures stack up. You've got 5% income increase in incomes and fuel use falls. You know, this is crazy. And the other thing is of course that what we do know is that fewer of number. I pointed out that the. Consumption per capita in Toronto in that diagram which shows adjusted prices was about 30,000. In other words, when it says in that diagram, even in Newman and Kenworth's own evidence that this is adjusted to US incomes of crisis, it's only short run adjusted. Even on their own statements it's only short run adjusted, it's not long run adjusted. So we have, well, what shall we say? So is it misleading? Deliberate, accidental, they have to say. The reviewer of film in the Journal of American Planning association described the second half of the book, which is the book contains all the data, four pages of data for every city of the 36 cities. It says we should all be grateful for the data that's been collected. On the other hand, the first half of the book is basically a work of propaganda. The word propaganda is actually used for, for higher densities. And they seem totally concerned with persuading people that it's higher densities. So what I'm finding is. Well, it's a fabrication of this evidence at best. And the question is what happened during the fabrication? Because there's no way an increase of incomes of 6% for Toronto can fall cause a 25% fall in consumption. Well, the one explanation is, and I suspect it's the truth, a research Assistant got paid by them to create and he collected the money and he put the points on the diagram. They were exactly where they wanted them to be and so they didn't check them. He collected the money, they were happy, everybody was happy. That's it. Now, because. And this is probably true, right? I mean, the second reason I think is that if they were going to fabricate the data completely, they should have fabricated the data in the second half of the book. You could have started off with different figures. Who the hell was able to check them? If anyone at some point from Spare City checked, they could write back and say, oh, sorry, there was an error with that figure for Toronto or Perth or something. So doing the fabrication in the way that it appears to have been done, it's always laughable to have frankly someone like me stumbling across the fact that it's absolutely. And I haven't been in contact with Newman Kenwood because I have to get all my ducks absolutely in line before I do because I'm kind of aware I'm going to wreck their reputation and it's kind of difficult anyway. What's the other possibility? Well, the second possibility is that they give really rather too much detail. They emphasize how generous their elasticities are, as generous as they like because they're not actually used using them. And they're very accurate. Some things. Incomes in US cities, they alter the average incomes in US cities given the price of things in different US cities. So they give different income levels for US cities. In the case of German cities, they don't. The German incomes are exactly the same for Hanlon, West Berlin, Munich or London simply gets the average UK income, which is, we all know, something of an underestimate. So there's a lot of detail somewhere in there and how everything is so accurate. But then other things, if you look a bit closer, is it the conjuror's chatter to mislead what's going on? So what would their figure look like? If you really recalculate it the way that they said they had done it with price elasticity of minus 1, income elasticity of 0.6. And I've done that for the Australian and European cities and the relationship with fuel use and density is a lot less clear. Sorry, where is it? This line is supposed to be in here somewhere there. That's right. So this. I haven't come back to this, but that's what it looks like. Recalculated. It's a lot messier, by the way, as a matter of interest, all your econometricians you realise this isn't a fitted line. All your econometricians who use Box and Cox techniques to make absolutely sure that you get absolutely the right curving. What does it matter what you do? Just put in the line where you think it ought to be. I mean, that's much more persuasive. I suddenly realized this sometime afterwards, that actually there was no equation for it. It was just there. It's just there. So there are other problems with the data. I've excluded Moscow because in 1980 it was a communist communist state and saying that if, if prices were reduced slightly nuts, prices weren't going to be reduced. Presumably you've got a fuel allocation depending on where you lived or whatever. But since it's not a capitalist state, not working on price elasticities and income elasticities, doing a recalculation seems slightly crazy. The same thing in 1982. So I have a certain knowledge of it. That's a very small area. You couldn't actually travel very far because you could travel through New Territories but up to the border and that was it. And I think they only recently got a tunnel under the harbor from Victoria island to Kowloon. So the fact that fuel use was pretty low in Hong Kong can be explained by other things than the fact that it's very high density. And Singapore, which I also visited a few years before, is an island state with only one road out. So. So you also can't travel very far if you've got a coal car there. So it's a kind of slightly exceptional. And so I haven't actually done the recalculation. So that's what we get, the three, which I haven't actually recalculated. So but shortly, about the late night, 1997 at the end, I think we did the calculations and it was published and Ian did the. Using the raw data and actually used regression analysis. And what you got was an equation which is just fuel use as a function of density and you get an r squared of 0.78 and the coefficient on density is 0.7. But if you put in fuel use and incomes, what you get is 0.23. And since they're natural logs, that's actually an elasticity on density, 0.75 on price and 0.25 on income. And price is clearly the most significant factor. And both the elasticity is calculated, obviously 0.75, that's minus 0.75, that's less than the one which New and Kenroni sort of said was their general set elasticity which they use of course and as this is also lower than their 0.6. So that would seem to be what we can get out of the data on the assumption that of course the original data is actually accurate and the regression does show density to be quite important. But there are other problems with the Newman and Kenworthy data. Australian former Ray Brenwell pointed this out fairly soon after it was published, which is that they use SMSAs in the states and SMSAs are a statistical construct which are intended to include the whole of an urban agglomeration and since established this concerned with it, the area is much larger because they don't really care, they just want to include the population. They're not really concerned about whether they treat too much land. But the result is of course that the average density of the SMSAs in their figures are rather lower than they would be if you just was the area covered by the conurbation and the population of the conurbation. On the other hand, with Europe they use political areas which are smaller. So they use the figures for the county of Greater London which is less than was defined as the cultivation of London Greater London back in about. Was it 1950? I think it was designated and we all know that various Conservative boroughs managed to get out of being in the Greater London county of Greater London and because it was being put through by a Labour administration they were quite happy to let Eesha and Coge get out because that made it much more sure that it was going to be a Labour control most of the time. So it's in place of high income and so what you have in London or other European cities is actually the densities are rather higher and yet American cities that they're rather lower than they actually should be. So what you are doing is creating elasticity which is rather high than you might expect. So now the fact that they are really, I love the word disdain, they really are totally unconcerned. I've had this book, My Bedside Table practically for most of the last year, so I know it pretty well by heart. But their concern is with comparators in the direct control of physical transport planners. But they're not concerned with economic variables and so the price of travel is not in there. Actually the data for London was 1980, which is of course the year Fayers Fair started. So I'm not quite sure whether it was before it actually started or after it started. But anyway, whether or not it was in other European countries they were subsidizing public transport but again unconcerned with this sort of thing. So the covalent density and Ian Gordon's equation is very much an upper estimate. You know, his estimate was 0.26. And Peter hall did a calculation 2001 that doubling density would reduce fuel use by 15%. So that would be 12.15. So it's about the same sort of estimate, rather lower than the 0.26. Of course, given that Ian's price elasticity is 0.76, you can achieve the same. You can either rebuild London and it would take about a century and double the density and that would reduce fuel use by 15%. Or you could raise the price of fuel by 20% and about six or seven years later you would have reduction down reduction by 15%. So I've no doubt from a policy point of view and then by a cost point of view, which would seem the more efficient process, but it's not actually something that human and Ken really actually interested in. Okay, sorry, I'm moving on from Newman and Kendra, I think. Does anyone want to ask any questions on that up to now? Okay, right, well, this is more recent publications. Is higher density always good? And it's from Norway and there's also some work done in the Netherlands as to not just fuel use of people traveling around within the city, but the study of Oslo indicated that the higher the density, the more people actually wanted to get get away from the place. So the diagram looks like that that's energy used for everyday travel and that's that curve. And you can see it falls quite sharply as housing density increases. But on the other hand, this is long labour time travel by plane. And as you can see as the density increases, so that increases quite sharply. In other words, if you're living at high density, you can't, you know, you want to get away. And so what it looks like actually is that and there's a rather shallow low at about 60 dwellings per hectare. Our minimum the PPG 132000 was 30 per hectare. But because of the people sort of flying off for weekends to get away, this slope, unlike the Newman and Ken really slope is actually rather shallow. The savings are not that great because of higher fuel use. In other sources, what they actually comment also at the authors was that actually if you had a garden, you traveled away less. So houses with gardens. For those gardens you understand precisely why that is because you've always got things to do, species and eating in the garden, which stops you from going out of the way. So that is also another factor. But of course if you're simply taking into account higher densities. The higher densities and the exclusion of gardens is a quote. Now British planning policy has been that what we want to do is build a high density on groundfield sites and constrain settlements by the use of grain belts, etc. Now the trouble with this is that it results in dispersion and high fuel use. The green belts analysis this is, is, you know, distance from the center, rent gradient ab agricultural value away from the urban area, green belt built, put in between D1 and D2, urban expansion continues, incomes increase, etc, etc so the new rent value, land value gradient goes up to cd. But this development isn't allowed to occur. So prices rise and what you finish up with is a new higher land value grade UPF gh and the development occurs the other side of the green belt with higher prices and higher densities and because the higher prices. So the stated aims of green belt, as we all know, I'm sure is to check. Can I ask you what the data is from that previous chart? It seemed to be a sort of floating. Sorry, which, which one are we going from? This one? Yes. Oh, it's a standard model. You'll find it in Evans on residential location 1973.

[C]

That's not Theta, it's theory.

[B]

It's theory. It's not this. Sorry, my, my thesis, so I've given it away when we were both PhD students now, but it's actually one of the last chapters in the book because I think Peter hall, who was my external examiner suggested that I should put some planning application in to do with what I was doing was an analysis of residential location in cities which basically you have a land value gradient of that kind. So land values tend to fall with distance from the center. And then you can explain given income elasticities, etc. And the amount of space that people want, why people with families will live out towards the edge because they want more space. And it depends on the income elasticity. Sometimes the rich people want to live near the center the of, sometimes they'll move even further out, et cetera, et cetera. But basically starting up what would be regarded as the standard urban economics analysis, which would be a land value gradient here which would often come down towards agricultural value at the edge in the absence of any planning constraints which would be true in most American cities would have been so, okay, so we've going so right. They say the aims of green belts in planning terms, checking odds for all, safeguarding gardens, surrounding countryside, preventing towns merging, preserving the character of historic towns, assisting new generation. And they were originally on Abercrombie. This Greater London plan, narrow mostly for recreation of the people in the towns. There isn't anything now in the Ames and Greenfields. They're just recreation's being dropped from that. If, as I do, you go for walks around London green belt almost every weekend, you will actually find that it is for recreation. It's for recreation of the beach. See, if you walk through London's green north western setting, you will see more horses occupying a very large. I think I've seen two herds of cows and one sheep and I've seen God knows how many horses. I went golf courses. What you won't see is very much agriculture, which isn't of course, because then the agriculture isn't there either. But there isn't anything about recreation. But that's what they're being used for. It's possibly why the Telegulf tourism, so keen to preserve greenbelts, you'd have to have to drive farther to ride the horse, wouldn't you? Can't allow these oinks out of the country. So in economic terms, if those are the aims, what we should get is higher land and property values in the container of an area. And if it's working to prevent expansion and if the demand is high enough, what you'll get is commuting across the green belt and you'll get development on the other side of the green belt and actually higher property values on the edge of the green belt and infill and higher density development in a contained urban area. In other words, the argument about regeneration actually in economic terms depends on the fact that prices are now higher. So it becomes worthwhile developing to higher density or developing sites which are underused. So you get regeneration. This is kind of not spelled out in planning documents, but from an economist's point of view, well, okay, what we're keen on is at brownfield sites, does it make sense to build at high density in the countryside on brownfield sites? Building at high density on brownfield sites in the countryside, if what we're actually trying to do is reduce fuel use. This one I came across, it's an old cottage hospital site five miles west of Reading near Bradfield. It's absolutely out in the country, but it ticks, as Paul Cheshire put it, the right boxes. It's a brownfield site and it's got a bus route. And so what else do you need? There's a bus. It stops there, well, 800 metres down the road once an hour, but it's on the bus route.

[C]

And it's a.

[B]

Brownfield site, so it's got about 28 houses on it. Quite expensive houses. I have not the slightest doubt that no one, except a possible cleaning day uses the bus to get anywhere. That's actually pre 2000. That was in 1997. So I went out and checked when it was built. The other piece of evidence is containment ground Oxford. This is Oxford Brookes University a few years ago, Oxfordshire at that point in the 90s said that new housing would be outside Oxford. A smaller town like Bicestone, Banbury, Big Trot and Whitney and these towns had good public transport and so that's where the development should be. Oxford should be protected by its green belt, etc. The result actually was that everyone, the guys at Oxford Brooks did a survey of people who moved into this new housing in the areas of public transport and without exception, they used their cars more to get to work after they'd moved the other side of Oxford green belt than they had before to get to work. I think the extreme was ditkut, which was 70% used their cars with get to work before and 98% used their cars to get to work after Kidlington. The new housing was adjacent to Oxford and Kidlington, which was actually inside Oxford green belt. 54% used their cars to get to work from Kidlington before and 50 from wherever they were and 54% used their car afterwards. So actually housing within the greenbelt didn't actually result in more car use. It was the housing out at the smaller towns which resulted in more car use. This is from a paper by. I think it's Peter Vivid in Land Use Policy recently on new housing in England. I'm slightly astonished by this. About 300. There were five and a half million houses between 2000 and 2004 and 300,000 were in urban areas, but 200,000 were in rural areas in large part being conversions infill in villages. So two fifths, 40% of the new housing was actually being sort of scattered around the countryside in small pockets. I was slightly amazed by this statistic, but that's. I think he's using. I think he was a satellite imaging. So what was his definition? I can't narrow enough.

[A]

I think it was administrative. It would be. It would include a large number of.

[B]

Claimants because his argument was that there were more. There was more housing provided out in these rural areas than was provided actually in town centres. So although all the publicity was bound lots of flats and town centres, actually it was equal. A number of houses were being built out in sort of rural areas, which.

[C]

Was kind of surprising but presumably on brownfield sites.

[B]

Well, you can do infill anyone watch by the way, watch BBC2. It's very good. BBC2, that's right. Biggest in 2000, Thursdays 8 o'. Clock. The planners. It's worth watching the British at their worst or best, I'm not sure. So anyway, I'm nearly closing. The US evidence is there's a recent paper the policies of containment where containment policies of course fuel use is greater because what happens is people go from one contained area to the other other and so instead of being grouped together, what you get is increased increased fuel use. So what the conclusion is that the policy that we have are justified by reference to global sustainably sustainability but that the evidence for these policies reducing fuel use and emissions is at best non existent if not fabricated. In my view there is evidence that they worsen the situation. That is we have a policy which actually increases fuel use and results in greater CO2 emissions than we need have. So we know that the British policy is there for other reasons. Some people and power think that for example that high densities are just good in the north themselves. The people who really should learn to like high densities because it's good for them. Some people just want to protect the countryside and so people like Simon Jenkins who wants to produce any. Exaggerated responses of the countryside, The British use of urban land more wasteful than any other country in Western Europe. So I went great to point out to him that that wasn't actually true. The Robin Vest had demonstrated actually they were almost the most efficient in Western Europe many years ago. So the next time it came in after it was. It is generally agreed that the British use. It's generally agreed by people who don't know anything about the soil. So can we have a little honesty? Thank you.

[A]

Thank you very much.

[C]

Yeah, I mean it seems there's another political line in this which is that density isn't the answer but fuel price is the answer. Nobody's got them. No politician has got the balls to actually.

[B]

Well, they have actually. They were, they were doing it. They have been to the point I recorded. Yeah, but he did increase it every year. He said I'm going to give another holiday this year.

[C]

Absolutely.

[B]

But in another sense actually the fuel price has increased. I passed what it was 139.9 at walk down the road I think. So in a sense the price increase has been occurred anyway.

[C]

But it seems to me that anything you do which will have the effect of reducing emissions is going to be unpopular. The great thing about density based policy is that you don't actually do. Doesn't actually have any buy it.

[D]

We don't talk tomorrow 30 years.

[C]

Yes, but most. But you don't most of the time you just retreat from the state of policy. So it's a nice easy option. If you increase a price, you've increased the price and that's it.

[B]

One of the papers I didn't refer to it but which Kate Barker I think refers to along with yours and others is a study. Oh it's somewhat Israelis who use the Newman and Kenworthy data but disaggregating and it's a. I can't remember, it's some fancy econometric technique and what they're arguing is that actually it depends where you're building. But if you build and it's this question of if you build high density out in the suburbs, you've got absolutely no reason to suppose that they're actually going to use their cars or go by public transport into the centre and actually if it's constructed out on the suburbs then actually what apparently occurs is a lot of circumferential travel. So it depends where your high density is. High density in the centre of London people are likely to pay a high amount and then river work there. But on the other hand, if you've got as me outer Harrow, a block of flats with 100 flats, then everybody drives out in the morning and goes north, south, east and west. Not necessarily as was discussed nausea planning inquiry, walking half a mile to the tube down the road and then spending an hour to get into central London. But is it based on fuel use? This private car, is it all it's supposed to be? I think it's supposed to be all fuel use, yes, the camera indicted yes, it's all fuel use for travel.

[A]

So what does the Netherlands stuff say? You said what the north region, which is presumably at a given point in time.

[B]

So income distribution is just to be absolutely honest. Oliver Hartford found that paper and I was over in Coningham actually last October and I met the guy who wrote it, but I don't know actually he was quite happy when I gave a version of this in Colingham but I mentioned it without the actual details of it. I should actually get what the breakdown is between the proportion of fuel which is used by private vehicles, let us say in commuting and that used by trade vehicles, buses and all the other things which we've seen on London trails. It's in the Newman and Kenworth data. I think. I think it's the zag. Well, they have to have. Well, no, actually it would appear that as I said, if they were going to lie, they should have done it in the data because you couldn't check it. But if not the fabrication which they actually did. So I have to assume that you can the data they decided they actually did collect. And so I assume that. Well, that's the. That's the data for which the reviewer and the JAPA said we should all be grateful. There are unlikely though to be long term if you like time series data from Inland Revenue points like sort of fuel depots and garage chains and so forth, in which you can actually do a run on London and just look at how terms of whatever had changed. Grantham and I did a study which was a statistical study of journeys into central London using the corporate account which because we had. I realised There was a 50 year run of data. The 50 year run of data in urban economics is just too good a chance to. And the price of fuel was a relevant factor. So things like the bus fares, price of fuel, train fares etc. And because when I mention fares fare in my mind I've got this. It goes like this. In the consecutive years people traveling into London and usage there's a. Because it came in then Bromley, if you remember Bromley appealed and said it wasn't judicially. Right. And so the judge said they had to was it consult. That's right. So they put the fares back up again and then they consulted and put them back down again. And so there is a zigzag in usage but actual usage. So you've got that sort of data on sort of prices and journeys to work. But you might have the sort of data which New and Kenworthy collect say they collected I mean the Greater London Economics Group. I know from.

[D]

Very useful for you point one point of view study of the where people live by skill level working central London.

[B]

Right, I'll show it to you. Sorry, Paul's giving me a paper that I've read in the last. I mean Newman and kenworthy spend another 10 years traveling around the world collecting all this data. Which is why the guy JAPA said we should all be grateful because you know, as Australians they obviously like traveling to visit all these countries. That's useful but trying to get it, you know, I mean they got it for one year trying to get consecutive runs of that sort of data probably can be just about this maybe that you could get data off of glc. But then of course the county of Greater London is less than the culture of great and less than Considerably less than the functional other region.

[D]

Yeah, I mean glazing can't got some stuff for America time series and small special units.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Because USA collect this data.

[C]

There are several other new international databases across cities, at least one of which I launched in a library a long time ago but nobody's used it. So I think that the data exists now to do something with sophisticates but nobody's actually shown any real interest in doing.

[B]

Well I was I'm going to ask.

[D]

A different question which is about the causal measure. When I see a scatter diagram I.

[B]

Always say which way bits of causation go.

[D]

And we've got a very good urban economics theory that tells us that density is the exercise of fuel. So density is the outcome of the prices of fuel rather than the cause of the price of fuel. Yes, yes, that's so you could work on the price of fuel and impact on density but it doesn't follow. You can work on density and impact.

[B]

On the use of fuel price. Well, I mean I'd accept from Newman chemo point of view that if you do increase densities in certain ways this will affect the use of fuel.

[D]

It's not inconsistent with effective but with reducing the use of fuel. You've already given a lot of examples of where you get for example dents, high rise, outside infilling villages and small towns where density is not associated with actually use. It's rather associated with England.

[B]

No, no, there is a classic which I.

[D]

Whereas price is pretty unidirectional.

[C]

Actually Newman and Kenworth the urban form doesn't matter at all.

[B]

No it hasn't.

[C]

So take no account where the house does.

[A]

I mean implicit in most people's discussion of this in general terms is the understanding of your basic model. Therefore density is going to be in the center and that is therefore so that location and density are together in people's minds rather than Mihaili that together.

[D]

My reading of this whole Kenya.

[B]

You will find Rachel Ainsworth there's a paper Urban Studies last May and it's why flats were being built in England. We said it was because of the planning policy guidance that they'd suddenly increased and someone anyway there was a comment saying no, it's all these flats being put up in city centres because there's a new buzz about city centre living actually. And so I first demonstrated that actually detached houses were still being infrastructured in Scotland in a way which is was impossible in England because of the density.

[D]

Price of detached houses in Manchester is the.

[B]

I also found a classic because the person arguing was it was all about city centre living. And I actually found on the southern outskirts of Reading this. And I went and looked at this development, which is 2007, so it achieves the 30 dwellings per hectare. It has some detached houses in, they're three stories and it achieves it by having 30% of the dwellings in blocks of flats. So this is the extreme southern edge of Reading. It's just off the A329M. So you're absolutely ideally located to get your car out and drive into London on the M4, which as I drive out to give a lecture at 9 o' clock this morning, at 8 o' clock, I notice on the other coming across, coming from ready to Navy, more or less, it stops somewhat even at 8 o' clock in the morning because of everyone coming across the green belt Reading in order to get into work. Anyway, Ben, so you're investigating the relationship between density and one aspect of the environment, which is, I guess, carbon emissions. What about the relationship between density and biodiversity? Is there any. Well, curiously enough there is some data on it because the pieces that I broke with Oliver Harscliff for Policy Exchange going to policyexchange.org UK and unfortunately housing was kind of open then and I can't remember that or another of the four, three others that we wrote from, but I'd have dug up the data. Yes, actually biodiversity is greatest in city suburbs and Italian. Yeah, well, you know, cities, but basically greater than in the countryside because with pesticides and insecticides etc. Actually it gets reduced. Whereas if you're in the suburbs, you've got all these foxes running around. It's standard ecology.

[A]

Trying to break up this group of three here. And I think one. One of the issues about this question of density versus city center or locations in this context is that while we might very well accept the density argument, actually work by people like Helen Jarvis, who looked at the city centre story for Leeds, shows that increasing density of population in the city centre actually increase. Increase the use of transport, increase fuel use because people want to journey in all directions. Rachel's as compared to living a little in the inner suburbs.

[B]

Rachel's data, which was actually why I brought her into the act, was studies of people living in leaps, actually. And the interesting thing was that they weren't sort of. None of them displayed any attachment to Reed City centre. A high proportion of them had cars anyway and they all anticipated moving out to a house as soon as they had kids, got married or whatever. So there was no sense that we got oh yes, the buzz of central city living. We all want a living plan. I mean it was when we were getting up from the table. I had lunch with some very senior DOE planner about 10 years ago and he said something about flats and I said, you know, they don't particularly want to live. He said they're buying them so they must want them. Well, yeah, okay, if there's nothing else available, nothing else being built, you'll buy a flat. But it doesn't seem that particular case that Kimberly wanted the banks of plans. Very chief seeming plan.

[D]

That was the point about the relative grasses of different types of house in Manchester, that there is a big increase in wood flats in central Manchester and the result was price of houses in central housing space and central Manchester fail relative to the suburbs.

[C]

Who.

[D]

Relative change in prices.

[A]

Was that desirable or undesirable?

[D]

Well, it's suggesting that there was a relative, there was a relative under supply of all housing but there was a relative oversupply of flats and did that.

[A]

Allow large numbers of people to live.

[D]

And worse than the plus of living in central Manchester? But that's where the Harris were.

[E]

I mean I think this is actually very interesting. One thing I do try, I teach a course planning for sustainable cities and I always try to tell people is to beware of the simple solution. And I think that clearly the Newman in Kenworthy stuff was actually presented as the simple solution. Governments love simple solutions. It means you don't have to do anything nasty like raise a price. That's actually going to really impact on your electric quickly and apparently. But turning the argument around slightly, I think one of the problems with the density thing is it is so believable.

[B]

So believable. Absolutely.

[E]

If you don't look at data, if you don't look at numbers, it is so very believable if you come from a North American context to move into somewhere like London. So a lot of students that are coming across, the first thing you note is that you use public transport because you can, because it's there and it's far more simple than if you're living in northeast Texas where frankly you need a truck. It has to be a truck, it can't be a car because you know, you look silly in a car, really big truck. But to turn the question around a little bit, how about the idea of density in terms of supporting public transport? Do we think public transport like a tube system, like a decent bus system is important and does density in Some way mean that you are able to have those services?

[B]

Well, yes, clearly. I mean one of my lectures on planning is a chapter in the book is upon the way in which we had plot ratio control which limited the height of buildings. And one of the first papers I actually wrote was saying the result of that is that it spreads all the ices out and actually reduces the. Whereas or sort of make you up all the Wall street or the city of London. Everyone walks around. We used to have messengers who transported stuff around like, you know, and the density is high enough to have public, you know, good public transport. I mean Jubilee extension to Canary Wharf is slightly not a good example of that because it was heavily subsidized. But yeah, I mean I always, when I'm doing this, that piece I'm sort of arguing that actually the economists were the first people saying this doesn't work in terms of economics. And actually in a sense in terms of destinations, work destinations. The planning thing has come towards the economic consensus that actually high density is quite good in the sense it's efficient. I mean the evidence on prices is.

[C]

That.

[B]

Office space is worth more the more other office spaces there is nearby. On the other hand, the price of housing, the price is lower the more space there is other houses there are around. So the externalities work in different ways. We, we're talking about jobs or house or residences, but in terms of obviously allowing better public use. I disagree on that theme.

[D]

I'm quite interested because, you know, it's.

[B]

Quite well recognized that to build houses living at these cars. So there's been quite a trend among some regeneration agencies to put in good public transport facilities, space for keeping a bicycle early on in the development. And Freiburg as an example of this, Where they put in a tram facility, ferry, the army, anyone moved in. Is there any evidence that that's actually had some long term effect in terms of producing crimes? No idea. I think actually the problem with this kind of debate is that it's quite theoretical and I trouble theories. I like to see practical examples. And so I think, you know, it's kind of shows how it could work. The trouble is, I guess you're talking at a very micro level. I'm not sure that. I'm certainly not an expert at that sort of level. I mean the problem is, I think what I'm gunning for is actually green belts and the way in which we have a policy of actually distributing development over the countryside and then saying it's high density. So high density is good because it reduces fuel use? No, it Bloody doesn't. If you stick it out, you know, five miles from anywhere in the countryside, high density just means there's more houses out there for people to travel in by car. So parodying the planning system a bit. I'm not only an academic with respect to the planning system. I was responsible for the halls of residence at Reading and deputy Vice Chancellor there. So I was responsible for quite a few, quite a large amount of development and I've sat in on planning committees when I've been the developer and at Harrow where I live I'm chair of the planning Harrow Hill Trust objecting to things. And so I sit on planning committees and I observe what happens. Well there I'm the objector so I cut in the back. That practical insight. We've all got practical insights. It does feed in. Yeah, yeah, sorry. But I think actually see your example and it comes back actually to quite an att. Your example of your housing estate which is five miles from somewhere with 800 meters from a bus stop. Yeah. Actually I suspect if I was to transport authority I would put a. I would put the bus stop rather close.

[D]

That.

[B]

Still only goes once an hour. Okay. So you might actually increase it because actually what you're seeing and there are transport plans for development stack and they would look at the way that this development was planned and actually make it happen. And they do. I've seen a lot of examples where they do make it. Now whether they work is another matter and that's what I'm interested in I think.

[A]

I mean some of the discussion around that issue is that they work for those types of specific journeys.

[B]

Yeah, well that's the problem.

[A]

The issue is that that is only one of your five journeys of the day and they don't work for the other four and they don't work when your 17 year old wants to take a job which starts at 6am and all of those sorts of issues. But it's incredibly easy to be negative about the potential. And I suppose that what I would like to see is the diagram with employment density on there rather than population density that could produce a quite different. I mean we're arguing. Implying what we think employment tends to. You will show some useful.

[B]

We know.

[C]

So when we looked at British data, the National Travel Survey and the census that urban formed in the sense of the balance between core and periphery and act or within city regions, the distribution and employment and population and so on the internal densities. The only thing which would have meant different is concentration. So there's absolute common sense between what saying is the only thing you can demonstrate as having a significant impact on total energy emissions within city mutants. And it's a red herring. This house established, taken out of the Newman Kemba. It's buried in Newman Kemba to some extent because you do not, obviously do have more concentration within the highways and the cities they're talking about. It's just not unpacked and it works primarily as a motor switch.

[B]

I can't remember the Israeli piece. I can't even remember which journal it's in. It's about 2003. Whether that includes this, I can't remember. That gate is in. They've got practically everything in there, you know, as to where it is, what the densities are, et cetera, et cetera, which is how they can get to circumferential journeys. It's a very sophisticated piece going into place. I wonder, perhaps this has been done already, but it occurs to me that if you want to win the argument for building on green belt, one way of doing it would be to come up with a vision for what a green belt might. The sort of amenity value that you might create through the extra income that you needed. Green Valley. So it's a positive vision, particularly which recovers the original app, which is a lot of it was about unity, which you say has been lost. Has anyone done that? Well, Kate Barker actually, in her report said what we ought to have is more development within greenbelt so that the amenity space was available. There would be some green wedges. The point is, in Britain, all you've got to do is say, I want to build on a piece of green belt and let you come. Nick Bowls, who actually was headed Policy Exchange when I wrote unaffordable housing, etc. It was misplanning. Now, I noticed when he did his piece, lost his temple with Simon Jenkins on the newsletter, you remember, was to care for this. That was not building on green belt. His own green areas, not the brink belt. Where the other green areas were, is not absolutely clear. I just think there's a sort of piece of work to be done to actually sort of, you know, showing how. How developing that vision, I think would be very, very persuasive. Had a lot more traction with the public than actually some of this. Some of this robot technocrat, you know, I started off on a more general thing and then got waylaid by Newman and Kenley. I know that a flat yesterday I had this book on the table and I kept on sort of. I don't know, just a minute for about 10 days I was back and forth booked. Check what they actually said. That's that much senate to me. So is the problem the emotive name.

[D]

In the green belt? Just change it to the town expansion belt. The only problem, there's also very substantial asset values locked up in ownership. I was going to do some Sign Ecosystem Evaluation 2011 was it? I mean that didn't the biggest study yet of the value of greenware. And as far as the social value of green Bible, that is the value of the Greenwich people who live in the Green Bayou was zero. But there was a substantial amount of value associated with people who owned houses.

[B]

One of the things about the British countryside and I walk through, I visit the British countryside and I walk every weekend out on the British countryside. But I deliberately take a road, you know, on the survey map and I avoid, you know, I don't go to the station places that everyone else goes to and I will hardly meet anyone except someone walking their dogs who's alone. If there are certain places that you go to Virginia, Water, Dead and Rail, West Wickham, Hellfire, Keight, you pass it as you're driving. There's a mass of people arriving there. The point is the British visit the countryside but they only visit very few points of the countryside which are always crowded when they get there. Which is why they have the view that there's hardly any countryside left because they only go to the beginning which are very, very crowded. I mean the classic was January 2nd last year. My daughter in law in St. Albans invited me to go to Wendover Woods. It was a nice day. My wife had died five days earlier. When you get out of the house, you know. So I went generally up to Wendover Woods. She said there's a place you can park for em. Catherine January 2nd, I drove through deserted children's. I arrived, There was a 50 car car parker at 150, a cafe you couldn't get into. Could you go for a walk in Wendover Woods? Only if you were going to trip over, you know, dance around everybody. But of course it was crowded. So as far as everyone's concerned, there's hardly any countryside left and therefore any countryside is worth preserving. So it's a peculiar psychological situation because I was trying to establish the reason for the paradox which is. And the CPRE says, you know, 80% of the British visit the countryside at least once a year. Yes, you know, how is it that I never meet anyone except at these places because they all visit the very popular spaces and that nowhere else so actually, 90% of the countryside is irrelevant because no one ever actually sees it. But of course, you know, because they never see it, they don't realise it's there.

[A]

It seems we've done really well to get through an hour and a quarter without having the green belt discussion. But if we're going to have a green belt discussion, perhaps we should come back to your point, because I don't think it's just about renaming, although I've been trying to rename it. I'm badly managed scrubland for an awful long while. But equally, I think an awful lot of people do not understand that the green belt does have a lot of assets in it. I mean, the students who are sitting at the back rather quietly, and I don't blame you, really. How many of you know, would expect to see buildings in the green belt? I mean, when you would country club. Yeah, but I. I mean, most people's concept of the green belt is one, it's green and two, it doesn't have a large amount of development in it. But in fact, that is not true of significant parts of the green belt. So the problem is neither green nor. Nor is it. But I don't think Bella's way of approaching it will work until we get to a point where people actually understand that there is significant development in the Greek belt because they genuinely believe that they are keeping Mr. Nilsen in natural.

[B]

The general public's view would be that I put up the five things which are, what are the reasons we've been gone? Most people will say something about preserving wildlife, preserving land for agriculture, the fact that it's all related to stopping development. Most people don't see it that way.

[E]

Well, I mean, it was originally developed. We were very worried about towns bumping.

[B]

Into one another, but it was also developed, particularly developed. And, you know, the Scott Report, et cetera, et cetera, 1945, 44, et cetera, was, you know, preserving land for agriculture. You know, we've just been through Dick for Victory and, you know, new boat blockades, etc. And the whole thing was about preserving this valuable agricultural land. Now, you know, along the way, when you get to sort of 50 years, and thanks a bit to Paul and various others, when you get to the Rogers Report, the reasons for preserving the countryside, agriculture isn't even mentioned, but many of the population will say, you need to preserve agriculture, but it's not actually there. A lot of these things are. Expectations, are they? They don't have much to do with rationality and it's not entirely Clear that even if an effort were made to explain that not all the green belt is green and not all of it isn't built on and you never get waste from the problem that those who defend defend it as far as I can see because they think if they don't defend it completely they'll lose all of it. Certain things can be true, but that is the single one that most drives them. I'm not saying that that's rational. I'm just going to say that I infer discussing why they don't.

[E]

I think that that's actually quite accurate. I think there are a lot of people that have that fear based upon the way we as the British tend to legislate the things when we do something we do it usually to the full extent of ridiculousness.

[D]

People do defend their self interest.

[E]

She will be fearful that her British countryside will be.

[A]

Could we perhaps for a final comment and question come back to the original statement which I think slightly concerning which was that if this was true we.

[B]

Didn'T have to do anything with our.

[A]

Planning system because it will automatically be doing it. What would you do with our planning system other than get rid of it? I mean, let's have some positive suggestions. Yeah.

[B]

I spent so much of my life writing.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

You avoided. But I mean I have been introduced to conferences to the Prince of Darkness as far as. And there's so much economics in working out what's wrong but arguing for positively for it. Well, actually, I'm sorry, I'm going to argue for self interest. It seems to me absolutely nuts that 90% of the country is countryside and therefore totally preservable and about half a percent of it is urban conservation areas but they're brownfield sites and and therefore override for development. So you know there's a peculiar.

[A]

So another negative state. Turn that into a positive state.

[B]

Either land more development in the countryside and I do probably. I notice and I think onto the right what he's obviously working towards. A he's not going to get 3% but he'd be happy if he got half percent or 1%. But he's working towards the new towns argument which I think is actually he's probably onto that he might get away with it because A you can get the architects on board, right? They can build new towns, capital designed. B it's very specific that where the new towns might be. It's not as though you're committing development all over the place. It's just this new town and we used to have new towns New towns were built up to the 1970s. You know, populations to are going increased by turning 40%. We now need more new towns. It's arguable and I think probably he might even get away with wanting to.

[C]

Try different because the issue starts off in a way price changes versus plan. That seems to me the thing is that you can't have effective gyros which frontally confronts market pressures. And what you see around the green belt is exactly this. So if you constrain it in one place, it pops up somewhere else, somewhere else less convenient. What seems to me to be the strong argument for trying to get the prices right in relation to emissions is that that will undoubtedly encourage densification. And densification requires planning. It'll put market force is going in the right direction, but it'll need organization. Some of the organization may be new town, some may need females and green cards and so on. But actually you're only likely to get this in a useful way if you sort out the balance of market forces by getting prices right to start with.

[B]

Can I just take that as a couple of fine and that is that when the 10. Really go on about Los Angeles is clearly there sort of the worst possible low density, high fuels actually. Of course I know I met one, I just used a couple of people from Boston and New York and they moved to Los Angeles. And the first time, the first time there was a serious price hike, they went out and bought a Toyota Prius. In fact they bought two Toyota Priuses because you need to if you're living in Los Angeles. And they did it very early on over the Internet found all the Toyota Priuses in Los Angeles have gone on the other side of Death Valley. And the guy who killed the TV film director can't chasm off the bridge. They found his car on the bridge, it's a Toyota Prius. So if you know you live in Los Angeles and you have to travel a lot because of the roads, what you buy is a car which uses very little petrol when the price is high. I mean the sales of Japanese cheap usage, low usage cars in those cities deserves another look by the equivalent even in Kenworthy to find out what actually is the fuel usage now after the price hike which have occurred. So that petrol, sorry, gasoline is no longer as cheap in the states as it used to be.

[A]

Okay, well thank you very, very much.