mkpdavies

Don't worry. They will make driving a car so expensive and so hellish that eventualy the proles will be happy to be packed INTO phpbb_cattle wagons, while the elites drive around in luxury cars (paid for by the proles via taxation).

Yes these packed cattle wagons will be a terrorist target and every now and then one will be blown up, meaning a bit more fear and panic. Solutions will be found for that though, that help track the proles even more, for their own safety of course.

The freedoms of the car will soon be forgotten, just as being able to go anywhere without and ID card, pre-water-rationing days and non-government approved lifestyles. The car is a symbol of personal freedom, which is an evil this government will only be too happy to remove at some point.

Freedom is so yesterday anyway.

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SGK

No need to apologise; you've raised a point for discussion.

Because you would have to reverse the entire British culture to do it.
Firstly, you have to convince people to buy apartments. The first disadvantage is neighbours left right up and down. The second is no garden. The third is parking.
There's no answer to the first and is a problem in Germany as it would be in Britain. The second is often softened by a small balcony, but you will have to convince the British that their great passion for gardening is something they will have to give up. The third can be helped these days by building underground parking spaces, but adds to the costs and is often not possible. Parking is a real problem in German cities. You would have to convince the British that squeezing their car INTO phpbb_a space 4 inches longer than their car after a twenty minute search after a long day at work is better than having a garage on the side of the house.

The only way this works in Britain is to make them exclusive; large, well appointed, with selected residents and good facilities. Okay, but it hardly is the mass solution you're looking for. Of course, in Germany, most people rent (and the buyers do so to rent out). There are advantages in renting, particularly the freedom to move and a lack of responsibility for structure, etc.
But there are disadvantages and differences in lifestyle. Decorating is not as popular, because you have to undo whatever you do when you move out. And the British love to decorate. Carpets are pretty much a no-no. Furniture has to be carted up and down flights of stairs. And of course there is the embedded opinion in Britain that rent is dead money.
You have to change all of these fundamentals just to get people to want to live in apartments.

Then there's the physical reality. In Germany, people still generally live away from city centres. Yes, some people live there, but there isn't room for that many. Most live in areas of the city that are given over totally to apartment blocks, large buildings usually 4 stories high with about 40 apartments. They require a large plot of land and the streets are generally a lot wider than in Britain. So these would have to be built.
City centre apartments, in closer together buildings, have even greater parking problems and are noisy. They tend to be favoured by single people and young couples.

Despite all this, Germans still aspire to, and save for, a house. When they're older they'll buy a house in the suburbs, so the suburbs are still there. They are perhaps a little smaller, but they have larger houses in larger plots of land.

The better social life you mention depends often on the area. I know many soulless apartment block areas. The British social life revolves around pubs and restaurants. The continental one on bars and a more casual form of restaurant. By building new apartment blocks, you would recreate the soulless living areas similar to the suburbs. Friends and family are close or far away equally in house buying cultures or apartment renting ones. It is amazing how you don't see the person in the apartment across the hall from one year to the next. The British are far more neighbourly in their separate houses.

Lastly, don't forget that the apartment block idea has been tried once in Britain and was an utter disaster.

I agree with you that the government should stop building on virgin land. I agree with you that more effort should be done to make use of derelict inner cities. I just know for certain that an attempt to replicate an alien culture is a hiding to nothing.