Countrycide (Urban Sprawl)

Member Name: duncantorr

Product:	Urban Sprawl
Date:	10/08/09 (212 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: 'The Green Belt is a Labour policy... '

Disadvantages: '... and we intend to build on it.' (John Prescott)

There is on another opinionating website a topic entitled "What can be done about the urban sprawl in Dorking?" for which this was first written. Why they picked on Dorking I don't know, but I hope that bit of background explains why the review, which is really about urban sprawl in general, focuses on that particular locality.
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Dorking is a market town
Of no great glamour or renown,
But some antiquity and charm
And archetypal English calm.
In country to light up your eyes
- Lush, green and pleasant - Dorking lies
A score of miles from the City
(Ay, there's the rub, ay, there's the pity);
Young Londoners need not think twice,
House-hunting for a place that's nice
For raising kids outside the smoke,
Before deciding: 'Okey-doke,
We'll leave our urban woe and worry
And settle down in rural Surrey.'

To be commuters they'll commit,
And never afterwards omit
To catch the 7.32
Delivering them to Waterloo
8.24*, thus just in time
The corporate greasy pole to climb.
Meanwhile, the population's swelling
And every family needs a dwelling
- Three million right across the land
In twelve years is the number planned -
And where you've homes you've shops and schools,
With playing fields and swimming pools
And access roads and parking lots,
Until the landscape's joined-up blots.

'So be it,' you might say. Indeed,
It could be argued that we need
Aspiring folk like these to fuel
Our country's growth and the renewal
Of each succeeding generation.
Where this entails a vast migration
To countryside that's thereby lost,
Well, all advances have their cost.
If round our towns the pinch is felt,
We'll have to loosen our green belt -
That's what our government believe,
And just for once they don't deceive
Us citizens as to their aim,
But seem content to take the blame.

The blame? For what? For lack of sight
Both hind- and fore-. To see the plight
Our land has come to both are needed.
The whirlwind we will reap was seeded
Two hundred years or more ago
When cities started to outgrow
Their ancient limits and devour
The natural source of fruit and flour
Around their edges. At that time
South-west escaping London's grime
You'd reach rusticity by Clapham;
Beyond were villages, let's map 'em:
Wandsworth, Wimbledon and Tooting
All ripe for railwayed commuting...

...And therefore ripe for urban sprawl;
By Queen Vic's passing you'll find all
Of these (and Collier's Wood and Merton)
Were swallowed up, gone for a burton,
By speculating sharks developed
And in the city's fringe enveloped.
Each century sees the radius double;
There is no bursting of this bubble,
Just more expansion. London's girth
Like Topsy grows for all it's worth,
And more, it seems, for now the spread
Has found its way to Leatherhead
And thus, of course, in easy walking
Distance of the town of Dorking.

It's amply clear that Dorking's toast,
While London's rush towards the coast
May run another century,
For Dorking's half-way to the sea
(That's if the sea stays put; by then
The global warming caused by men
May start a polar-melting era,
And bring the sea a whole lot nearer).
In just a hundred years or so
There'll be no further we can go
In that direction. And the rest?
Well, let's look north or east or west;
Where there's no coast to overcome
You bump into the likes of Brum.

For yes, throughout our built-up isle
Are cities spreading all the while,
And towns and villages as well:
None can resist the urge to swell,
And when they don't resist the urge
They go on swelling till they merge.
At every stage people protest,
But never manage to arrest
The swelling. Off the stage they're hissed
As Cassandras and pessimists
(If with Greek myths you're up to speed,
You'll know that whilst no one would heed
What Cassy had to say, poor mite,
She was invariably right).

Of course, it can't go on forever.
We know that really but we never
Seize the day to call a halt.
It's everyone's and no one's fault.
For people have the right to breed
And having done so they then need
Homes for their children, who in turn....
.... Where this all leads to you'll discern.
The case against cannot be won.
The question was "what can be done?"
To stop us nationally sleep-walking
Until all share the fate of Dorking.
The answer's nothing, and so be it,
But I'm glad I won't live to see it.


© First published under the name torr on Ciao UK, May 17th 2008

* Train times correct at time of publication.

Summary: Seemingly as inevitable as it is regrettable