59th AGM of the Highgate Society

Alice Roberts gave a fascinating talk at the Society’s AGM. She covered how the CPRE aims to pre-empt threats to green space, and fight those threats. There are over 900 friends of parks organisations in London, which have a powerful role to play because space which is not well used and well maintained is under threat.

CPRE is aiming for ten new parks for London, which would be on land currently classified as Metropolitan Open Land but typically fenced off and under private ownership. She explained that the London housing crisis is not about lack of land, indeed permission has been granted for 350,000 new homes in London, which have not been built.

There is an interesting relationship between housing density and modes of travel. New developments at less than around 70 dwellings per hectare are not viable for bus services and inevitably give rise to car use, often two cars per household. Interestingly much river pollution could be traced to run off from roads which had picked up polluting particles and fuel residues.

Her slides are available here.

William Britain gave the annual chairs report, reporting membership numbers had reached the highest for 10 years. His full report and the financial report will be in the Summer edition of buzz our members magazine.

His slides are available here.