An Outsiders View

Over the last week or so I have been thinking how lovely it is to live in the countryside and how lucky I am to live here. As some of you will know when I work I normally have to go to one of the big cities in the area to do my work. Each day I have to drive through the rush hour traffic and in sit in queues of cars with nothing to look at but houses and more houses. All the time I wonder why we have developed area's so much as to turn them into brickwork jungles and this is reinforced by the stories of anti social behavior you hear on the local radio. Today's story being of arson on a housing estate at the edge of the city. 

Just in traffic terms, I spend half of the time traveling first 26 miles and the other half the last 4 miles. Just in terms of getting about as motorist there is no pleasure in the actual driving itself. I guess there is public transport benefits in terms of buses but with government cut backs kicking in and bus fairs going up it won't be long before some of these start to disappear in some area's of the city. Then if the there is traffic there is the fumes. I remember being living in Leeds on a warm summers afternoon and smelling the fumes from the traffic in the lifeless air. It was horrible. One thing the Government really need to do is look at how to reduce the pollution we put in the air, especially from stationary traffic and the way we develop out of town shopping area's that encourage people to use there cars.

the other problem I have with cities is the planning and design of housing. Row upon row of identical looking buildings. It is just so dull. Just lake cardboard boxes standing in a row. The don't have anything that makes them unique. Of course the planners had good intentions when they set up these estates of houses providing them with focal points such as local shops, pubs, and in some cases community centers. The problem is these focal points have been destroyed due to the closing of the shops because of the competition they faced from the large supermarkets that have taken their trade. With the local shops gone and boarded up, on the whole, these focal points have become different sort of center for the community where the bored youth hang out and sometimes cause trouble. After all, with the closing of community centers and youth centers what else is there for them to do in such boring surroundings. At least fighting and generally being a nuisance is something to do and talk about. What gets me is nobody is doing anything to rectify the problems or changing the way we plan future housing estates. It is one of the things that gets me about the Hawksmead development north west of Oakham. We shouldn't be building more of these social nightmares with loads of high density housing at it's core. You just have to look at some the developments in the cities around Rutland to see that. 

One of the big issues that affect cities is crime of all kinds. Just looking at some of the figures you find that compared to a village some alarming results. A small town such as Oakham has between ten and twenty times the crime of a small village while an area on the outskirts of one of the cites near Oakham has nearly one hundred and fifty times as much crime than a the village. The figures show a clear trend that as you get as you move into more populated area's is increasing crime of all kinds, and as such you are more likely to be a victim of crime or antisocial behavior. Then of course there is the exposure to the drug culture which is clearly more evident in the cities than small towns. It hard to know what to do about these issues but it is clear that putting lots people in high density council type states in cites causes massive social issues which we have failed for tens of years to solve.

Finally education it is clear from the league tables that as you move into the cities the general level of educational attainment falls. This is not so much the educational institutions fault who I'm sure do the best they can but just a result of the environment that the students live in and the stimulus and encouragement they receive. I know from personal experience from teaching within a number of different institutions within cities you find more antisocial behavior in the classroom than you do in more rural areas where the students are more willing to learn. 

Although I can see the advantages of a living in the city to me they don't out weigh the disadvantages. That is a personal thing and I guess I have done my city thing and unlike many people that want to get away I actually managed it. I wouldn't go back unless I was forced to. Small towns I could deal with but not a city unless I really had no choice. I just think that living in such big communities when we isolate ourselves from the people around us by staying in our homes isn't a good thing. Being in a small community has the advantage of knowing the people around you and being able to stop and talk. Cities might have been alright in the past but the way we live today mean we have no involvement in the people around us. The spirt of the old communities has gone and the people have become as faceless as the houses they live in. There are lots of reasons for this and the people are not to blame. It is what we have made society to be. What is worse is they can't escape it. Thankfully being human we do adapt but we should never have really moved away from the small local communities that we were made to live in.

I guess all this has been  brought up by the idea of Lucy moving away. I can't do anything about that. My opinion has no value even if I could actually have it heard by the right people. All I know is I'm glad I live where I do and lucky at that. Moving here was the right thing for all the children and I'm glad I did it. Just a shame it all got messed up along the way.

At the end of the day these are just my views. I like it in Rutland and I love living nature all around me. It so relaxing to be able what the countryside change as we move though the seasons. It just make you appreciate life rather than enduring it. I just hope my family comes to appreciate that too.