Let's get back to Mary's orignal post. You are right to be concerned about this and other high-density developments that are mushrooming in the Brentford area. The people who will live in these apartments (yes, Adam Beamish, it really DOES matter where people live) will be mostly hard-working. Many of them will hold down two jobs. They have to, to afford the extortionate rents charged by profiteering landlords. They will not know their neighbours. It is hard to get a sense of community when you live in a self-contained box. This will lead to feelings of loneliness and isolation. They will feel no connection with Brentford. The purpose of these dwellings is to eat and sleep, not engage with your local community. Their children will complain about having nothing to do. The little ones will have no green space to play outdoors. It is hard to motivate yourself to walk to a park or visit the library when you live on the 17th floor. The parents will feel guilty about this and will know the damage that they are doing to their children by keeping them indoors and on the computer, but you can't just let them out by themselves, can you?There will be No Ball Games signs on walls all around the estate to stop the older children from playing football. So they will hang around on stairwells, bored and looking for mischief. You can guess the rest.How do I know this? I speak to parents already living in the GWQ and Paragon developments. They do not want to live in these high-rise boxes, cut off from neighbours and community. They aspire for their families to live in a house, with a garden, but this has become a middle-class luxury in Brentford thanks to recent "stack-em-high" housing policy.I've seen a lot of nonsense written about bringing Brentford into the 21st century! It would seem these days that building strong communities around well-resourced ameneties such as a thriving high street, library, football club, swimming pool, parks and pubs is a Victorian value. High rise developments - even those wrapped up as 'luxury apartments' - break down communities and breed social discontent. You only have to look at high rise developments in every British and European city to see this Our politicians and developers have not learnt from the mistakes of the 60s and are putting profit before people. So yes, Mary, you are right to be anxious about the future of our town - a 21st century dystopian colony of worker-bees with no social cohesion or sense of community.
Katy Whelan ● 4721d