WE'VE recently been informed that the university is planning a major regeneration of the Osney Mead industrial estate, which will create "thousands of jobs". They are also considering about 600 flats for students and academics. City "leaders" apparently welcome this plan, but I'd like to take a moment and ask – why??
Is this a knee-jerk reaction to the word 'jobs'? Or is it just that it is a university project? Because if you stop to think about it - Oxford has a low unemployment rate (3.7 per cent according to the council) and a huge housing crisis.
Where will all these thousands of people coming to Oxford to take up these new jobs live? Will they live outside the city, and join the 46,000 people who already commute into Oxford (according to the 2011 census)? Or will they join the scramble for an increasingly ageing - and ever more pricey – housing stock?
Oxford University is a world-leading institution, and a unique resource for potentially amazing innovations - it is only right that we would want to see this excellence being utilised. But this should not mean that we throw sensible, balanced planning to the wind. Oxford City should not encourage reckless development which will add to the housing crisis we are already experiencing.
RUTHI BRANDT
Green Party Councillor , Carfax
James Street
Oxford
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