Sir — It’s all too easy for Oxford City Council to continually press for the destruction of Green Belt land on the edge of the city (‘Council bid for ‘garden suburb’ on edge of city’, Oxford Times, August 7).
But just where do they intend to stop? Do they know?
The pressure for more land and more houses won’t go away even if the latest demands are successful.
Oxford is a small city occupying a very special and complicated location among rivers and hills (just look at a map). Its transport links and infrastructure reflect that. Let it sprawl unconfined, and Oxford itself will be damaged and degraded, not just the countryside around.
Providing adequate housing is a difficult problem. Perhaps part of the answer might be limited development across many towns and villages, allowing existing facilities to be used without swamping any one location.
I don’t know what the answer is, but it needs intelligent thought, not the mindset of a 19th-century imperial land grab.
David Harris, Warborough
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