When was the last time you saw a wild snake, deer, rabbit, hare or bird of prey in a small, housing estate garden?

You think those creatures live on Sandleford at the moment? Red kites yes, we disturbed one eating a rat only this morning, but I've seen numerous sparrow hawks around my road and not one on Sandleford. You'll certainly get more garden birds in gardens than you will on Sandleford at the moment - that's why they're called garden birds!

I do agree about the development potential of brownfield sites but councils do make potential developers jump through hoops to get a few apartment blocks built, let alone the huge S106 payments that the council expects. These apartment blocks are ideal for young upwardly mobile couples who want the urban lifestyle, close to town, then later on they will look to Wash Common and further out for their housing needs. The complete nosh up of the planners to foil the attempts to develop the old Travis Perkins site in Mill Lane and the twenty years that the developers have been trying to get approval for the Sterling Cable site in Kings road to name a couple. I'm not sure about squeezing in properties in the garden but if there's room, why not.

I stand corrected!

But disregarding the figures the principle still stands. What happens when the land starts running out? Not only in UK but other countries? How do we grow food and what happens to wildlife when most countries are concreted over if we were to build high rise buildings?
Or will mother nature control the human species and cull us with a virus of, probably, our own making?

One good reason is that it can degrade the quality of the built and natural environment. Not every house needs an enormous garden, but it's good to have a variety of house types and there should still be some large gardens.

If you put food out you will attract some birds, rats and foxes too.

And making matters worse is fake grass and decking.

Often, the cull is of our own making and now that women serve on the front line, it's not just men.

Being realistic, that is considering available land to be built on without destroying our farming community, you may be nearer the mark as to capacity than the BBC figure that Simon quoted.

This is straying from the active topic of the OP so I'll start a new thread for the development discussion.