Fallacy of straight lines

It's been a year since in defence of this monstrous attack on ODZ a government PRO used this map and the principle of straight lines as a means to convince us of the legitimacy of the whole issue. Cutting straight lines through natural boundaries is a non-existent concept in planning principles except where development falls in a totally flat landscape such as desert, typical of Egypt and Dubai, or reclaimed land e.g. in Holland. When natural ridges and terraced fields surround a built-up area, it's normal for irregular shapes to form the boundary of a town or village. Rounded, triangular or square shapes in villages' boundaries only exist in Wonderland and in the mind of someone like the Minister's PRO.

In the case of Iklin area B, to the east part there is also a ring road completing the division between the urban and rural zone, with well planned, saw teeth-retreating façades. The western part of the zone could easily be regenerated into agricultural usage once this uncertainty of the land's fate is over.

Throughout mainland Europe and the UK urban areas are typically blended with rural or forest areas mostly with star shaped boundaries to benefit from the surrounding greenery. Also towns and villages are much more sprawled but only to include the mature trees normally original of the land taken by the residential development. Locally, this concept is not only discarded but we go to opposite extremes where all greenery and soil areas are uprooted and destroyed with the ultimate result being a barren, sandy and dusty environment for residential purposes devoid of any architectural beauty and lacking any interactive blending with nature. This makes the difference between awesome and ugly, between smart planning (abroad) and the haphazard jungle of blocks over here.

Evidently the authorities abroad are smarter and uninfluenced by political entities or developers' lobbies. They stick to principles not compromises. Conservation of nature and rural areas is evident by the lack of new development on the boundaries. In Europe it seems that things are finished permanently; here we have a never-ending process of buildings going down and being rebuilt all over the country. Worst of all the government now undermines even the areas outside old established development zones, and calls it rationalisation. I think what we really need to rationalise here are some of the local politicians and their weird sense of justice and national interest.