Wee gardens

June 15, 2006
Filed under: culture, en, featured, politics 

One of the things that I find very strange in Scotland is that most houses are placed extremely close to each other and have tiny gardens. Not just in the middle of Glasgow, but everywhere. And these tiny estates are then surrounded by masses of empty space.

My best guess is that this has been caused by applying laws designed for England here. Look at the graph on the left (showing inhabitants per km², based on figures I found on Wikipedia): England is a very densely populated country, like the Netherlands and Belgium, and of course you would expect strict laws to limit the size of space for development and to protect the nature and agricultural areas. But Scotland, on the other hand, is less densely populated than Denmark or France and only has slightly more people per square kilometre than Sweden. In other words: There is plenty of space in Scotland!

Comments

2 Responses to “Wee gardens”

  1. Phyl on June 15th, 2006 21:13

    Maybe Scottish people are just too lazy to do the gardening! Or does it maybe rain too much to cut a lot of grass?

  2. Thomas on June 15th, 2006 22:24

    That could be as well, of course. But wouldn’t you in that case expect a better mix of small and large gardens?

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