Washed It!

Naples Construction

Often planning departments don’t want to refuse permissions for dwellings, their interest is in maintaining the area while preserving the environment. A delicate balance has to be struck between allowing people the freedom to live, and giving nature a chance.

We are as a society becoming more environmentally aware. It used to be something other people worried about while we threw out trash without thinking and drove our nine mile-per-gallon SUV to work and on the school run. Now we are recycling, buying hybrids, or more efficient cars and looking more to green energy as a solution.

This is a significant change for us, and while things like the Kyoto treaty become more and more strict about industrial and vehicle emissions, it is something that is going to have to gain momentum. We have held ourselves apart from the world as they progressed and we stayed behind. But, as we always do, we soon catch up.

So while we may want out dream home right in the middle of the everglades, it isn’t going to happen, but there are still plenty of tracts of land that offer just as much but with much less impact on the environment.

Greenfield sites aren’t always the most responsible option. We have much less undeveloped land than we used to, and while the Naples construction market is slow right now, it isn’t always going to be. Our environment is one of the reasons people like to live and visit. The beaches, the nature reserves, trails all provide a great atmosphere and we don’t want to spoil that.

Planning departments have to mind the environment for us, because however much we might love nature, if we wanted to build all over it, some of us would. So while some builders and citizens believe planning departments are there to refuse everything they see, they are actually there to protect us from ourselves. For many of us, the wider concerns of our surroundings go out the window if they get in the way of something we want. We have a tendency to become blinkered and somehow manage to justify our actions whatever they may be. This is why we have governments and bureaucracy, checks and balances against our innate ability to be selfish.

New home building will soon pick up and land will become a premium again. While there are many efforts to regenerate brown field sites, there will always be a demand for new building plots. Even in a country as big as our, land is still a finite commodity and it will run out some day.

So while it is tempting to vent anger and frustration at a planning department for refusing permissions, there is often a very good reason for doing so. Not always of course, everyone is only human after all, but most of the time.

So next time you drive into the country, remember that it is still there because people in power protect it from us.