I don't think it's a matter of "room" as much as it is "what do you want the country to be like?".

Back a few years ago we were riding in a group through Lincolnshire farm country, and rode into a little village on our bikes. There was NO place to park, so cars were parked in the traffic lanes and you just had to go around them in the opposite lane, which was fine with me, but a bit dodgy if you weren't paying close attention.

I asked one of the guys I was riding with "Wonder why the town doesn't put a few parking spaces along the road here? Wouldn't need many and it you wouldn't have to play 'chicken' with oncoming traffic."

He said "It's not like the USA; we haven't got the kind of room for just making parking spaces that you've got."

I looked around from my bike seat on the edge of the village. It was all open sheep pasture almost as far as the eye could see. I was sitting in the middle of probably 600 acres with a village on one side, and the rest nothing but open land to the hilltop horizons with a few stone fences and sheep-cotes. You could use a fraction of an acre of it for a dozen parking spaces and never even notice.

"What about THIS space?" I said innocently. He was astonished, as if I'd asked to take his wife to a hotel for the night.

"That's FARMLAND!" quoth he. "Always been farmland, always will be. What are you thinking?"

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for planning, conserving farmland, and avoiding the spreading rot that uglies-up so much of the exurban USA. I like the Domesday Book and think you ought to stick to it.

But it's not like the land isn't there; it's the choices you make of what to do with it ...

Lannis