the massed ranks of middle-class protesters are up in arms.

... the citizen’s defence of their housing is hardwired into an adversarial planning system. New properties are seen as a threat, developers as villains, councils as their partners in crime.

Yet the country is sleepwalking with increasing speed into a housing nightmare. A chronic scarcity of homes is dashing the hopes of young people, dislocating family life and diminishing economic recovery. It impacts on almost everything from the cost of living — one study found the net cost of planning constraint to be 4p in every pound of income — to the environment and transport.

A slew of statistics underscores the insanity of our housing and planning policies. Britain is building fewer homes than during any peacetime for close to a century; it is generally assumed one-third of the number needed, but one government expert put the figure at one-sixth. In London, where the population rises by about 100,000 a year, fewer than 18,000 new homes were completed in 2011....

Britain, and especially London, needs more housing, better housing and cheaper housing. There is no shortage of land, just a system out of sync and a dearth of land that can be built upon. If we want to resolve this crisis, we must tackle an archaic planning system and take on myopic myths over a land that remains green and very pleasant.