The SNJ’s new columnist Karen Eberhardt-Shelton was born in California but grew up in England.

She now lives in Stroud and is currently working on an education project called Learn, Think, Act and is hoping to develop an eco-community land trust.

Her thought-provoking columns will focus on how we all have to take responsibility for our actions and for our planet.

RECENTLY I had a long phone chat with an old friend in Crowborough, East Sussex.

She lives on the edge of a housing estate and dislikes it intensely – I’ve been there and agree with her distaste.

I keep urging her to move, but her resolve and courage are a bit damp, so she stays put.

She mentioned that she rarely receives a nice phone call or anything worthwhile in the post.

A friend in Wales said pretty much the same thing, and I’m in the same boat.

Twenty four hours can pass without even one phone call.

Days go by without a single letter dropping through the noisy slot.

Are housing estates partly to blame for the death of community?

Why is there so much impersonality and lack of communication lurking about nearly everywhere?

Is it because there are simply too many of us, that we can’t keep up with the numbers?

Have a dog or two and pet and hug them repeatedly with 50 dogs, you would be hard put to pet even half of them.

But our numbers keep rising and the growth-focused, blinkered government never addresses the population issue (as most people don’t) and simply allows developers to continue building housing estates throughout the country, while failing to seriously considering all the primary issues involved.

The construction of multiple new homes devours large quantities of natural resources and in the process of obtaining, transporting and using them, generously adds to the carbon overload in our unhappy atmosphere.

Regardless, more and more humans keep appearing.

I just learned that Earl Spencer, Princess Diana’s brother, is becoming a dad for the seventh time, as though he has no perception regarding limits to growth and who or what will keep delivering future supplies.

The system allows perpetual building to accommodate new arrivals without regard for long-term, knock-on effects.

More and more humans driving cars, shopping for products probably delivered from other planets, buying consumer goods they don’t need, flying to Jamaica for a suntan.

Build it, supply it and they’ll keep coming.

More and more natural landscapes are being devoured by housing developments.

What happens to all the wild things?

They have to keep moving house.

Have we no sense of respect for and cooperation with other species?

We do what we want and they have to adjust?

But what about that sense of community; neighbours interacting with and caring about each other?

Long gone in my books.

Those ugly uniformly built cheek-to-jowl structures essentially discourage any sense of artistry and reflection of what surrounds us.

They are duplicates, clones that suppress a sense of individuality.

Whichever one you lived in, you might as well be Mr Jones, Mr Jeans, or nameless.

In my view this side-by-side uniformity erases the primary aspects of real community life.

We don’t know each other’s names, rarely speak to one another, couldn't care less what’s going on behind the closed doors.

The value of uniqueness, both in soulless architecture and human character, has been been tossed out the lookalike window.