The tens of thousands of occupiers come from:

a) Pent up demand, given the increase in house sharing and people staying at their parents longer we've seen in recent years
b) More births than deaths
c) Immigration

And, yes, Cardiff might have to start opening schools again soon. The issue is we had a massive fall in the birth rate between the early 90s and early 2000s, which meant a big fall in the school-aged population. Then in the early 2000s, the birth rate increased substantially, especially in our cities.

Now I don't know whether they've kept the sites of most of the closed schools - I hope so. But the rebound in the number of children will certainly be a challenge for Cardiff. Presently it looks worse at primary level as lots of people move out of the city by the time their children are secondary age (whether to get bigger properties, or for career reasons, I'm not sure).

Time for a referendum in the Victorian suburbs of western Cardiff to return Fairwater/Pentrebane back to green state it once was and make Cardiff even greener. I'm sure you'll give it your 100% backing, not only will it make Cardiff green but it will also reduce road traffic.

Newport seems to be building houses like mad, aside from the massive Glan Llyn/Llanwern project there is of course Redrow's Mon Bank, proposed new developments at the former Tredegar golf course, Anglian Water want to build 200 homes at Celtic Way in Coedkernew plus another potential project at the old Whitehead Steelworks.

Cardiff is falling terribly behind in house building, the council needs to get a move on.

It's not really a competition - some of those new builds in Newport will be bought by people who might otherwise have bought in Cardiff.

Newport's advantage is that it has a large number of brownfield sites available like the old Llanwern rolling-mill site where Glanllyn is being built and the old railway sidings where Mon Bank is being developed. With a few exceptions most similar sites in Cardiff have already been utilised. The only big brownfield sites left in Cardiff that I can think of are all in the development pipe-line - hence the pressure on greenfield sites like Fairwater and Creigiau.

I guess a few more brownfield sites might come along - particularly some of the older retail parks which are beginning to look very tired and under-occupied.