I too have followed Luton Airport's development since my first visit there as a schoolboy in 1965. LTNman is right that the development in recent years has been transformative.
However, life too has suffered or benefited from transformational change in recent years. Britain has unforeseen levels of prosperity. The propensity to travel, and especially by air, has increased exponentially. Use and ownership of cars has changed every built environment - mostly for the worse. In recent years, population growth, especially in the south-east, has been unsustainably high.
The idea that one can stop "progress", however malign it may seem, is unrealistic. The best that can be done is to try to influence events, or to accept them as they are, or escape to a more benign environment and look back on one's happier memories.
/Here endeth the lesson/