The entire brownfield-greenfield debate has engendered a great deal of emotional passion but not nearly as much cool analysis.
Jules Lubbock attempts to leap over the brownfield-greenfield debate. This is the argument as to whether it is better to build on new greenfield agricultural land, or used brownfield sites in cities and towns. The argument has engendered much emotional heat, that Lubbock tries to intensify. I prefer cool analysis. Let me try to achieve this with a series of testable propositions.
- We dont need agricultural land. Jules Lubbock is absolutely right: with around 10 per cent of South East England in EU set-aside, this land will not be needed for agriculture in the foreseeable future. Perhaps, in a saner world, it should. But, since that would require dismantling much of the world trade in agriculture and ruining the economies of a number of countries, it seems unlikely. The virtual certainty over the next ten years, already presaged in the Rural White Paper, is that we shall be racking our brains to find new uses for redundant rural land among which housing could be one. But:
- The argument isnt about land, its about sustainability. The case for brownfield development, in the Urban Task Force report, was all about the need for more compact urban forms in order to economise on non-renewable resources and to reduce greenhouse gases. This suggests that we should plan land uses so as to reduce the need for travel wherever possible, promote walking and cycling where we can, and design urban areas so that everyone has a choice of good public transport as an alternative to using the car. The Urban Task Force showed that, in Britain, recent development failed to fulfil these conditions. But:
- Greenfield as well as brownfield development could and should be sustainable. Its true that, other things being equal, it will generally be easier to achieve sustainable development within existing urban areas, wherever land is available, because theres an existing base of jobs and services and transport close to hand. But wherever that isnt the case, it should be quite possible to achieve sustainable new urban forms on greenfield. The new urbanists in the United States have spent a lot of time on this question, and have produced plenty of models. Most of our own new towns still do well in sustainability terms. Its essentially a question of land use and density. If you mix land uses, and then connect homes and jobs by good public transport corridors, its quite possible to achieve new, sustainable development. Look at Peterborough, a new town designed around an old town thirty years ago. But:
- North and south are different. One important finding of the Task Force was that substantial areas of Englands northern cities, like Manchester and Newcastle, are effectively becoming derelict, even though successful regeneration may be happening less than a mile away. The reasons are complex, but they include: old row housing that no one (save ghettoised Asians, whose plight has recently become highly visible) is willing to live in any more; bad ambience and poor schools, causing families to flee; and, in some of these areas at least, a criminal culture that creates a sense of fear. There are ways of breaking this vicious circle; we suggested them in the Task Force report. They will cost public money, though money the Treasury has so far been unwilling fully to commit. But:
- The South is different. In the north, if we succeed in redeveloping the wastelands of East Manchester and West Newcastle, we could repopulate them and save lots of greenfield land outside city boundaries, which perversely is being developed even as new brownfield land becomes fallow. But in and around London, this is not the case. London is booming: it has gained a million people in the last twenty years, and projections suggest another million by 2021. So it is effectively full. London planners have found sites for around half a million homes but there are strict limits. And outside London, in the wider South East, population is also rising. Here, Urban Task Force figures show that only about 40 per cent of the demand can be accommodated on brownfield. If greenfield sites are not found here, the demand will spill out further afield, even into the Midlands. That could lead to a big increase in long-distance travel which would be highly unsustainable. And so:
- We need a portfolio approach, combining sustainable brownfield and sustainable greenfield: brownfield in urban villages like the exciting scheme now taking shape on the Greenwich peninsula, greenfield in the form of clusters of settlements, old and new, linked along high-density public transport corridors. Colin Ward and I suggested a blueprint in our 1998 book Sociable Cities. A few areas have already begun to think this way: Northamptonshire have based their structure plan on these principles, and similar ideas are being tested for the growth corridor linking Cambridge, Huntingdon and Peterborough. But:
- Emotion isnt enough, and could be a dangerous driver. It could encourage unrealistic schemes which will not meet the legitimate demands of people who can exercise free choice in the market. In consequence, it could have all kinds of untoward side-effects (high-density apartment living could bring increased demand for second homes in the country, perversely leading to more travel), or, worse, it could cause the poorest and the most vulnerable to be housed in ways that would be socially unsustainable. High-density high-rise living could be the lifestyle of choice for many one-person households, who are predicted to become four in five of the new households not only in London, but also in the big provincial cities (plenty of new apartment developments suggest that this is the case). But not for lone mums with broods of difficult kids. For them, such a lifestyle could at any point become unmanageable. We tried that before, in the 1960s, and we know from abundant evidence that it was a catastrophe. Sounds emotional? No: read the evidence.
Sweeping assaults on the planning system like Jules Lubbocks are good if they force us to be more specific, and aware of the consequences. It does not follow that no planning at all will lead to a benign outcome.
