Green Belt refresh is needed
Urban Design Learning
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UDL’s Green Belt Discussion gathered planners, architects, transport consultants and more for a frank conversation on this contentious topic.
The Green Belt covers 12.6% of England’s land surface. The policy was introduced (in London in 1938, and around other cities and towns from 1947 onwards) to curb urban sprawl. It is not a landscape designation and the quality of the land within has no bearing on whether a place is included in the Green Belt or not. Nor is it not required to be biodiverse, publicly accessible, productive or to be a carbon sink. The National Planning Policy Framework states that all development not falling into a small group of exceptions should be resisted in the Green Belt unless (unspecified) ‘very special circumstances’ apply. Major developments on what had been undeveloped Green Belt land do occur. These are generally either via:
Public debate on the topic has been become polarised between groups that wish to preserve or increase the current boundaries of the Green Belt and maintain the current restrictions and those who feel that housing need is a higher priority than ‘openness’.
Our discussion aimed to move beyond that binary. Here are the key findings of that conversation:
1)??By preventing Britain’s cities and large towns from continuing the outward sprawl of the 1930s, the Green Belt has succeed and continues to succeed in its original core purpose. If the term ‘urban containment zones’ had been used instead of ‘green belts’, that goal might be better understood and there would be less public confusion of the Green Belt with countryside as a whole.
2)?The priorities of the mid-20th century are not the priorities of the 2020s and beyond. Current Green Belt policy primarily aims for an absence of development. Instead, this protected land should be reimagined as a resource for the urban areas it borders, making contributions to climate resilience, biodiversity, green energy and food production, public health and wellbeing and (in well-connected, sustainable locations) housing.
3)?Better use of land in the Green Belt is encouraged by paragraphs 142, 145 and 146 of the National Planning Policy Framework, but these recommendations are rarely talked about and there is no clear mechanism for councils to make those improvements happen.
4)?Too many of the housing developments that have been allowed in the Green Belt are car-dependent and poorly connected to existing infrastructure and services and lack facilities of their own.
5)?The piecemeal approach (both from local authorities and developers) to building housing on sites in or removed from the Green Belt makes it harder to plan for parks and other genuinely open spaces.
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6)?Successful greenfield applications (especially in the Green Belt) create a dramatic uplift in the value of land – this is not currently captured as planning gain for the benefit of the community.
The recommendations that follow from this conversation are:
1) Public discussion about current policies should stress the idea of urban containment and make clear what the role of the Green Belt has been up to this point.
2) There should be public consultation to find out how people today think open space around urban areas should be used.
3) A full national review should be conducted to establish the types of land use, economic value, landscape quality and ecological quality of the green belts.
4) A Royal Commission on the Green Belt could help defuse the polarised arguments that have stifled the possibility of making changes to this policy.
5) Authority-wide design codes could prove valuable in making changes in the Green Belt acceptable to the public. Local planning authorities would use area types would define locations for different primary functions within green belts, and to provide appropriate locations for sustainable new settlements.
6) A return to regional planning would be beneficial as all Green Belts cross multiple local authority borders.
7) A combination of new planning policies and grants would be needed for the task of rethinking the countryside (not just those parts of the Green Belt that are countryside) to provide more biodiversity, a wider range of food and more public access.
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1 年Ebenezer Howard had a "Green Belt" around Letchworth, but it had some clearer objectives than the usual Green Belts, such as to provide the food required for the new city in farms owned by the City. It was also an important location for enjoying countryside walks and open spaces, part of Letchworth's DNA. Green Belts are there to contain growing cities, but at Letchworth a size limit was set from the outset of some 30,000 people and this was slowly achieved in around 50 years. So their Green Belt is only now being pressurised by growth as the envisaged size is exceeded. As a town grows and becomes more attractive, the land value rises over a long period of time due to a mix of actions, both of investment and hard work, around the town that are both public and private. The land value uplift on release of land in Letchworth to be developed was planned to go to the citizens who had shares in the land, and not just to the developers, who simply received a reasonable profit for building, but not the unearned profits from rises in land value.
Esther Kurland, Amanda Reynolds, Mike Saunders, Laura Alvarez, Russell Curtis