WHO'S LAND IS IT ANYWAY
Land use must be smarter, adaptable, multi functional.
Lets start with building, as that is the starting point, in fact the only point, of all planning policy. The guiding principle of all “development” is that it should be sustainable. The second objective, is keeping our cities vibrant and vital. Development must be in a city or where it can access a city. Why? What are cities, a conglomeration of industrial or trading activities, often port based, drawing in people and an economy. Is that driving force still relevant? we have no industry and many former port cities no longer have a port, so all you have is the financial apparatus that built up around the original reasons for existence. The city’s historic purpose is now perpetuated by an available workforce, service industries and commercial office space. As covid amply demonstrated workers don’t have to travel to the workplace anymore. So what is the city's purpose? What is wrong with letting a once vibrant city decline, this is the natural order of things? Why can’t we build houses in the countryside to support villages and small towns? breathing much needed new life into these dying communities, schools and hospitals stay open as do pubs and shops, and those working remotely have a better quality of life.
Next consider the other behemoth, although of zero concern in any planning document, that’s farming. In essence the East of England and the borders of Scotland produce our wheat, the rest of the 70% of the country that is farmed is grazed by livestock. It has been this way for 400 years, since the Fens were drained to become the UKs breadbasket. What happens if rising sea levels and/or a rising water table make arable farming in Norfolk and Suffolk unviable? not an unlikely outcome. The farming map of Britain will change, dramatically, wheat growing will spread westward. And why is it that farming/ agriculture practices have to exist in isolation, how is it that farming cannot co-exist with, or sit alongside another land use? Growing wheat is difficult alongside other activities but surely cattle and sheep can be reared in environments that are not truly rural? I met one forward thinking? farmer recently who was grazing sheep under his field of solar panels, what is wrong with that? Cattle don’t graze the same field perpetually, the herd moves from field to field, with long periods of down time for the grass to recover, why not use this recovery period for another activity?? The British countryside is not natural, any notion that it has always been the way it is now is completely misguided, it is largely the product of 50 plus years of industrialised farming, promoted by producers of inorganic fertilisers and farm machinery. Is it likely to be the best it can be, no, so why can’t it change?
Other land uses that will grow as we seek new ways to address the climate emergency. Our forest extent is going to rise, to lock up carbon and mitigate the effects of severe winds. The Government is committed to adding 30000 hectares of woodland every year, a wholly inadequate aspiration if trees are a good way of getting to net zero.? You would need a forest half the area of England to offset our emissions. If we can get to a position where timber buildings are seen as safe and sustainable then all of Labour’s new houses and more could be delivered using?home?produced?timber and without making another brick.
And then there is infrastructure. Climate change will need more reservoirs and more floodplains, lots of them. On shore renewables will require areas to accommodate it,? although not as much as you might think, the? projection? is? that to deliver? all? of the? Uk's? energy needs? from? solar you? would? consume?less?land than is?currently?in?the?nation's?golf?courses, perhaps golf could be paired with wind turbines, now that would make things interesting!
So land use planning clearly needs to move away from house numbers alone, such a blinkered approach is pure madness, a political aspiration which has no winners. Land use has to be smart, it has to be stacked, transitional, overlapping, multifunctional, better!?????