Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Box 21.2
London
London is the largest city in the UK (population 6.7 million
in 1991) and, until twenty years ago, one of the largest
cities in the world. Was it too big, in area or population? In
the interwar period, there was concern over the rapid
outward expansion of London's suburbs, focusing on the
loss of farmland and the difficulty of providing public
transport for the suburbs. The idea of a green belt was first
enacted in 1938, and land was bought to protect open
countryside. The Town and Country Planning Act 1947
provided the powers for a circular belt of land roughly 10-
15 kilometres wide, beyond the city, where there was a
very strong presumption against development. The Green
Belt was both a policy in its own right (stopping London's
expansion) and a component in a wider plan of urban
management that also included the redevelopment of
slums within London and moving people to new and
expanded towns beyond the Green Belt.
The Green Belt has survived for fifty years, added to in
some places and eroded a little in others. It did not aim to
enhance the countryside; that was left to separate policies
concerned with conservation and the protection of
landscapes. Nor was the exclusion of development
absolute; much of the orbital motorway around London
(the M25) was built through the Green Belt. Other national
planning interests did sometimes take precedence over
the green belt function, yet it did successfully stop almost
all urban development within its area.
The management of the urban fringe around London
was characterised by a coordinated hierarchy of regional
and local plans, very detailed land-use planning using
published criteria, and a system of inquiries and appeals
for aggrieved parties. The whole system was staffed by a
cadre of professionally trained planners. It was part of a
UK system that expressed national ideals about how
development should proceed. However, in practice an
acceptable compromise had to be found between national
needs (e.g. more houses), regional requirements (how
many more in the south east), and local priorities (whether
to encourage growth in particular localities). This planning
system was designed to confine the political system and
politicians to issues of policy (e.g. the future of the Green
Belt) and to separate them from direct involvement with
individual land-use decisions, except within the framework
of published plans and criteria or the final adjudication of
the most contentious cases.
The system created a high degree of certainty about
what development would be permitted, confined
speculative land purchase to small areas, and established
a regulated oligopoly of suppliers of development land. It
was inflationary of land and house prices, since it created
an artificial shortage of building land. The London Green
Belt has become a symbol of the British planning system,
and this helped its survival even during the deregulatory
and pro-growth period of the 1980s.
Sources:
Munton 1982; Elson 1986; Simmie 1994.
green belt, the city edge was the preferred location
for space-extensive activities (such as
supermarkets), bad neighbours (e.g. abattoirs) and
for activities generating traffic (new hospitals or
leisure complexes) (see Figure 21.2 and Plate 21.1).
The urban-edge location, where public transport
might be limited, tended to promote further car
usage, while simultaneously the 'sustainable city'
ideal promoted more compact cities, less fringe
development and less use of cars. The case study of
Lancaster (Box 21.3) shows these features clearly.
The city edge is the first part of the countryside
that urban dwellers meet, so there will be conflicts
over what city folk would like their most adjacent
countryside to be and what the fringe-area
residents and landowners want from it. Conflicts
may arise over access to farmland for walking, the
tipping of rubbish and vandalism. City people may
object to some farming practices (e.g. the smell of
slurry or traffic from a farm shop). These are not
issues unique to the urban fringe, but they are
more common and intense there because urban
Figure 21.2
Urban edge land uses, Lancaster.
