Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
and steel. Yet his desire to increase urban densities in place of the sprawling suburbs
had a point, as did his advocacy of links with nature. Sadly, many of the buildings
that purported to encompass his high density visions in the public sector after World
War II also completely ignored the shopping and community facilities he believed
should be incorporated within the buildings, as well as the need to have a mix of
sizes of apartments and social class of tenants. Also, the key question of providing
security was also forgotten. The result was that most of the public sector high rise
buildings were badly built, poorly maintained, had no facilities and limited security,
so many quickly become havens of crime and anti-social behaviour, with the limited
green areas around vandalised and full of trash.
Although the key social and environmental ideas of Howard and Le Corbusier
were forgotten or drastically modified in most twentieth century urban projects, the
desire to avoid overcrowded slum developments and to consider the health of the
population did lead most western governments to create comprehensive rules for
the development of new city areas. Specific rules were enacted to control features
such as construction standards, road widths, lot sizes, utilities, sanitation, etc. But
in many western cities they also led to minimum requirements of amounts of open
space in every new residential area were established, which in many western cit-
ies increased from the typical 10 % proportion adopted in the 1960s, with larger
amounts in affluent developments. Some of this space was used in parks, often with
a hierarchy of different types, from small sub-neighbourhood areas for pre-school
children to community then district and regional parks (Davies and Herbert
1993
).
All of the above measures relate to areas within the urban settlement. However the
regional aspects of Howard's scheme helped stimulate interest in Regional Planning,
with advocates from Geddes and Adams, to Mumford and Abercrombie (Geddes
1915
, Hall
1988
). They developed new ideas about the need to create regional plans
to protect the green hinterland of big cities in order to secure its water supply, recre-
ation land and agricultural areas or simply to protect unique natural areas. Of course,
previous attempts have been made in the past to control the area immediately outside
the urban area, such as Elizabeth 1's designation of an agricultural zone to provide
food for London, or those that restricted development on defence grounds, such as
the need for an open extra-mural glacis area. After World War II Britain pioneered re-
gional conservation measures using three major policy initiatives (Hall and Clawson
1973
, Hall et al.
1973
). One was the creation of formal development plans to control
the growth of existing urban areas through area plans that specified the future use of
land. Another was the creation of National Parks, Areas of Outstanding Beauty, and
Countryside Parks, which have protected large unique landscapes areas from devel-
opment, although most of these are in remoter areas of the country. The other British
policy that had a more specific effect on urban growth was the creation of Green Belts
around some of the major cities, in which only agricultural or recreational develop-
ment is allowed
(
Thomas
1970
, Elson
1993
, p. 58). These were primarily designed
to prevent sprawl, especially the coalescence of existing large urban areas, as well
as to provide recreational land for the city, although increasingly they are also seen
as forest and wildlife habitats. It has been estimated that 40 % of the land in England
is directly preserved from any large-scale development of settlements and industry
