Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
by the combination of these conservation policies (Hall
1992
, p. 121). Indeed the 14
designated Green Belts around the major cities and conurbations alone account for
13 % of the total area of the country (RSA s
1990
, p. 59). Although most of the popu-
lation still support the Green Belt policy, there have been a lot of criticisms of their
utility, for example: development has often leapfrogged over the belt creating sprawl
in surrounding settlements; many former industrial and mineral extraction sites in
these areas remain vacant; farmland deteriorates because owners are unwilling to in-
vest in improving land, especially those close to city boundaries, not simply because
intruders vandalise land and livestock, but because owners hope for windfall profits
if the land is turned into urban use; house prices in the green belt increase, so that
locals cannot afford to buy the properties and only the richer classes benefit; while
relatively few recreational uses that would benefit the city, apart from golf courses
and riding stables linked to the more affluent, were actually developed (Smith
1984
,
Elson
1993
). This led Elson (
1993
) in a major report on Green Belts in England to
suggest they had an important 'effect', but this did not mean they were 'effective'.
Other countries adopted different approaches to the maintenance of open land
in the face of urban sprawl, such as policies that create growth areas around cities
that are separated by zones of restricted development dominated by green space.
The form of these green areas varies widely. Some are green sectors or wedges
with urbanized corridors in between, as around Paris or Melbourne; others show
green fingers, separated by urban development along main transport routes, open
lands that run from close to the city centre to the periphery. This type of alternative
to a complete green belt was pioneered in Copenhagen's famous 1947 finger plan,
with similar ideas adopted by neighbouring countries. For example Helsinki now
provides one of the most famous examples of this concept, having a green zone,
Keskuspuisto park, that extends 11 km miles from the city centre to a forested pe-
riphery. In Holland, concern over the possibility of the major urban areas between
Amsterdam and Rotterdam growing together to form a new conurbation led to the
creation of a no-growth zone around and between the major cities, often described
as the Randstadt—an area seen as the Green Heart of the country.
In the late 1970s and 1980s restrictive land use controls became criticised in
many western countries that were suffering economic depression because of the
higher oil prices consequent upon the creation of OPEC, and then the de-industri-
alization as many manufacturing jobs moved to Asia. This led to higher unemploy-
ment levels in most large cities and the introduction of many new policies to attract
new businesses with a relaxation of planning regulations whose rigidity was blamed
for preventing new growth and causing house prices to rise on the limited land left.
So the land use policies, such as Green Belts or Green Sectors or Wedges, imposed
by national authorities were widely criticized. Many cities, as different as Dublin
and Seoul, abandoned their green belts, although many have survived in other parts
of Europe, with relatively few areas taken out of the zones over the past decades,
helped by the affluent home owners in the areas who support the policy of restricted
development.
Despite these pressures to lessen policies of containment, the recent growth of
interest in environmental polices has led many jurisdictions to return to policies that
