Guardian launches anti-sprawl campaign

By , Friday, 6 August 2010, 6 Comments

The Guardian has today launched a new campaign, Piece by Piece, to “bring together groups working to save biodiversity from ill-conceived development.”

The campaign website allows users to upload pictures, add details of campaigns to an interactive map and share tips on campaigning against “the sprawl of development into our green spaces.”

The paper and quotes the environmentalist Jonathon Porritt (head of the axed Sustainable Development Commission) who said: “If it (the campaign) has been badly needed over the last few years, I think that need is likely to become absolutely desperate over the next few years.”

“The [government] is intent on setting aside some of the restrictions and constraints in the current planning process in a way that will promote local decision-making at the expense of environmental safeguards. I think we’re just going to slide back to pretty crude nimbyism.”

Add to this the loss of regional planning and the challenge to halt biodiveristy loss gets even greater. Yesterday’s letter from the ‘larger than local’ alliance included several high profile environmental groups (WWF, FoE) who argued just this.  

The Piece by Piece campaign website runs an article by environment secretary Caroline Spelman on ‘garden grabbing’ and how the government has moved to block this “piecemeal destruction.”

Figures released yesterday by the government to back up its garden grabbing action which found that the proportion of new homes built on previously developed land reached 25%, against 11% when Labour came to power in 1997.

However the figures failed to distinguish between gardens and other brownfield land. Spin is alive and well.

The irony of course is that the defenders of the countryside CPRE actually hit out when brownfield and density targets were scrapped in June. Speaking at the time chief executive Shaun Spiers said: “One of the biggest yet unsung environmental successes of recent years has been the regeneration of many of our urban areas, which has also saved vast swathes of countryside from unnecessary development. 

“Brownfield targets and density standards have been instrumental in protecting valuable countryside, preventing urban sprawl and regenerating inner cities.

“To make these changes now could undermine the sustainable use of land and leave the English countryside under the threat of sprawling new development.”

  • Roger

    Here we go, the LibDem cry of birds and bugs before people to the fore again!
    Urban sprawl is of course a blight on what would otherwise be open countryside and needs to be controlled as much as possible. However, blanket one size fits all policies must be avoided to avoid damaging the modest growth needed to support rural communities and economies.

  • http://www.useful-community-development.org/ Nancy Thompson

    To strengthen local decision-making at the expense of regional planning is to virtually guarantee sprawl.

    On our website we argue that growth isn’t the same thing as sprawl. At least with the degree of freedom to move that we have and all seem to want (at least where we are, in the US), sprawl happens when and only when land consumption outpaces population growth. So Roger could have some modest growth in rural communities, which are close to my heart, and still not have sprawl.

  • 156

    As someone who grew up and continues to live and work in the countryside, I must say that the approach advocated in this campaign is extremely wide of the mark.

    The countryside should be planned and allowed to grow in a way that reverses the managed decline advocated by the sort of hand-wringers that this is aimed at. This is more than ‘modest growth’ which is another way of saying decline in most areas.

    It is notable that most readers of the grauniad, as with Country Life (!) live in towns. So do the vast majority of CPRE, FoE and WWF supporters.

    Most Country people are sick of townies telling us how to manage our own land for their benefit.

  • Smithsinarazz

    The vast majority of most people live in towns in this country, 156, if they moved to the countryside, demanding houses, pretty soon it wouldn’t be the countryside any more. The countryside isn’t your “own land”, matey, unless you happen to be a major landowner. If it’s yours, it’s mine as well.

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  • 156

    Smithsinarrazz – I understand that most people live in towns in the uk. About 90% according to the CIA.

    That same source gives the total population of the uk as 61m – who live in 25m households.

    Interestingly the total area of the uk – excluding the watery bits is 94,000 sq miles – only 23% of which is put to arable farming (ie required for food) I can’t find the area that is subject to environmental designation but it can’t be any more than 10% in total. This means that there is an area of 63,000 sq miles potentially available for people to live on.

    So I think we can absorb some more houses. Most people who live here know that and would be happy to see a measured amout of growth. The don’t want loads of housing estates or new/eco towns full of the sort of rabbitt hutches that we have come to expect from some housebuilders who shall remain nameless.

    But while most people who live in the country are happy to see more townies moving here – we’re not 100% chuffed with the idea that the countryside – the place where we live and work – being considered by the urban population as a sort of large version of richmond park and managed as such.

    But that is the way of the world I guess.

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