COUNTRYSIDE LESSON THAT ENGLAND IGNORES

 [©Cedric Pulford 2009. The article may not be reprinted or distributed other than for individual and personal use, either electronically or in hard copy, without permission from the author, who may be contacted through this website]

Urban sprawl is threatening the English countryside in a way that has not been seen for decades. It is happening because England has forgotten the lesson that it taught the world – the clear separation of town and country, says Cedric Pulford

To the north, London ends where it ended 50 years ago - at Barnet. Not many cities in the world can claim to have contained urban sprawl so successfully.

On leafy Box Hill, with sweeping views over the Surrey countryside, we could be 100 miles from the centre of one of the biggest cities on earth. Actually, we’re just 21 miles.

Around Oxford (58 miles from the centre of London), amid the tranquillity of ancient stone-built villages and their encompassing hill-land, it is unimaginable that we are in one of the most densely populated countries on the planet. Yet we’re told that England has more people per square kilometre than Holland, a country that we used to see as famously heavily settled.

What these examples show is that England has been spectacularly successful in avoiding the nightmare of endless urban sprawl while accommodating a rapidly growing population. There has been enormous growth of existing towns and villages, as a glance at any Ordnance Survey map with its 1960s counterpart will show. By and large, however, towns are still towns and the country is still the country.

How different from the endless settlement along much of the US coastline, ditto Spain, with Greece playing catch-up. Or houses dotted here, there and everywhere among the fields in much of Europe.

The continuing separation of town and country is one of the United Kingdom’s great gifts to the world, for all that it is rarely recognised. And what a pity that emerging countries seem determined to repeat the mistakes that we once made. The ribbon development that we finally banned is found in countries like Spain and Cyprus and (more understandably) all over the Majority World.

The United Kingdom learnt the hard way that the town needs the country, as the megalopolises of Lancashire and Yorkshire and the soulless South Coast sprawl from Margate to Bournemouth testify.

But the lesson was eventually learnt. A nine-year campaign by the Council for the Preservation of Rural England (CPRE - now Campaign to Protect Rural England) led to the Restriction of Ribbon Development Act, 1935, which aimed to thwart linear urban developments snaking out from towns and cities. In the postwar dawn of hope came the landmark 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, which allowed local authorities to include green belts in their development plans.

Now, however, we have gone backwards. We can number ourselves among the countries that ignore the lesson of separating town and country.

Green belts around towns and cities are being eaten away under the authority of an unashamedly urban-oriented Labour government. This appears to have little understanding of or sympathy with the countryside (which by and large doesn’t vote for it).

A new generation of planners seems happy to take a contrarian view of established practice. Thus we have the return of ribbon development under a euphemism with, for example, the madcap plan for a linear city from Cambridge to London.

In the need for new homes, councils reach too readily for greenfield sites because the developers prefer them. Meanwhile, not merely brownfield acres but tens of thousands of habitable dwellings above shops go unused.

The plan for “eco-towns” is a blueprint for yet more dormitory suburbs, this time in the middle of the fields. One possible site, at Micheldever in Hampshire, has been on the builders’ hit list for decades. Christmas may be coming at last for the builders.

The more sensible course would be for “eco-town” to read “eco-suburb” – in other words, to build the housing that most of us acknowledge is needed as an extension of existing urban areas. This is the German way, and it is the sensible way to minimise the effect of urban development.

We should not fool ourselves with the current collapse of housing starts. The recession won’t last forever and the housing market will pick up. We are faced with an exploding population on an already heavily built landmass. Present predictions are for a population of more than 70 million by 2050 (currently about 60 million).

Unless things change, and change quickly, a toxic mix of heedless government, ignorant planners and apathetic citizens will destroy one of the values we cherish most. Survey after survey show that Britons rate the countryside as one of our most important components in the quality of life, but there is little sign of a mass movement to protect it.

Suddenly, the comforting certainties of Barnet, Box Hill and Oxfordshire don’t seem so certain after all.

www.cpre.org.uk

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