Public support for Green Belt: common rights in countryside access and recreation

Public support for Green Belt in England is legendary but is often dismissed as sentimental attachment. The aim of this paper is to situate public support for Green Belt within a history of common rights and access campaigns and a specific cultural landscape of outdoor recreation. This paper contends that Green Belt in England carries notions of common rights established in struggles against the enclosure and privatisation of open spaces from the early nineteenth century and predicated on an understanding that the policy conveys a communal interest in land and landscape. It argues that contemporary public affection for Green Belts is expressed through practices of ‘commoning’ or the performance of claimed common rights of property. Drawing on field research with a popular campaign in North West England, the paper evidences the deployment of a history of access struggles to preserve Green Belt as recreational amenity and accessible countryside. In the perception of Green Belt as a collective resource the paper posits the continuing relevance of common rights to planning policy. It concludes that a clearer understanding of popular support for Green Belt may provide planning scholarship with new perspectives on notions of public good and the use rights of property

Housing supply and brownfield regeneration in a post-Barker review world: A comparison of policy and practice in England and Scotland

The findings of the Barker review, which examined the reasons for the undersupply of UK housing, have important implications for the devolved constituents of the UK, including Scotland. This paper traces the emergence of the brownfield regeneration policy agenda across the UK and examines how the Barker review connects with this brownfield policy focus. The paper compares housing and brownfield policies and practices in England and Scotland, places them in an international context and elicits wider lessons for devolved governance in relation to housing policy, in terms of `centrist—local' tensions. Estimates based on published data suggest that Barker's emphasis on increased housing supply cannot easily be reconciled with the current emphasis on brownfield development and is likely to require a return to greenfield development in both countries

Space and sustainability. Potential for landscape as a spatial unit for assessing sustainability

Assessment of sustainable development normally takes place within what can best be termed ‘administrative’ spaces (cities, regions, nation states etc.), where there is some managerial and policy control. Thus recommendations may be derived from an analysis of this space, for example the derivation of indicators and indices, which can feed more readily into decision-making. They are alternatives to the use of defined ‘administrative’ spaces such as the ecosystem and landscape. The paper questions the viability of landscape as a viable spatial matrix for assessment of sustainability. Joint Character Areas (JCAs) in England were employed as the landscape space, and data were collected to assess environmental quality (via the creation of a Countryside Quality Index, CQI) and social deprivation (via the Townsend Index of Deprivation, TID) for each JCA, as these represent two dimensions of sustainability. Results suggest that when employing JCAs as the spatial matrix it is possible to derive a statistically significant regression between CQI as the independent variable as TDI as the dependent variable. Therefore landscape does have some viability as a space for assessing sustainability. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.sustainability , space , landscape , social deprivation , environmental quality ,

A framework of sustainable behaviours tha can be enabled through the design of neighbourhood-scale developments

The purpose of this paper is to present, and explain, the development of a framework of sustainable behaviours that can, potentially, be enabled through the design of neighbourhood-scale developments. To be sustainable, such developments need to be technically sustainable (i.e. in terms of materials, construction methods and so on) and to support behavioural sustainability by their residents. This paper focuses on the latter. Drawn from a literature review, the paper presents eight sustainable behaviours that are argued to be enabled by specific design features of neighbourhood developments. These are the following: use less energy in the home; use less water in the home; recycle waste; maintain and encourage biodiversity and ecologically important habitats; make fewer and shorter journeys by fuel inefficient modes of transport; make essential journeys by fuel efficient modes of transport; take part in local community groups, local decision making and local formal and informal social activities and use local services, amenities and businesses. Both theory and empirical evidence underpinning the claimed relationships between the design features and the eight behaviours are presented. The framework, and accompanying explanations, are offered as tools for further research, and as references for practitioners such as urban designers, architects and planners seeking some clarity on designing for behavioural sustainability at the neighbourhood scale. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment