Yes: Adrian Ramsay, Deputy leader of the Green Party
There’s an argument that the Government started using the label “eco-towns” to
rush through developments it wouldn’t otherwise get away with under its own
planning system. In any case, eco-towns are a tokenistic attempt to appear
green and do not take into account broader social and environmental
concerns.
Genuine eco-towns would be about sustainable communities in the widest
possible sense. The Green Party is not convinced that eco-towns live up to
this standard. The current proposals are not fully thought through. While
the standards for buildings are set high, the proposals fall down in other
areas such as transport and jobs.
We want every town to be an eco-town, not simply a label that’s applied to
certain developments to make them sound more acceptable. To do this, we need
all new developments to be of the highest environmental standard, not only
eco-towns.
In general, rather than building new towns, there needs to be more
concentration on improving energy efficiency, housing stock and public
transport in existing communities. Not enough attention is being given to
improving energy efficiency within existing houses to help people to reduce
their fuel bills and save carbon.
While we understand the need for new affordable housing, we have concerns
about that level of housing growth in the countryside. At present, eco-towns
are primarily intended for greenfield sites and will take up large swaths of
the countryside. But there are ample brownfield sites around the country
that could be used instead — derelict industrial sites or areas with a
number of empty homes that could be developed into eco-towns.
Eco-town developments are going ahead without the transport links having been
properly considered, without local services and jobs being available to try
to minimise the need to travel. Even if the towns are built to a high
environmental standard, this will be undermined if the prime mode of
transport is car based.
This is the case in the proposals for the Rackheath eco-town near Norwich,
which are closely linked to a major new ring road around the city. It
suggests the Government is not taking the eco-town seriously. The road would
result in a massive increase in carbon emissions and mean the development
was entirely car based.
The eco-towns will not create the local jobs and services needed to be
self-sufficient. In the case of Rackheath, it is seen as part of Norwich
getting bigger — people won’t necessarily be working near home and many will
need to travel every day. Rather than the road relieving the city’s
congestion problems, it will exacerbate them.
We want strong local communities where there are work opportunities and a full
range of services locally to reduce the need to travel. We are not convinced
that eco-towns will offer that. There is too much concentration on housing
targets and roadbuilding and not on sustainable communities.
No: Gideon Amos, chief executive of the Town and Country Planning
Association
The concept of eco-towns is absolutely right in environmental and demographic
terms. We have to develop them in an entirely different way to cope with our
changing climate and understand better how we can reduce carbon emissions.
It is vital these places work socially as well as environmentally. They have
to be places where people want to live, homes where people want to bring up
children and invest in their future. They have to be attractive places that
work as successful neighbourhoods, not just low-carbon communities.
We believe the successful eco-town sites proposed can achieve this. ln already
built-up areas it is much more difficult to put in new infrastructure and
provide open space. Building major new settlements means that in most cases
a much higher standard of sustainability can be provided through putting in
different transport systems and different energy systems, community heat and
power, heat exchanges and the kind of infrastructure that you can’t as
easily put into neighbourhoods such as Hackney, [East London] where I live.
As new sites, eco-towns also offer opportunities for really high-quality green
space — parks, gardens and open spaces that are extremely difficult to
provide in existing cities.
There are huge challenges, too. Some of the biggest challenges are getting the
public transport right. We want to see eco-town sites with excellent public
transport links. We hope priority will be given to those with rail stations.
We need tough measures to ensure that car use is kept to a minimum. In our
guidance, which is supported by Government, we set tough standards for the
maximum number of journeys by cars.
A lot of environmentalists support eco-towns but there were concerns about
some of the locations. Some were never likely to be sustainable. Now those
have been weeded out, the remaining locations stand up to much better
scrutiny. We will be pushing to make sure that’s the case.
It would be foolish to pretend that all the opposition was well founded. Some
is based on a simple case of “not in my back yard”.
We need to move away from the old dichotomy of “greenfield bad, brownfield
good” and come up with a new form of development, which doesn’t impinge on
the environment in the way we have in the past. If we are going to tackle
the huge environmental challenges we face, we have to find ways of using
land, including greenfield. Some use of greenfield is necessary, although we
would like to see most development on brownfield sites.
Every eco-town must be linked to an adjoining and existing town through
top-quality public transport. As exemplar new developments, they have the
opportunity to boost their neighbouring communities through their investment
in new infrastructure and transport services and provide a stimulus to make
existing towns more sustainable.
