Bad news for anyone who's not a fan of endless suburbia, the government have released a major report it comissioned into the Green Belt, the areas around large cities in the UK where planning restrictions have been incredibly strict over the last half century in order to protect the countryside.
London was the first place Green Belt rules applied and you have to say thank god they did. Since the end of the Second World War Greater London has just spread out like a big puddle and the Green Belt’s the only thing that’s stopped it.
I live in Enfield, north London and I like the fact the in 15-20 minutes, if the traffic’s not too bad, you can be out in the countryside with fields that have cows, horses or sheep in them. I may only be passing through but having a change of scene to endless concrete, shopping malls and business parks makes a difference.
North of where I live there’s a whole group of satellite towns in Hertfordshire such as Harlow, Bishops Stortford, Hertford, Welwyn Garden City over to St Albans and Hemel Hempstead that are separated from Greater London by Green Belt land, and you know that developers are just dying to fill in these areas with housing estates and retail parks.
I think this government, especially John Prescott the Deputy Prime Minister, are pretty gung-ho about getting cosy with property developers and overruling local planners. Yes there’s a housing shortage in London but how about getting more creative with a lot of the brown field sites in the city. Once you tear that Green Belt up you ain’t getting it back and an urban sprawl from London to Birmingham would be about as ugly as it could get.
You only have to take a look at the maps at the British Library’s London:A Life In Maps exhibition to see how London’s exploded in size over the last 100 years. Right now I’d say we need to keep Greater London within the boundaries of the M25, even that’s a huge area but any bigger will be ridiculous.
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