Green Belt (United Kingdom) - Criticism

Criticism

Several academics, policy groups and town planning organisations in recent years have criticised the idea and implementation of green belts in the UK. Greenbelt policy has been attacked as too rigid in the face of new urban and environmental challenges. Amongst other things, it has been claimed that areas of green belt can be of unremarkable environmental quality, and may not be well managed or provide the recreational opportunities originally envisaged.

The Town and Country Planning Association, an organisation heavily involved in initiating the concept several decades previously, published a policy statement in 2002 which proposed a more flexible policy which would allow the introduction of green wedge and strategic gap policies rather than green belts, and so permit the expansion of some urban areas. Similarly, in October 2007, Sir Martin Doughty, then Chair of Natural England, argued for a review of green belts, saying: "The time has come for a greener green belt. We need a 21st century solution to England's housing needs which puts in place a network of green wedges, gaps and corridors, linking the natural environment and people.".

Lewis Abbott has identified greenbelt barriers to urban expansion as one of several major protectionist political-economic barriers to housebuilding with negative effects on the supply, cost/prices, and quality of new homes. (The others include new housing development taxes and quasi-taxes; political discrimination against particular classes of new housing supplier, household consumer, and housing product; and controls on housing technical-product development – in particular, the blocking of innovative low-cost housebuilding using new materials and production technologies). Abbott argues that the greenbelts actually defeat their own stated objective of saving the countryside and open spaces. By preventing existing towns and cities from extending normally and organically, they result in more land-extensive housing developments further out – i.e., the establishment beyond the greenbelts of new communities with lower building densities, their own built infrastructure and other facilities, and greater dependence on cars and commuting, etc. Meanwhile, valuable urban green space and brownfield sites best suited to industry and commerce are lost in existing conurbations as more and more new housing is crammed into them.

Commentators such as James Heartfield and Alan Evans have called for outright abolition of green belts, principally on the grounds that by inhibiting the free use of land they restrict home ownership.

However, in England, where 70% of people are property-owners who benefit from scarcity of building land, the concept of "green belt" has become entrenched as a fundamental part of government policy, and the possibility of reviewing boundaries is often viewed with considerable hostility by neighboring communities and their elected representatives.