Planning Perspective of England Eco-Towns - Essay Example

How Sustainable Are England Eco-Towns From A Planning Perspective? Introduction The idea of eco-towns is not a new one as it resembles the proposals by Sir Ebenezer Howard in his 1898 book, Garden Cities of Tomorrow. Visions of small towns with huge open spaces and a landscape design that enabled the local community to blend the environment with industrial and agricultural production have become influential over the years. The Hampstead Garden suburb, Letchworth and Milton Keynes have all proven that beautiful and walkable town are possible. In response to climate change, the problem of our time, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) announced its plan to build several eco-towns across England. The original goal was to create 50 such eco-towns in the hope of reducing carbon emissions in the country. This paper tries to assess the sustainability of eco-town proposals. It also hopes to discuss some of the key issues that led to the government’s abandonment of the plan, as well as how such a move has affected planning in the United Kingdom. What Makes an Eco-Town? The idea of developing eco-towns came from the need for more affordable housing vis-à-vis environmental protection. In the foreword to the Ecotowns Prospectus, Yvette Cooper said: Like the post war generation, we now need to set out a clear and radical programme to increase housing and to protect the environment as well….As housing accounts for 27 per cent of carbon emissions, we need to substantially cut emissions from new homes and work towards zero carbon housing and development. (Department for Communities and Local Government 2007: 3) Through eco-towns, the UK can start anew, and this time, focus on the highest environmental standards while at the same time taking advantage of a site’s economic potential. This move, the government believes, would bring about a new form of development and ensure sustainable growth. To ensure participation from the communities and the local government, the DCLG enjoined them to submit their proposals for eco-towns. The Ecotowns Prospectus outline the various criteria by which the submissions were judged. To considered an eco-town, proposals must meet five essential requirements: (1) They must be new settlements, separate and distinct from the existing towns but well linked to them. They have to provide at least 5,000 new homes; (2) Each plan must minimize carbon emission and meet exemplar performance in at least one area of environmental sustainability; (3) Proposals must provide for a wide range of social services and facilities within easy reach; (4) 30 to 40% of the homes must be affordable, with emphasis on larger family homes; (5) Plans must set out a management body which will help develop the town and provide assistance to people and businesses wishing to relocate to the site (Department for Communities and Local Government 2007: 11-12). The Prospectus specified that proposals have to use the Code for Sustainable Homes which requires appropriate designs to deal with issues of energy, water, pollution, waste, health and wellbeing of residents, construction materials, surface water run-off, among others (Department for Communities and Local Government 2006). Designers of eco-towns must not only think about energy efficiency, they also need to plan for various types of environmental infrastructure to protect water sources and water quality, as well as prevent flooding and other issues. The Prospectus also enjoined designers to keep urban design in mind but to ensure that there are ample open spaces, a characteristic carried over from the idea of the garden city. Masterplans have to provide a timeline for construction for the basic facilities such as schools and hospitals. Moreover, such town plans have to adhere to existing policy on town and community planning. Perhaps the most important criteria developed in the Ecotowns Prospectus is its provision for community empowerment and the need to encourage participation in civic activities. As an article in the Ecologist puts it, “without local involvement, forget it” (Potts 2009). Incorporating environmental protection in the conduct of economic activities, a key value in eco-towns is a practice which stemmed from the idea of sustainable development. The premise is that life on earth is interdependent, and while every state has the right to exploit its resources, they must do it in a way that will not compromise the health of the environment. This is stated in Principle 4 of the Rio Declaration which says, “In order to achieve sustainable development, environmental protection shall constitute an integral part of the development process and cannot be considered in isolation from it” (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development 1992). Almost every international agency from the United Nations (UN), to the European Union, realizes that real sustainable development can only happen with community involvement. In the Preamble of Agenda 21, the comprehensive plan of action developed after the 1992 Earth Summit says, “One of the fundamental prerequisites for the achievement of sustainable development is broad public participation in decision-making” (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs 2009). In order for resources to be managed properly and the environment can be protected in the process, dialogues among stakeholders have to done. Centralized governing has its advantages, but the top down approach has its failings, particularly when it comes to environmental conservation. Because government’s role is centered on political and economic development, it is the community’s responsibility to serve as watchdogs to any activities (both economic and political) that can potentially damage the environment. In a presentation by Rita Trattnigg to a Masterclass OECD Conference (2008) she said, “People don’t want to react and implement goals top down – they want to create their own vision, define their values and find their ways“ (5). They will, of course need to be educated on the various issues of sustainable development, how current human activities are leading to climate change, social and global inequalities, loss of biodiversity and many others. Moreover, they will have to be trained so that they can make incorporate sustainable development aspects in the policies they will create for their own locality. While the idea of eco-towns are rooted in garden cities which have real-life examples in the UK, its being eco-friendly is largely untested. What sorts of technologies are truly environmental? How sure is the government that the kinds of homes made will pass the environmental and building standards at the same time? And what sort of standards have to be utilized to judge how eco-friendly an eco-town is? Hence, it is a great idea that the Planning Policy Statement (Department for Communities and Local Government 2009) has created a provision allowing eco-towns to “develop [its] unique characteristics by responding to the opportunities and challenges of their location and community aspirations” (9), but how does a community work when there are various guidelines imposed by the national government? What if the climate change adaptation and mitigation methods utilized by a community does not require high technologies, but rather the simple use of indigent materials, will it still pass the current standards of “environmental sustainability”? No one knows how eco-towns should look like, and nobody has taken the initiative of adding the impact of the construction of the town itself in the process of assessment of the proposals. Moreover, because eco-towns are new settlements, many locals are talking about developing brownfield areas but the Prospectus does not totally exempt greenfields. Hence, there is the possibility that even the initially green spaces are constructed on, which in turn can cause further environmental damage in the favor of development. The Community as the Key to the Eco-Town’s success After the announcement of the four approved eco-town sites, Dr. Gareth Potts (2009) said, “Too much political grandstanding has been done with Eco-Towns – the basic idea is sound, but poor planning and a lack of local involvement will doom them to failure” (Potts 2009). While it is true that the DCLG had a public consultation on the possible impact of eco-towns (Department for Communities and Local Government 2008), it came after the agency announced the opening for bids. Hence, the standards for what eco-towns should be was generated by a few people only (particularly those in the DCLG), before they were asked to confirm if these were the same values they had in mind. Any researcher will see that this is not a real participatory process as the public was no longer asked to brainstorm and were merely presented with the answers. Even the costs and benefits of installing an eco- and a traditional building was already preset. The good news is that because of the 2008 impact assessment conducted by the DCLG, they discovered that each location can incur variable costs, depending on the available transport infrastructure as well as site’s proximity to energy and water sources. For example, Weston Otmoor located on the south west of Bicester and seven miles North of Oxford will need major subsidy to redevelop its transport infrastructure while Marston Vale is well connected but will require more sustainable alternatives to connect to nearby communities (Department for Communities and Local Government 2008: 27). In the case of Middle Quinton alone, the creation of an eco-town in this area could lead to a deficit of £373m (BBC News 2009a), money which would be better spent elsewhere. With a limited idea on how eco-towns should be, proposal were reliant on government policy, and unfortunately, many of these policies were created with the top down approach, with very little participation from the stakeholders. As such, most proposals had its own problems: of the eleven short-listed Eco-Towns proposals just Rackheath got a top rating from the Expert panel advising on the bid’s environmental quality…Many bids, even short-listed ones, suffered from, amongst other things, lack of financial realism, insufficient environmental measures (including lack of public transport, employment base and amenities), and local opposition (to the bypassing of the existing planning process and/or site selection). (Potts 2009) The government must realize that no single designer or land developer can think of all the various aspects that make up the community – except when the community itself is included in the planning stage. Hence, proposals were inadequate at meeting all the issues of an eco-town because the designer has to tap into the collective intelligence that only a group of concerned and engaged individuals can give. Most of the proposals submitted to the DCLG were from private individuals and and public officials, and the brainstorming of “new towns” came from only from a few people. It is no longer a surprise that many of them could not adequately deal with all the issues, after all, they too have limited capacities for planning. Moreover, eco-towns are in a way another form of centralized governing wherein the national government imposes the kind of development that towns must have. As such, it will be a costly affair, and needless to say, it cannot be funded by local governments. Subsidies must come from the national government, and even with only four sites to be developed, it could take a huge amount already. Various demonstrations against ecotowns is proof that public consultation was inadequate. In one interview, a councilor in Stratford-upon-Avon, Mike Brain said that there is no need for eco-towns in areas where is “no unemployment, few housing needs, and where it went against local planning policy” (Mccarthy 2008). People are concerned that this is just another greenwashing technique utilized to get government approval and make high profits while others say that the government has assigned the wrong agency to facilitate the process (Mccarthy 2008). Some groups propose that derelict sites are refurbished by the government to install eco-friendly homes and make waste disposal more efficient. For many critics, it is “wrong to ‘ghettoise’ good environmental practices into eco-towns; it should be compulsory with all new housebuilding” (Mccarthy 2008). The Continuing Saga of the Eco-towns Despite these oppositions, the government announced in 2009 that four new locations for eco-towns have been identified: “Rackheath, Norfolk; north-west Bicester, Oxfordshire; Whitehill Bordon, East Hants; and the China Clay Community near St Austell, Cornwall” (BBC News 2009b). Plans for these four sites have been approved by the local government but they had to undergo the planning stage involving the local communities. Through this move, the government hopes that opposition will be minimized and social approval be granted to the plan before construction is started. Following this announcement, Housing Minister John Healey announced that another £5m was made available for councils hoping to conduct further improvements on the eco-town proposal in their jurisdiction. For him, the need to setup eco-towns must be a priority. He said, “The proposals can raise strong opinions, but climate change threatens us all. With our commitment to the eco-towns we are taking steps to meet this challenge and help build more affordable housing” (BBC News 2009b). Healey stressed on the use of smart meters to track energy usage, communal charging areas for electric cars, communal heat sources, large open spaces and renewable sources of energy as some of the integral features of the eco-town. Coupled with strict rules on public transport (by locating homes a few minutes away from local services), the government believes that it can help reduce, if not reverse, the effects of climate change. Three years after the announcement of the new sites, eco-communities in Oxfordshire, Norfolk, Hampshire and Cornwall are far from being completed. Despite this, new moves for the creation of eco-towns have been apparent. For example, in February 2012, plans for Northshowe in Cambridgeshire were resubmitted for approval. Will it finally be approved? No one knows, as eco-towns are out-of-favor in the UK government these days. What one knows is that the UK housing crisis is deepening, with England alone expecting to grow by 232,000 households annually until 2033, and that there is no means to accommodate this growth but new developments in the country side (Hubbard 2012). In the hope of addressing the situation, the Green Deal was introduced in November 2011. The Green Deal offers homeowners incentives to install energy efficient fixtures in their homes. It also promotes a zero carbon emission from energy generation in the homes. Bethany Hubbard says in her article, “What appears to be missing from the political rhetoric is eco-towns” (2012). Paul de Zylva from FOE said that there is nothing wrong with the concept of an eco-town, he says, “but sustainability should be at the core of all housing development, not reserved for individual towns” (Hubbard 2012). But it isn’t development that they are complaining about, it was the standard at which development will be judged on. “It was the government coming up with an idea and giving it a name and a slogan, but actually not putting in the legwork and requiring lots of other people to try and define it” (Hubbard 2012), de Zylva adds. While the aspiration for eco-towns faltered with the exit of Gordon Brown’s administration, groups such as CPRE says that green communities and more eco-friendly villages should have a place in the future. Sustainable Development is More than Just Environmental Protection With the death of the eco-town proposal in the national level came various environmentally sound methodologies of house building and retrofitting. For one, Cambridge University has undertaken one of the biggest green development in the UK. Due to start this 2012, the Cambridge Scheme is aiming for level 5 on the Code for Sustainable Homes with the hope of raising it to level 6 on the BRE Environmental Assessment Method (zero carbon emissions) by 2016 (Rees 2010). Buildings are climate proofed with a decentralized energy system fueled by renewable sources such as solar power. Its action plan is limits traffic as car usage will be kept to a minimum and various streets will be pedestrianized. Moreover, cycle lanes will be introduced so as to encourage residents to use bicycles as their primary form of transport. Rainfall will be conserved, thereby limiting flood risk and allowing homeowners to have a renewable water source. Aside from the Cambridge Scheme, the Greening-the-Box initiative provides the technology of retrofitting old homes and enabling them to become fuel and energy efficient (Rees 2009). While new movement for environmental conservation has been made, one cannot say that UK is already espousing sustainable development. For one, environmental sustainability is not the only determinant of sustainable development. In fact, there are other factors such as economic, political and social sustainability. The government has to realize that every human activity has an impact on the environment, and perhaps it is not the activities which need an overhaul, but rather, the values behind such activities. The issues are often interwoven and it can sometimes be difficult to make sense of which factor activated which. For example, the use of heavy machinery may damage the environment because of its large carbon emissions, but without it, there would be no mass production, and there would be less employment for people, or there would be less food for the growing population. Or perhaps, one can see it this way: because of the growing population, industries and agriculture have to work overtime to supply its needs, hence, the need for heavy machinery. In the same way, creating a sustainable environment can have benefits for both social, political and economic interactions. For example, sustainable transport can lessen carbon emissions, but it also ensures better personal health and better socialization with neighbors. This is perhaps the reason why the idea behind eco-towns is not so easy to dismiss, despite the issues it encountered in the past. For one, there is Beddington Zero (fossil) Energy Development (BedZED), the first eco-friendly housing in London which provides an example of a forward-looking social housing. Its action plan was centered on what is called sustainable living extended to the village (or town) level. In sum, Sue Riddlestone summarizes the potential that an eco-town can offer to the world: As with BedZED, it is our intention that these real-life projects will advance industry best practice and government policy. More than that, we hope they will speak to all of us as individuals, showing us what a sustainable future could look like: nothing to be afraid of, but something to embrace. (BioRegional & CABE 2008) Eco-towns are beautiful and communities where people can live harmoniously with each other. When planning for it, the stress should not be on the economic potential of the area, but rather, on how the community is part of the “one living planet”. When people realize that eco-towns is all about changing lifestyles and attitudes about how one see life and living in general, then all towns and cities can tun into an eco-town. Bibliography BBC News, 2009a. Assessment over eco-town project. BBC News. BBC News, 2009b. Four sites to become “eco-towns.” BBC News. 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