Labour’s pledge to release green belt for new housing raises important questions about the balance between density and sustainability, writes Joe Holyoak
The new Labour government has invented something called the “grey belt”, about which nobody previously knew. It is proposing to build on it, to help to meet its big plans for new housing development. But what kind of housing will it be? One looks in vain for any clue in Labour party policy.
Unlike Tony Blair’s 1997 government, to which this new government is often compared, it is improbable that there will be a commission to today’s equivalent of Richard Rogers to write a “Towards an Urban Renaissance” policy for the 2020s. So far Angela Rayner shows no sign of being a new John Prescott.
Given what looks like a continuation of the dependence on commercial house-builders to achieve the projected housing numbers, it seems likely that we shall get low density urban enlargement similar to what we already have - just more of it.
Unlike when Prescott was in charge of planning, we no longer have mandatory minimum figures for residential density. On balance, that is probably a good thing. There is a mantra among urban designers (I can’t remember who originated it) that ‘Density should be an outcome of a plan, not a determinant of it’. I believe this principle to be correct, but at the same time I am aware that there is a widespread ignorance about the realities of residential densities, and a reluctance to be realistic and specific about what is frequently referred to vaguely as high or medium density.
Some time ago I was asked by a planning officer in a district council close to Birmingham, where a lot of house-building is happening, to address the planning committee to advocate the sustainability benefits of higher densities. I could sense the opposition in members as I did this, and at the end I was asked by one councillor if I intended to also give them a talk advocating lower densities. (I think that was intended sarcastically, but it also reflected a refusal to understand the points I was making).
Part of the problem is a semantic issue: the ambiguity of the word “green”. It is used to mean both sustainable in a wide sense, and also unbuilt space containing grass and trees. Often these two meanings are in direct contradiction with each other. I recall Andres Duany at a Congress for New Urbanism conference describing Manhattan as the most sustainable district of the USA. Yet apart from Central Park, it is not known for having lots of trees or grass. Duany’s claim was based on its high density, which in turn means a relative absence of green open spaces.
In practice, densely-built neighbourhoods – one kind of green - are frequently in opposition to lots of planted public open space – another kind of green. Birmingham’s so-called Sustainable Urban Extension (SUE), in what was until recently the Green Belt at Langley, in the northeast of the city, is a flagship of the city’s ambitious house-building programme. The plan is to build 6,000 dwellings there, in what the SPD describes as a “connected, inclusive, resilient, green and vibrant” development. But which kind of green is that?
The site is 274 hectares in size, so the gross overall residential density is 22 dwellings per hectare (dph). Even allowing for the fact that the site will contain a local centre, schools and other non-residential uses, this is a low density. This is an edge-of-city site, so one should not expect inner-city densities, but 22dph is very low for a development which has the word “sustainable” in its title.
Birmingham’s planning culture has always looked unfavourably on high density housing. When five inner-city neighbourhoods were comprehensively redeveloped – i.e. flattened and rebuilt – from the mid-1950s onwards in chief planner Herbert Manzoni’s ruthless modernist rebuilding of the city, resultant residential densities were reduced to about half of what they had been previously.
In Ladywood, one of the five neighbourhoods, before redevelopment the gross density was 65dph, measured without excluding factories and workshops, schools and churches. This density was created entirely by two- and three-storey terraced houses. After redevelopment, the density was 33dph, made up by a fabric which included a number of 15-storey tower blocks.
Part of the planners’ rationale for this depopulation was the desire to create public green spaces in the redevelopment, in reaction to the dense carpet of buildings, containing few if any parks, which typified the 19th century inner city. But very few spaces of any quality were created. Much of the new green space consisted of vacuous and unusable areas of grass surrounding the tower blocks.
Ladywood is now the location for a so-called regeneration programme, which seeks to greatly increase the residential density of the area, in line with the policy document Our Future City (I have written about both in previous BD columns). This unfavourably compares the city’s thinly-populated inner city neighbourhoods with those of European cities such as Lyon and Brussels.
The programme has so far been extremely badly handled by the city council, and has succeeded in alienating great numbers of residents with threats of Compulsory Purchase Orders and proposed widespread demolition, just as happened in the 1950s.
Ironically perhaps, the buildings most likely to survive appear to be the remaining seven tower blocks. But it is unclear whether their Corbusian isolation in open space can also survive. Just as in the Langley SUE, with densification comes a promise to include “more open spaces, including play areas and parks”. Can this circle be squared?
Another location where the contest between densification and green space has been played out is the Smithfield redevelopment next to the Bull Ring. What is essentially a good mixed-use masterplan by Prior + Partners has been challenged in a vociferous campaign by a local group called CityPark4Brum. The group has called for 25% of the 17ha site to be dedicated to a new city centre park.
The developer, Lendlease, has declared this would be commercially unviable. The masterplan does include a new park within the residential quarter of Smithfield, and in response to CityPark4Brum’s campaign, this has been increased in size from 0.6ha to 0.8ha. The amended plan was approved by the planning committee in June.
The missing element in this and similar arguments is an urban design code written by the local authority, which would demonstrate in graphic form how a mid-rise urban form, perhaps similar to those of cities like Lyon and Brussels, could achieve densification, while also making good quality green spaces.
It can be done – it exists elsewhere. But if the local authority merely expresses aspirations, and leaves choices about urban form to private developers, the arguments will continue.
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