There are well over 300,000 acres of publicly owned “wasted” land in England and Wales, according to estimates made in a report(*) prepared by the Continuing Professional Development Foundation. This total is considerably more than the “official” total of 112,000 acres of derelict land compiled from the registers kept by the Department of the Environment. Despite government intervention, inner city dereliction is increasing in magnitude.
The notion that green belts force development into the city should be recognised as incorrect, states the report. The green belt is, however, one of the few control devices that really works and it should therefore be preserved — for administrative reasons, though not necessarily for planning reasons. “Unfortunately, local plans deliver housing sites in supportable locations instead of where people want to life. A new settlement (such as that proposed for green belt land at Tillingham Hall in Essex) which can pay for all its own infrastructure defeats that reasoning and confronts the conventional logic of green belts.”
Structure plan authorities, with the support of the Secretary of State, have been trying to minimise urban sprawl and at the same time redirect investment into the inner city, the report points out. If such a strategy is going to be successful, then the inner city location will have to offer comparative advantage. “It is not enough simply to ration land releases so that little greenfield land is available, and hoping that, because of this, development will occur on inner city land. Such a strategy does not get over the inherent development cost disadvantage of urban sites in comparison with greenfield land.”
