TLIO - Land Essays 2 - 1. Land Use

The Land Is Ours
TLIO
a landrights campaign for Britain

LAND ESSAYS 2
1. Land Use

CONTENTS(click any row of trees to return here)

A Sustainable Development Act, Tony Wrench

Travelling Light, Tony Thomson

Dear People of Brighton, Sue Craske

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A Sustainable Development Act by Tony Wrench

"The UK is determined to make sustainable development the touchstone of its policies. We recognise that this means a change of attitudes throughout the nation. That change cannot be achieved overnight, but that gives no grounds for defeatism - it should instead act as a spur to action."
(John Gummer, Sec. of State for the Environment, in the introduction to Sustainable Development - The UK Strategy, Jan 1994)

All the indications from the actions of local authorities, business and central government in this country since those stirring words were written two years ago, suggest that few people have any idea of how to assess a development for its sustainability, nor even any incentive to do so. Supermarkets and factories still consume green fields, roads and increased traffic continue to drive wildlife into smaller and smaller corners and waste in many forms continues to pollute the environment.

This is a suggestion for a new law that would focus our attention on sustainable development in one extremely important area, that of land use, and that if implemented would be a verifiable indicator that unsustainable development had ceased and that the tide had turned. It would not supplant existing planning laws, but be additional to them.

Could there be a way for legislation to help stop this seemingly inexorable slow suffocation of the natural world?

A Sustainable Development Act would recognise that a stop must be made to encroachment on the living skin of our island home from any more net development, as a means to ensuring the quality of what is left of our green environment for future generations, and to preserve the complexity and diversity of the living world. The crucial word here is 'net'. It would be hopelessly unrealistic to expect a total halt to all building or development of any kind. The fact is, however, that our developments have been so wasteful in the past that there is almost unlimited scope for further development by using more efficiently land already developed, or re-greening what has already been built on.

The Act would require that:

All developments of whatever nature that involve the covering of any area of green land by concrete, brick, tarmac etc. must first have been balanced by the 'greening' of exactly the same amount of developed land in the same bio-region.

(For these purposes 'bio-region' means the catchment area of the major river in the region. Bio-region is suggested rather than administrative area because an ecological loss in one bio-region would not be adequately compensated for by a greening in another.)

Greening would involve in most cases breaking up the existing hard-pan and structures, replacing topsoil, landscaping and planting with native plants, shrubs and trees appropriate to the locality.

Every proposal would be assessed by ecologist inspectors, and if a development were to involve the destruction of some existing animal or plant habitat, a new adjacent and appropriate habitat must be created before any development takes place.

The Act would be specific on the ways in which areas of land were 'balanced' and on methods of enforcement in the case of breach.

Broadly speaking, we would expect to see local authorities earmarking areas of road, industrial wasteland and redundant buildings as areas suitable for balancing future developments. A new road by-passing a town might be balanced, for example, by the greening over of dozens of minor roads elsewhere in the town centre. The balancing would be simply square metre for square metre. If the development were by a private or commercial enterprise, the balancing land would need to be purchased and greened in advance in the same way.

EFFECTS

The main effect of this Sustainable Development Act would be to create a new series of mental models in business and public organisations that would bring developmental and sustainability considerations into line with each other. At present, as we all know, they are almost diametrically opposed. A supermarket wishing to construct a new store in or near a town would have a whole series of new realities to face:

Green field sites are only feasible if the company can locate, purchase and green some old developed land.
It will almost certainly be cheaper to build a supermarket on that developed land than to green it, plus build afresh on the green land.
Space for car parking suddenly becomes extremely expensive! It would pay the supermarket to bus people into the town centre rather than try to balance and green that much developed land.
If the supermarket were still to decide to go ahead on a green field site, acres of new wilderness would be created.

All 'concrete' developments ... must first have been balanced by equivalent greening

Take another example - a county council wants to build a by-pass around a market town:

Building the road through an SSSI or a wood with many diverse habitats would be impossible. Even if adjacent developed land were available for greening, it might take a hundred years to recreate appropriate habitats.
Building under woods or green fields would be a viable option, with considerably less balancing to be done, but the cost would be so high that other more sustainable options would have to be considered, such as new public transport systems.
If the council decided to go ahead with a new by-pass through green fields, it would have to green scores of acres of developed land in the area. This would undoubtedly improve the quality of life of the local inhabitants, as well as safeguarding habitats for wildlife.

In the longer term, we might expect the effects to show themselves by an environment in which cities and towns become much greener, with no dead or derelict areas. Buildings would be designed efficiently. Wilderness areas such as forests would come right up to town outskirts. Industrial areas would be much less visible - the older factories from the 20th century would be surrounded by woods, and the newer 21st century ones would be underground.

As one of the 150 countries signing the declaration at the Rio Summit, and as one of the most extensively developed countries in the world the UK has a great opportunity, not to say duty, to take a lead in seeking that its development is sustainable. By pass ing a law such as this, the government would be taking great step for our children's children, and for the biosphere on which they will depend.

Travelling Light by Tony Thomson

Since the first hunter-gatherers crossed the European land bridge, nomadism has been an indigenous activity. It is nothing new, 90% of human existence has been experienced as nomadic. It is a profoundly human activity. Nomos is the Greek word for pasture, since the domestication of animals began (8000BC) it came to mean law, fair distribution and that which is allocated by custom. The activity, however, precedes the word and has been practised here for over 100,000 years. Custom is derived from habitual usage and practice.

The hegemony established by the Norman conquest has made constant assaults on custom by laws which enable the theory of individual ownership to supplant earlier mystical and more egalitarian notions of our relationship with the natural world. Custom survives because of the common sense of people who do not belong to the culture which towers over them. Its expression in the form of communal ritual and traditional pr actice has always irked authority and it is no different today.

The rural theatre of the fair is a perpetuation of much older pagan ritual. Celebrated at ancient sites with music, dancing, courtship, rough games, and role playing, these festivals are a form of sympathetic magic to draw fructifying vital energies through the land. They are an affirmation of a community and personal relationship with a Living Earth untrammelled by the mediation of the church, state or landowning baron.

Associating 'uncontrolled' popular recreation with public disorder, such festivals were banned in 1356 by feudal lords, in 1555 by the Calvinist Scots, in 1660 by Cromwell puritans, in 1850 by Victorian gentry and in 1985, 1987 and 1994 by the Conservative party in government. As loci for cultural and economic exchange festivals are a target for expropriation for those who wish to monopolise activity in these areas.

Nomadic dwelling weaves human habitation into a web of life.

There is a long association between travelling people and festivals, well before 'Gypsies' or 'Tsigans' were publicly recorded in Western Europe (in the 14th C), all mountebanks and travelling showmen found themselves dubbed 'Egyptians'. Since mobility enhances income, capitalism generated nomadic activity. Retail, craft and l abour services all originate in nomadic practice, merchants, cathedral builders, journeymen craftsmen, strolling players and agricultural labourers all 'tramped' and in contemporary form, many still do. As well as being an avenue for economic opportunity the road is sanctuary for the refugee. Slavery, war, desertification, enclosure and homelessness generate nomadic behaviour, it is an instinctive and perennial response to environmental stress.

Sanctuary however, is not necessarily just a condition of material well-being, it has a spiritual dimension. The ritual pilgrimage is as relevant today as it ever was, an opportunity of escape from the mundane to quest for some deeper revelation, the serf escaping slavery on the road to Canterbury to praise a god who, brought him 'out of the land of Egypt and delivered you from the house of bondage' (Deuteronomy Ch3v5) or for the Leveller 300 years later 'upon our march from Egypt to Canaan from a land of bondage and darkness to a land of liberty and rest' or the New Age Gypsies singing Bob Marley's Exodus on their way to Stonehenge. Like Bunyan (a tinker) author of Pilgrims Progress it begins 'As I walked through the wilderness of the world', for between eviction and settlement is the 'wilderness condition' symbol of disorder, darkness, death, place of testing, punishment, refuge, contemplation and ultimately redemption.

All of these stimuli to migration and movement exist still, their form may have changed but essentially they remain.

The Criminal Justice Act and Planning system attempt to impose an idyllic view of social and spatial order to perpetuate an inherently unstable and iniquitous relationship with Nature.

Nomadic dwelling weaves human habitation into a web of life in which hedgerow trees and herbage afford shelter, shade, fuel and food. However the traditional sites which are naturally abundant within the rural landscape have been systematically denied in a new rash of Enclosure. In the areas surveyed, between 60% and 90% of traditional sites have been gated, ditched and encroached upon since 1986 in a continuing covert policy of site denial. Droves around the periphery of market towns have been particularly vulnerable to closure because of the nomads perceived threat to property values and their proximity to anticipated urban expansion. The outcome of this massive loss of habitat, in conjunction with an influx of refugees, has been the creation of overcrowded, overused sites in more unsuitable locations.

Traditional patterns of site usage offer the facility for population dispersal, discreet location and rotational conservation. The knowledge that there is fresh ground in the vicinity after the expiry of the one presently occupied engenders a spir it of co-operation and obviates the need for expensive legal action.

Agenda 21 calls for a new kind of customary consciousness, a re-evaluation of our relationship with land through the resources we consume and the lifestyle we lead. Growing environmental awareness is cultivating a greater appreciation of the virtues of nomadic dwelling, in its rotational conservation of land, in its minimal material and economic requirements to achieve shelter, in a subsistence economy which liberates time and minimises dependency, and in a mobility which can respond to economic, social and environmental need.

Dear People of Brighton by Sue Craske

Dear People of Brighton,

We have one of the most lively and exciting towns in Britain. There is one thing that I and many friends with young children yearn for though, and that is more open space for recreation, sitting outdoors, or just somewhere for children to expend some of their considerable energy without wearing the pare nts out as well!

There are several very pleasant areas if you are lucky enough to live near to them, e.g. Preston Park and the Rock Garden, Tarnerland Park, East Brighton Park, Queens Park. There are several areas which have few or no parks or open spaces within easy walking distance , e.g. Coombe Road area, Hanover, North Laine, central Brighton, Hollingdean.

Even if a local park exists nearby, children and adults appreciate variety and visiting different places. More could be made of the existing open spaces. They could be enhanced with community landscaping so that people would want to use them. So many parks are under-used, apart from the kids' playgrounds, dog areas, and occasional football matches. Kids' playgrounds are the only places most parents can take them which don't cost them money or petrol and where people don't resent the presence of children.

Landscape based play areas are rare, but are the sort of places people didn't realise they would like.

When we adults were children, we had many more opportunities to play outside in wild or natural environments. Many of these remembered places have been built on, grubbed up and flattened, or are used as car parks. Others require car journeys and accompanying adults because they are on the fringes of the town or in the co untry.

Most children in this town only have small patio gardens or the street for regular outside play. The street is a desirable though dangerous place to play. Kids enjoy meeting their friends and riding their bikes up and down the pavement. (Building sites and waste ground too were exciting places to play.) A patch of earth to mould into hills, valleys, rivers and holes is fun but is unavailable to many children.

Children's and parents' real needs are not recognised most of the time. Playgrounds are all very well, but there is much evidence that children need to be able to explore 'places' to learn and develop social and mental skills and physical well being. Fixed play equipment is not stimulating for very long and is generally the same as in any other playground. Landscape based play areas are rare, but are the sort of places people don't yet realise they would like. Think of the sort of places you may have played in as a child. These were places where you could hide: secret little nooks and crannies where you could plot strategies with friends. There were hills, banks and ditches, dens and trees to climb. Kids prefer trees and fallen trunks to climb on rather than climbing frames - there is an element of discovery and danger. They would rather make a den between bushes than have a play house provided by an adult, where nothing can be moved around. A small garden around those on The Level would increase their attractiveness to children no end. You could imagine all sorts of stories and scenarios in these 'found' places. Landscape based play environments could still be used in wet weather and in the winter. Children could still have a lot of fun running around a stimulating environment, without getting wet bottoms from wet swings and slides.

Elsewhere in the country, local people are joining together. With grants and fund raising, they are creating exciting new community open spaces or preserving wildlife areas. Couldn't we do that here?

There would be all sorts of social benefits. It would bring people together and foster community spirit. People can learn new skills and increase their confidence. People notice things about their environment they would have overlooked before. They would appreciate other parts of Brighton which received the same sort of attention. If children were involved they would want to care for the park they helped to create, rather than vandalise it. If they could help plant up the park, they would be concerned for the plants they had put in.

Brighton people are starting to care about their environment. People want some restriction on the use of cars, which, thankfully, the Labour group is encouraging, because government hasn't done anything about it. They can see that the town is choked up with cars. Kids can't play safely on the streets. Providing a few more pleasant places within walking distances of where people live would help to reduce traffic. We would not need to get in a car to escape to the country so often, and people without cars would not feel so restricted.

I have since got involved with the 'Friends of' a local park from the initial stages. It is certainly good for the council to direct the frustrations and energy of ordinary people like me into an area where their funding is low. Trouble is, there is no money and very little support and lots of difficult problems to overcome - but people are joining in with us at last - more in the future maybe.

Yours in hope

Sue Craske