Eco-towns in Britain - Good design vs. Environment?
This is an article I read in the Nov. issue of BBC History Magazine, to which I subscribe. They sent me a text version of it and have kindly given me permission to post it here for your interest. The bit at the end about Ebenezer Howard was a sidebar which they have included.
What does history teach us about…eco-towns?
Continuing the History and Policy series, Chris Bowlby interviews Professor Alastair Bonnett on the Government’s new proposals for model ‘green’ communities,
and investigates the historical precedents
The claim is striking. The Government plans to build a wave of new communities around Britain that will “revolutionise the way people live”.
That is what former housing minister Caroline Flint has promised in the proposal to build ten new ‘eco-towns’
by 2020. They are supposed to have between five and twenty thousand homes each, with a range of housing to encourage a social mix, and will be designed to promote ‘green’, environmentally friendly living. Proposed locations for these pioneering new settlements include Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Essex, Cornwall and
South Yorkshire.
Eco-towns are an attempt to reconcile several tricky parts of the policy agenda – the pressure on housing in some of the most popular regions of the country, the demand for more affordable homes, and the need to combat global warming. At the same time, the Government is trying to offer a sense of tradition and continuity, suggesting eco-towns will follow in the footsteps of earlier initiatives such as Ebenezer Howard’s garden cities of the early 20th century.
We might think of all our towns and cities as places that have evolved haphazardly from centuries of gradual settlement and individual human initiative. But there have always been moments too when governments have attempted to create their own ‘model’ communities, and shape most directly where and how their citizens live.
Professor Alastair Bonnett, a historical geographer at Newcastle University, has been following closely the eco-towns debate, and its relationship with what has gone before.
Why is the Government so keen to build eco-towns – and why is it raising the issue now?
Alastair Bonnett: The Government wants to build three million new homes by 2020. It is also planning to cut carbon emissions by around 30 per cent by the same date. These are two very different problems. But could part of the answer to both of them be eco-towns?
The idea that people will flock to a new generation of high-tech eco-friendly new towns built in the countryside also reflects a rather worrying fact. For all the exaggerated claims made about Britain’s vibrant, fun-loving cities, a poll conducted in 2008 for Country Life indicated that 80 per cent of Britons would rather live in the countryside.
People want to live somewhere safe, clean and attractive. And that place isn’t called London or Birmingham or Leeds. The stark fact is that the regeneration of Britain’s cities has failed to turn them into places where the majority of people would choose to live.
Are there any historical precedents for this kind of government initiative?
AB: New towns are an ancient idea.
The Roman Empire was spread, in part, by building new towns (or ‘colonies’). Their design reflected the Roman view of the perfect community. These early attempts to impose proportion, beauty and harmony on the landscape were also about imposing imperial will and military control.
There have been periods when the creation of new towns was more common, such as the century or so after 1066 in England and Wales, and in Europe from the 16th century. Medieval new towns were often based around trade and commerce rather than notions of an ‘ideal community’.
But two aspects – aesthetic and authoritarian – have always been present. New towns are meant to be better places to live, perfect places, but they also represent the vision of a powerful state or individual that claims to know what is best for people. There are plenty of examples in Britain, such as New Lanark, which were both utopian and authoritarian. In the late 19th century, Port Sunlight (1888) and Bournville (1895) also provided model industrial communities.
And the idea of more sustainable communities is not new either. Ebenezer Howard, inventor of ‘garden cities’ like Letchworth (1903) and Welwyn Garden City (1919), strove to create self-contained and co-operative settlements. Land was to be owned collectively, food would be produced locally and people would live, work and find entertainment and education within the town.
In some ways the garden cities were far from green. Little regard was paid to the environmental costs of creating and maintaining new infrastructure and the new houses required. Yet the many garden towns and garden suburbs that Howard inspired soon attracted people who were enthusiastic about his wider vision. From the 1940s came the new towns, which constituted a kind of nationalisation of the garden city.
What lessons might be learned from past experience for today’s policy makers?
AB: Given that the vast majority of Britain’s new towns were built after the Second World War, the fact that the Government’s Eco-towns Prospectus doesn’t mention them is both significant and depressing.
In short, the Government is tacitly acknowledging that places like Stevenage (the first postwar new town, begun in 1947), Harlow or later places like Milton Keynes and Washington New Town are failed experiments.
It may be said that the new towns suffered from top-down decision making, bleak road systems and ugly modernist buildings. But at the root of the problem is the fact that the new towns were technological fixes dreamt up by policy wonks.
Can eco-towns avoid this fate? Real places, places with real communities and real identities, need to emerge from enthusiasm, from a vision of human community and from local people acting together. People actually like beauty and tradition.
More fundamentally, new town planning, both ancient and modern, has always assumed that land is an infinite resource – that people should go forth and colonise the empty places of the world. We will not create a sustainable planet with this now-badly dated vision. The Government should support movements to make our cities better places and give up on the fantasy of ‘ideal’ new towns.
Pundit from the past: Ebenezer Howard
What would one of the past’s most eminent planners make of the eco-towns idea?
The government’s Eco-towns Prospectus (July 2007) claims “Ebenezer Howard’s vision of garden cities” as an inspiration. He was by far the most important and influential of Britain’s new town visionaries. His book Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform came out in 1898, and inspired planners across the world (especially after it was re-issued in 1902 as Garden Cities of Tomorrow). Policy makers from the USA to the Soviet Union looked to Howard’s ideas as a way of creating sustainable towns that combined the dynamism of city life with the beauty and healthiness of the countryside.
But would Howard (pictured below) choose to create completely new communities in new places in the 21st century? If he had known about threats such as climate change, argues Professor Bonnett, “I cannot see him even contemplating building new towns in the countryside”. He would also perhaps be sceptical about central government taking such a strong initiative. “Howard was a socialist and looked forward to a time when the state could take a lead in the building of new towns”, says Professor Bonnett. “Yet Howard’s socialism was heavily influenced by the localist radicalism of William Morris. The idea that central government would push through privately built and privately owned new towns, ignoring local opposition, would have appalled him.”
Howard, who worked as a parliamentary shorthand writer, knew his politics close-up. But Professor Bonnett cannot imagine him as an eager junior minister or civil servant advocating eco-towns in their modern form. “I think what he would really miss from the Government’s eco-towns proposals is a sense of care, respect and love for people and nature. Where is the vision of a better world? His garden cities were designed to change the world; New Labour’s eco-towns seem purpose-built to allow us to continue living in the much the same way as we do now.” He also notes that Howard lived in garden cities himself – he died in Welwyn in 1928 – whereas it seems unlikely that today’s ministers or officials will be moving to the eco-towns that they’re so eager to build.
Given today’s circumstances, Professor Bonnett sees Howard as someone who would have championed groups like the Transition Town movement. Run by local enthusiasts, this works to convert existing settlements and buildings, creating food and transport networks with the aim of transforming the places in which we already live.
Alastair Bonnett is professor of social geography at Newcastle University. He is author of What Is Geography?
(Sage, 2008)
This series is produced with History & Policy, a partnership between the Universities of Cambridge and London that works for better public policy through an understanding of history. History & Policy connects historians with policy makers and the media and makes their research more accessible. You can read the latest History & Policy papers exploring contemporary issues and find out more about the network at www.historyandpolicy.org
What does history teach us about…eco-towns?
Continuing the History and Policy series, Chris Bowlby interviews Professor Alastair Bonnett on the Government’s new proposals for model ‘green’ communities,
and investigates the historical precedents
The claim is striking. The Government plans to build a wave of new communities around Britain that will “revolutionise the way people live”.
That is what former housing minister Caroline Flint has promised in the proposal to build ten new ‘eco-towns’
by 2020. They are supposed to have between five and twenty thousand homes each, with a range of housing to encourage a social mix, and will be designed to promote ‘green’, environmentally friendly living. Proposed locations for these pioneering new settlements include Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Essex, Cornwall and
South Yorkshire.
Eco-towns are an attempt to reconcile several tricky parts of the policy agenda – the pressure on housing in some of the most popular regions of the country, the demand for more affordable homes, and the need to combat global warming. At the same time, the Government is trying to offer a sense of tradition and continuity, suggesting eco-towns will follow in the footsteps of earlier initiatives such as Ebenezer Howard’s garden cities of the early 20th century.
We might think of all our towns and cities as places that have evolved haphazardly from centuries of gradual settlement and individual human initiative. But there have always been moments too when governments have attempted to create their own ‘model’ communities, and shape most directly where and how their citizens live.
Professor Alastair Bonnett, a historical geographer at Newcastle University, has been following closely the eco-towns debate, and its relationship with what has gone before.
Why is the Government so keen to build eco-towns – and why is it raising the issue now?
Alastair Bonnett: The Government wants to build three million new homes by 2020. It is also planning to cut carbon emissions by around 30 per cent by the same date. These are two very different problems. But could part of the answer to both of them be eco-towns?
The idea that people will flock to a new generation of high-tech eco-friendly new towns built in the countryside also reflects a rather worrying fact. For all the exaggerated claims made about Britain’s vibrant, fun-loving cities, a poll conducted in 2008 for Country Life indicated that 80 per cent of Britons would rather live in the countryside.
People want to live somewhere safe, clean and attractive. And that place isn’t called London or Birmingham or Leeds. The stark fact is that the regeneration of Britain’s cities has failed to turn them into places where the majority of people would choose to live.
Are there any historical precedents for this kind of government initiative?
AB: New towns are an ancient idea.
The Roman Empire was spread, in part, by building new towns (or ‘colonies’). Their design reflected the Roman view of the perfect community. These early attempts to impose proportion, beauty and harmony on the landscape were also about imposing imperial will and military control.
There have been periods when the creation of new towns was more common, such as the century or so after 1066 in England and Wales, and in Europe from the 16th century. Medieval new towns were often based around trade and commerce rather than notions of an ‘ideal community’.
But two aspects – aesthetic and authoritarian – have always been present. New towns are meant to be better places to live, perfect places, but they also represent the vision of a powerful state or individual that claims to know what is best for people. There are plenty of examples in Britain, such as New Lanark, which were both utopian and authoritarian. In the late 19th century, Port Sunlight (1888) and Bournville (1895) also provided model industrial communities.
And the idea of more sustainable communities is not new either. Ebenezer Howard, inventor of ‘garden cities’ like Letchworth (1903) and Welwyn Garden City (1919), strove to create self-contained and co-operative settlements. Land was to be owned collectively, food would be produced locally and people would live, work and find entertainment and education within the town.
In some ways the garden cities were far from green. Little regard was paid to the environmental costs of creating and maintaining new infrastructure and the new houses required. Yet the many garden towns and garden suburbs that Howard inspired soon attracted people who were enthusiastic about his wider vision. From the 1940s came the new towns, which constituted a kind of nationalisation of the garden city.
What lessons might be learned from past experience for today’s policy makers?
AB: Given that the vast majority of Britain’s new towns were built after the Second World War, the fact that the Government’s Eco-towns Prospectus doesn’t mention them is both significant and depressing.
In short, the Government is tacitly acknowledging that places like Stevenage (the first postwar new town, begun in 1947), Harlow or later places like Milton Keynes and Washington New Town are failed experiments.
It may be said that the new towns suffered from top-down decision making, bleak road systems and ugly modernist buildings. But at the root of the problem is the fact that the new towns were technological fixes dreamt up by policy wonks.
Can eco-towns avoid this fate? Real places, places with real communities and real identities, need to emerge from enthusiasm, from a vision of human community and from local people acting together. People actually like beauty and tradition.
More fundamentally, new town planning, both ancient and modern, has always assumed that land is an infinite resource – that people should go forth and colonise the empty places of the world. We will not create a sustainable planet with this now-badly dated vision. The Government should support movements to make our cities better places and give up on the fantasy of ‘ideal’ new towns.
Pundit from the past: Ebenezer Howard
What would one of the past’s most eminent planners make of the eco-towns idea?
The government’s Eco-towns Prospectus (July 2007) claims “Ebenezer Howard’s vision of garden cities” as an inspiration. He was by far the most important and influential of Britain’s new town visionaries. His book Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform came out in 1898, and inspired planners across the world (especially after it was re-issued in 1902 as Garden Cities of Tomorrow). Policy makers from the USA to the Soviet Union looked to Howard’s ideas as a way of creating sustainable towns that combined the dynamism of city life with the beauty and healthiness of the countryside.
But would Howard (pictured below) choose to create completely new communities in new places in the 21st century? If he had known about threats such as climate change, argues Professor Bonnett, “I cannot see him even contemplating building new towns in the countryside”. He would also perhaps be sceptical about central government taking such a strong initiative. “Howard was a socialist and looked forward to a time when the state could take a lead in the building of new towns”, says Professor Bonnett. “Yet Howard’s socialism was heavily influenced by the localist radicalism of William Morris. The idea that central government would push through privately built and privately owned new towns, ignoring local opposition, would have appalled him.”
Howard, who worked as a parliamentary shorthand writer, knew his politics close-up. But Professor Bonnett cannot imagine him as an eager junior minister or civil servant advocating eco-towns in their modern form. “I think what he would really miss from the Government’s eco-towns proposals is a sense of care, respect and love for people and nature. Where is the vision of a better world? His garden cities were designed to change the world; New Labour’s eco-towns seem purpose-built to allow us to continue living in the much the same way as we do now.” He also notes that Howard lived in garden cities himself – he died in Welwyn in 1928 – whereas it seems unlikely that today’s ministers or officials will be moving to the eco-towns that they’re so eager to build.
Given today’s circumstances, Professor Bonnett sees Howard as someone who would have championed groups like the Transition Town movement. Run by local enthusiasts, this works to convert existing settlements and buildings, creating food and transport networks with the aim of transforming the places in which we already live.
Alastair Bonnett is professor of social geography at Newcastle University. He is author of What Is Geography?
(Sage, 2008)
This series is produced with History & Policy, a partnership between the Universities of Cambridge and London that works for better public policy through an understanding of history. History & Policy connects historians with policy makers and the media and makes their research more accessible. You can read the latest History & Policy papers exploring contemporary issues and find out more about the network at www.historyandpolicy.org
Tags: city, environment, garden
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Fred Kent on -
This is a very interesting article.
As an aside, we were in Perth, Australia in September. We were meeting with the Committee for Perth, a leadership group that represented people not just from Perth, but outlying communities as well. We had asked them to prepare a list of the 5 best destinations in and around Perth, the 5 worst and the 5 with the biggest opportunities. 35 people came to the meeting and put colored dots on a large map...Green for good, red for bad and yellow for the big opportuities. I had only been there for a few hours, so I had no idea of what each dot meant. I asked them to assess what they had come up with. One person said that there were no green dots for anything built after 1950, and another said that there were no green dots in Downtown Perth, although there were a lot of big opportunities.
The second comment I would make is about a process we were involved in in Norway. I will get more information on this new initiative (it is only in Norwegian), but the idea that they are exploring is to work toward a vision for the "City of the Future". They had selected the 13 largest cities in Norway to explore what it should be like and how to get there. We were asked to help set the vision and gave the leadoff, keynote address for their first meeting. Their first translation about what they are attempting to do is below:
1. LAND USE AND TRANSPORT:
The projects included in the priority area of land use and transport will improve the urban environment and promote better urban development with lower greenhouse gas emissions.
2. STATIONARY ENERGY
Energy use in all forms is closely linked to greenhouse gas emissions. With regard to stationary energy, this is an important priority area which is focusing strongly on reducing the use of fossil energy and electricity for heating.
3. CONSUMPTION PATTERN AND WASTE
Increasing consumption in the western world has been a major contributor to the climate change we are witnessing today. It is important to keep this in focus when considering measures for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
4. ADAPTATION TO CLIMATE CHANGES
The City of Bergen would like to see a broad initiative to start work on a new human rights convention which will secure the right to a sustainable future and sustainable decisions within the framework of the climate goals recommended by the United Nations.
Bergen is a city in close proximity to the sea and the mountains, with large quantities of precipitation. In recent years incidences of extreme weather have resulted in loss of human life and material assets. A Risk And Vulnerability analysis has been carried out in connection with the land-use part of the municipal master plan. Different types of risk maps have been drawn up, mapping, for example, local precipitation, floods, water levels and land-slide risk areas in the whole of the City. These maps will be used in planning processes and developments to reduce the risk of unforeseen incidents.
A second comment would be that as we travel around the world, we are most impressed with the communities that have regenerated themselves through massive, local creativity. Brooklyn, New York where we live is a prime example. Brooklyn has become a city of great neighborhoods, and of the ones I know, I don't believe that government or for that matter any outside force had anything to do with the regeneration. I believe that many other great cities have become great over the past 40 years because of local initiatives done by individuals in their neighborhoods that is mostly done without government or local planning.
This all gets done to our belief that if you set it up for people to perform that they will seek holistic, outstanding and creative solutions for their community. The probelm is that no government or discipline wants it to happen with out their involvement...read control. - Attachments:
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Permalink Reply by María Nuria De Cesaris on -
I live since 1979 in a new city, Ciudad Guayana, that will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2011. This city was an initiative of the national government in the 60´s, inspired in the world movement of new towns and the theory of Perroux´s growth poles. MIT and Harvard university were the technical counterpart for this initiative. The city has now almost 800.000 inhabitants. When the city was created, only 5.000 people lived in the area...
There are two books of lisa Peattie, an American antropologist, that offer a highlight on the tensions and passion involved in planning and making it reality a new city (The view from the barrio written in the 60´s and other which name i don´t recall now, written more than 20 years after, following a visit to the city in its 20 anniversary)
I myself have a lot of thouhgts and feelings about this process
I aggree partially with Fred on who is the engine to have better places to live... I think that the best results are obtained when goverment and communities meet and work together... It is not an easy task! Sometimes is an initiative of a community groups or a citizen with leadership (this seems to be the case of Brooklyn), other times is an initiative of a local government (as the case of Bogotá). But in both cases, what is true is that at the end, government has to participate (at least do not obstaculizing the community initiative) and that the community has to be involved in order to guarantee that the government initiative follows the citizen visions of what they want in their places...
I am part of a team of professionals that are making the new urban development plan of our city... for us, it has been of particular importance to have people involved in the process...we have done certain things in that direction:
-we set an inter-institutional comitee that meets monthly to follow up the process, where representatives of the main institutions and of the civil parrishes of the city ( it is like the community counties, that have elected representatives)
-we have a strong communications plan to guarantee information about the city and about the process (mural newspapers that are hang up in the markts, hospital, trasnportation terminals walls, a web page: www.pdulciudadguayana.org, an electronic monthly newsletter, exhibitions, a biweekly colum in the local newspapers, thematic reports in tv and in the newspapers... )
-we did a public opinion study about the city where we asked among other questions, the three PPS questions (what you like, what you do not like, what would you like the city will have). We loved that almost everybody loves its city! that does not mean they think it is fine!... (I think that one thing that a new city has it that a big part of its inhabitants decided to live in the city and therefore, they have a different relationship with it...this is only a feeling that I have not tested...)
-we have had multiple workshops with public intitutions, private companies and community groups to discuss the situation of the city and the proposals
-we participated in the public asemblies wher the municipal budget is prepared to give informatio about the situation of the city
We know we are far away of a good participatory process, but at least we are doing the effort...because we know that it is their city we are planning and not the government city
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Permalink Reply by Michael McGreevy on -
Hi Maria
I'm an Australian very interested in what is happening in Venezuela, I'd love to hear more about what tyou are doing and how the general population is being involved.
michael McGreevy
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