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‘Urban v Rural’ Battle Will Kill Off Planning Solution

Chris Bowers explains how the National Planning Policy Framework could lead to a divide between cities and countryside.

By Chris Bowers

16 Sep 2011, 09:30

‘A Divided Nation!’ is a slogan many a politician and campaigner enjoys using, especially after a bout of rioting, whether motivated by wealth inequalities, race or whatever. But another great divide within our nation is about to rear its ugly head again.

The onset of the government’s alterations to the planning system is reigniting the ‘urban v rural’ conflict. This reached absurd proportions in the mid-2000s when the abolition of hunting with hounds was high on the political agenda. The issue was portrayed as the urbanites who oppose the killing of sweet furry animals against the earthy rural folk who have a connection with the land that townspeople don’t even know they’ve lost.

The fact that there were many people in towns and cities who support hunting and plenty in the sticks who abhor it didn’t fit with the perceived polarisation, so wasn’t really mentioned. By the same logic, the city folk who accuse farmers – with some justification – of failing to look after the land they tend barely register. At the height of the Foot & Mouth epidemic 10 years ago, urban commentators bemoaned the scandal of a government spending so much money on a sector (agriculture) that accounted for just three per cent of GDP; many in the countryside claim the scandal is that food-growing has been allowed to decline to such a low percentage of our national activity.

The latest round of urban v rural animosity is breaking out over the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). The government and various economists have concluded that there must be lots of new house-building, and the countryside is the area of least resistance. Planning policy guidance says you have to put brownfield sites ahead of greenfield in the priority list, but beyond a certain number of houses, such guidance is just determining the order in which they are built – the end result will be the same. There is also a resistance to tackling the problem of empty properties, or to ask whether we as a society can afford to live as separately as we do, with its resulting pressure on existing housing. So urban commentators are gearing up to smash what they see as precious rural protectionism, while the rural community – backed up by some big friends like the National Trust – is fighting for what it sees as the preservation of the fabric of this country’s heritage.

Does it matter? Surely there are always going to be battles over house building, fox hunting and whether we should be growing more of our own food? Well yes, but the latest round of urban v rural antagonism does matter, because it risks killing off one of the best solutions to many of our logistical, health and environmental problems.
In the mid-1990s, the concept of land-use planning emerged among those working for long-term solutions to our car dependence. The theory is simple: if we plan our settlements so people live within walking and cycling distance of schools, shops, facilities such as doctors’ and dentists’ surgeries, and ideally also workplaces, then we reduce car mileage, improve people’s health, and encourage a sense of social cohesion that will hopefully reduce crime and alienation. (In practical terms, it also needs to be made hard to use the car for short journeys, as people may live within a 10-minute walk of their local shops, but it’s often more tempting to jump in the car to get the Saturday paper than to walk or get out the bike.)

I know of a village of 5000 inhabitants whose shops are struggling to attract enough trade. The village could easily expand by up to double, but it would only make sense if a missing stretch of railway were to come through. If it did, you could build lots of new houses, with built-in traffic calming so kids could play safely in the streets, underground parking so there was safe storage for cars but a palaver to get them out for short journeys, and a thriving community could grow up, perhaps with a civic square around the railway station. It would be the model sustainable small town of the future.

But it won’t happen because the people who organise the housing targets don’t talk to the people responsible for rail infrastructure. In fact the reason land-use planning hasn’t made much progress is that it requires various elements of the planning process to work together. So this particular village will get somewhere above 500 new houses, lots of extra traffic, probably little extra trade for the local shops because everyone treats it as a dormitory, and the village’s development falls between two stools.
This is why the urban v rural element to the debate about the NPPF is a red herring. The real divide is between the different planning authorities, who are acting as a set of fiefdoms all looking after their own patches in isolation.

The NPPF represents a golden opportunity. If handled properly, it could help create a collection of pleasant towns and urban neighbourhoods in which people can walk or cycle to most of their local facilities. It’s a win/win/win situation just waiting to happen. But it won’t happen if we are distracted by fatuous faux battles between rural sophisticates and country bumpkins. After all, with 60 million people on a small land mass, we need both urban and rural communities – and both need sustainable ways of living.