1. Homepage of the Countryside Character Initiative by the Countryside Agency.
2. Homepage of the Countryside Character Network.
3. Homepage of Countryscape.
Worth building on and saving - Thames Gateway is both ugly and beautiful
Ian Abley looks at the Countryside Character Initiative produced by the Countryside Agency, which usefully shows how the Thames Gateway landscape varies, but argues that local authorities are in a better position to judge it's worth.
The landscape is what determines the character of the British countryside, and that character has always changed with patterns of land use. In the case of the Thames Gateway, the landscape is to be transformed again - or should be transformed - for an eastwards expansion of London. If the Thames Gateway is to be somewhere people want to live in vast numbers, it has to be thoroughly transformed.
The Gateway landscape ranges from some of the best bird sanctuaries and marsh, to marginal farms, 'horsiculture' and the worst sort of polluted industrial sites. Through this landscape areas are designated, amongst other things, as Green Belt, Best Most Valued (BMV) farmland, ancient woodland, Conservation Areas, or sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSIs). Everything from tree preservation orders, rights of way, and wildlife reserves exist alongside redundant workings of interest to industrial heritage groups. Swathes of all sorts of Gateway land are within the flood plain of the estuary, and across the whole area a myriad of ownerships will be affected by development.
As land is granted
planning approval for development and run through with drainage, utilities and
transportation infrastructure, this landscape's planning designations will be
contested. The allocation of development rights is obviously incredibly
valuable, but many third parties are already declaring their interests in the
Gateway beyond immediate speculation in land values. For most people the issue
of preserving the character of landscape will seem to be as posed by Richard
Wakeford of The Countryside Agency.
Wakeford
became Chief Executive of the Countryside Agency at its formation in April
1999, and was previously chief executive of the Countryside Commission from
1996. Prior to this he worked in the Cabinet Office, where he dealt with
economic and environmental affairs across government. Before that, in the
Department of the Environment, he developed a range of land use planning
policies. He edited the land use and transport chapters of the 1994 UK
Sustainable Development Strategy, building on his earlier work on the team
which prepared this country's first Environment White Paper, This Common
Inheritance, in 1990. He became a non-executive member of the management
board of the Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) in
2001 and is a member of the UK Sustainable Development Commission. Wakeford is
an arbiter of sustainability for government. He says of the character of the
English landscape:
'Most of us welcome progressive change, but don't want to see development running amok. We applaud new woodland to enhance the landscape, but know that planting and management must be sensitive to the locality. We can be excited by bold regeneration for places in need of a lift, but recognise that the new development must work around the best of the old, and not sweep it away.' (1)
Of course, the fear that development will be 'running amok' in the Gateway is a myth. The rhetorical vision of the Gateway is going to be planned - in the narrow sense of planning as development control - by competing elected and appointed authorities. This will be done through interminable public consultation exercises backed up with drawn out feasibility and technical reporting processes.
It is likely that many will suggest, as Wakeford implies, that uninhabited landscaping will be deserving of planning approval. Woodlands are said to be fine if they 'enhance the landscape', but buildings at low densities dependent on the car will not be allowed throughout the Gateway - despite the vast area under discussion and the possibility of diffusing development into new landscape. Even higher density urbanism, clustered around public transport, will need to be justified as a strategic plan to save the Thames Gateway countryside from 'sprawl'. The announcement of the Gateway does not mean it will all be built on.
Of course, not all of it should or can be developed. Wakeford is entirely right to point out that landscape change need not be opposed as inherently worse than the existing arrangement, or advocated regardless of what exists. Some discernment is required about development and the landscape. Which for us means the expectation that planning committees will exercise discretion on behalf of their electorate, might resist the policy impositions of quangos, and should not evade responsibility through unrepresentative 'public participation' exercises.
Unfortunately, it seems as though government planning guidance, the agendas of quangos, and the meddling of third party interests will hold sway, while a good deal of evasive consultation will be indulged in.
This will all serve to over-ride the ability of professional planners, answerable to elected planning committee members, from exercising discretion about old and new landscape. The Thames Gateway landowners will in that case be further estranged from the decision making processes that control their development rights. The result will be that executive agencies and environmental NGOs are better able to superimpose their prejudices over local discretion in matters of development. This will represent a loss of subtlety in planning, not a gain in vision, as the regional and national advocates of sustainability disagree on what sustainable development is in practice.
There is no such thing as one vision of sustainable development for the Thames Gateway amongst unelected policymakers, either inside or out of national or regional planning authorities. Even if there were coherence behind the sustainababble it would still be an undemocratic imposition on the local population.
You can see the problem in the the Countryside Agency's
Countryside Character Initiative, posed as '...
a programme of information and advice on the character of the English
countryside'. (1)
This is presented as a map of England as 159 and supposedly distinctive character areas. The features that define the landscape of each area are recorded in individual descriptions. These seek to explain what makes one area different from any other, how that character has arisen, and how it is changing. Maps and descriptions of the 159 character areas come in eight full-colour volumes. They are published with a view to helping decision makers at national, regional, and local planning levels, '... where tough decisions have to be made on development and change'. They are expected to provide '... a vital context for such decisions', as '... an important way of addressing sustainable development'. They may be a way of addressing sustainable development, but they are not the way.
The
Countryside Character Initiative has been produced by the Countryside Character
Network (CCN), which styles itself as '... an informal network, open to anyone
who has an interest in Landscape Character Assessment and its applications'.
(2) The CCN has over 450 members to date, who aim to promote best practice in
applying their Landscape Character Assessments. The CCN is funded by the
Countryside Agency, but is co-ordinated by another body. Countryscape are '...
an inter-disciplinary consultancy, combining design and media with geographical
information and landscape ecology', who '... specialise in improving
communication and decision-making amongst all stakeholders in sustainable
development'. (3)
The Countryside Character Initiative is a very useful primer on the landscape of the Thames Gateway, and indeed on all of the wonderfully varied English countryside. But at best it only represents the Countryside Agency's executive assessment of what landscape characteristics are important and worth saving, and then at a given time. At worst it represents the views of anyone in the self-appointed CCN, or those at Countryscape. That body '... comprises a team of experienced landscape ecologists, mapping consultants, graphic designers and other creatives, providing solutions for public media, planning and research'. (3)
Who died and left all these people in charge of judging what is noteworthy about the changing character of the countryside?
For many people who live there, or who might hope to live there, much of the Thames Gateway is lacking in any redeeming character. While other parts of it are widely recognised as of a unique character worth preserving. At best the Countryside Agency can only generalise about such judgements, but those generalisations will be debateable.
Our point is that the debate should be a local matter, and not one for every eco-busy-body who wants to insist that the Thames Gateway countryside '... belongs to each and every one of us'. (1) It doesn't belong to anyone except those who actually own it, and they should be free - albeit through elected representatives since 1947 - to change the character of the landscape to meet a new set of demands.
Read the Countryside Character Initiative because it is fascinating, but don't read it as an operable guide to sustainable development, or consider it representative of any view except that of Richard Wakeford and his Countryside Agency. Ian Abley 20 September 2003
The Thames Gateway
area cuts across:
113 North Kent Plain
115 Thames Valley
119 North Downs
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