Here in the north Bristol fringe there is a twin assault on soil / gardens
taking place.
The first attack is to infill gardens with housing and the result seems to
be an entirely random set of house shapes and orientations which will have
our children asking questions about the current planning system.
The second is far more insidious in my view. This is a blatent disregard for
Best and Most Versatile (BMV)Agricultural Land in the fringe. Bedlam
economics is continuing to see the very soil that fed our cities and towns
being sold for urban extensions which purport to offer sustainable city
solutions.
The red BMV land of my allotment on the fringe is fertile and vesatile and
at a regional scale offers the potential to help feed us. This soil will, of
course, die if it is covered up. I wish that Kate Barker had had a gardeners
/ geographers hat on when she was considering the important economic, social
and environmental effects of over simplistic messing with our priceless soil
resource.
I suspect young Dave Cameron (who I saw in his garden the other day) has a
view and a fledgling policy on all of this. Our strategists within current
consultations on the Regional Spatial Strategies clearly have little
interest in our best agricultural land for anything other than housing,
especially in the urban fringe where my current research has its focus.
Does anyone have thoughts from other fringe locations ?
happy days ?
Richard Spalding
UWE-Bristol
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Crouch" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 9:26 PM
Subject: Re: gardens for housing?
> Hello Hilary and everybody!
>
> Couldnt disagree more with 1-7.
>
> yes, gardens may be imperfect [is perfectoin our goal as radical
> criticals?]
>
> sorry, you`ve hit on a raw nerve here.
>
> who with sense thinks in the western world that rurals are so good?
> fifty years of agri-bads... etc?
> is perfection there? or even in the global transport of food [miles]?
>
> no, these are crucial spaces, mistakenly ignorantly muddled with false
> idylls of th o-called rural- what does that mean and not a little
> elitist cultural capital lurking in the 7 if only we realised.
>
> best productive gardens often those not leafy suburban!
>
> UK mistake was th ignorant Rogers report that sensed [sic] high density
> citis as void of green, soft, only hard stuff.
>
> the opportunitis acros cities, from Greenwich Uk to San Francisco SF
> league of urban gardens, slug] and more, are crucially-er than leafless
> rural.
>
> are we really still playing antedluvian mytholgoies? cant believe it
>
> look at the work of cities, city community gardens, etc.
>
> simplistic divisions really dont work [hopefully] any more
>
> difficult to believe one is reading this email, Hilary!
>
> best
> David
>
>
>
>>>> Dr Hillary Shaw <[log in to unmask]> 03/09/07 8:47 PM >>>
> Recent media article, bemoaning the classification of suburban gardens
> as
> brownfield sites and consequent use for infill housing. We hear a lot
> about how
> bad this is, but are there any good points to this? e.g.
> 1) avoids urban sprawl over food producing, or recreational,
> countryside.
> 2) Increased density of housing, reduces transport needs, and makes
> public
> transport more viable.
> 3) Gardens may be pretty, but we really mean those nice front gardens,
> they
> create a positive externality, the big back ones are private, we don't
> see
> them, nobody's considering building on the former sort.
> 4) The sort of prroperty the developers want, is big old oversized
> properties, that take up too much space for their current level of
> occupiership, so
> are wasteful of scarce urban space, better used as smaller housing
> units.
> 5) OK, turning gardens into housing may imperil some scarce species, but
>
> most gardens aren't the eco-friendly sort, at least 95% of gardens
> contain
> species imported via a garden centre, are replaceable, and have their
> fair share
> of pesticides and fertilisers. Wildlife in cities may be catered for by
>
> provision of public parks, woods, canals, railway embankments, and many
> other
> non-garden areas it colonises - even old factory sites. A multitude of
> smaller
> gardens can also harbour birds and insects, as can the rural hedgerows
> that we
> won't build over if we avoid rural sprawl.
> 6) Building housing on 'true' brownfield sites may endanger the health
> of
> the householder (remember Love Canal), maybe such sites are better
> re-used for
> industrial, commercial purposes, where children won't be digging in the
> garden
> or Dad growing vegetables, whilst we keep housing in residential areas.
> Also
> endangers the wealth of the householder, as UK law is that the current
> landowner must pay for cleaning up any past pollution discovered on
> their land.
> 7) The really valuable gardens (ecological, visual, architectural) can
> and
> often have been preserved by the National Trust etc
>
> What do other crit-geoggers think to using gardens for infill housing?
>
> Hillary Shaw, Newport, Shropshire
>
>
>
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