Eco-Towns – do we need them?

The simple answer, sweet and simple, would be a firm NO

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

We do not need those ever so highly touted Eco-towns and we also cannot afford them either.

Our aim, first and foremost, must not be Eco-Towns but to green our existing towns and villages instead, instead of talking of building and considering to build x-number of new Eco-Towns, the latter which are now supposed to also be part of the “need” new housing stock. This is totally and utterly crazy.

We do not need to build those new Eco-Towns. Instead, as said, we must do something about our existing towns and villages.

One can but wonder what really behind the stupid idea of the British government to keep pushing this agenda. It is an agenda that must be stopped! Those towns are a waste of time and effort and money and will do nothing to stop – as if we could anyway – climate change. The fact that most of them are in the countryside, often relatively far away from public transport access to the wider world will make the car something that cannot be given up at all. This despite the fact that the residents, at least half of them, will not permitted to have a car in those Eco-Towns. So, can someone please explain to me how they are going to get to the nearest rail station or such and – the cost of the tickets of the trains in the UK are making train travel very expensive and inaccessible to the lower range of the population which therefore (1) cannot live in such Eco-Towns – despite the fact that the government says many of the homes are supposed to be for those on lower incomes – because they would not able to be without a car and (2) all the travel to and from such towns, which probably will be nothing more than dormitory towns anyway, will add to the carbon emissions and all that.

Instead, if we would, like other countries are doing, green our existing cities, towns and villages, the savings, in many ways, could be immense, including the carbon savings.

Some of this greening of our villages, towns and cities could, certainly, be done, or more precisely, they should be done, by the residents, such as residents of a city block. Those eco-block and real eco-villages, from existing stock, could even become somewhat communities like Christiania in Denmark, the former military barracks that was taken over by then Hippies in sometime in the 1970s or thereabouts and that to this very day is a community/commune that has its own infrastructure. All is possible if but the will, the political will especially, would be there.

Eco-Towns, and so many experts have said already as well, will do more harm than good and will not, in any way, help the UK towards its sustainability goals.

So, let's abandon this silly and expensive notion and do something (more) positive with out existing centers of living, whether villages, towns or cities. This does make much more sense and would be money well spent.

I do, however, assume that the British government will press ahead with those silly ideas regardless for somewhere along the line someone's career is on the line should he or she not aid the developers in getting those Eco-Towns come along nicely.

Let us not be stupid. Let us go and build new homes where there is the infrastructure already in place and then improve upon the infrastructure, whether transport or other.

To start from scratch, much like the “New Towns” of some decades ago, such as Lego Town, erm, sorry, Milton Keynes and such like, is a silly idea, especially as many experts say that it is not going to do any good and may rather do harm.

Woah! Let's reign in those horses a wee bit. Rethink please!

© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008

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Scrap eco-town plans rural campaigners tell government

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Countryside campaigners are calling on the government to rethink existing eco-town plans.

The Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) claims the nation has been misled and the planned eco-towns will not be as green as they seem.

CPRE's Head of Planning, Marina Pacheco, said that to begin with the Commission supported the eco-towns initiative for who would object to exemplar schemes built to high environmental standards which provide the affordable homes the nation desperately needs? However, she said further, that they now believe that they, and the country, have been led astray.

“What will this programme deliver?” she asked. “It appears increasingly to be about spin with very little substance.”

The Green (Living) Review and its editor, this writer, also initially supported the idea of those “eco-towns” but, for some time already, doubts have been cropping into my mind about this, especially as regards to the “forcing” of half of the residents in such towns to not to have a car by basically making it against the statutes for them to have one. Anything that is compulsion like that cannot be supported. It is not ethical to do such things and to compare it, as the government tries to do, with the likes of Freiburg in Germany, mentioning the fact that many people there do not own a car. While this is the case, the residents there decided on their own free will to go without a car. They were not told they could not have one. They, and Germany as a whole, have a much better transit system than does the UK.

The entire thing is nothing but spin but, then again, we have hardly come to expect much else from this so-called Labor government in the UK.

Marina Pacheco said the CPRE's key concerns included siting, with many of the proposals likely to be 'car-dependent housing estates' with no working transport links.

And this is also one of my concerns especially as regards to the people not being permitted to won a car. If those are “housing estate” kind of “eco-towns” a long way, as it would appear, from elsewhere then that idea is not going to work from the start. Or what we are going to find is, what has been talked about in other such schemes in other places, and that are dormitory estates where cars are not permitted to enter. This means that need to be parked outside a certain perimeter at night and whenever, people will cycle or walk to and from home and then use the car to get about the country and countryside. This will defeat the object.

CPRE is also concerned that most of the sites were predominantly greenfield with two actually lying in designated greenbelts.

The organisation also claims that most of the proposed eco-towns go against local plans agreed with communities and therefore have no local democratic mandate with site-selection based on arbitrary, mainly developer-led, bids rather than sound planning in the wider public interest.

It must be said that from all that we have seen over the last years the fact that they may have no local democratic mandate to do any of what they are planning will not stop this government from doing what it wants to do.

"We are urging the government to go back to the drawing board," said Ms Pacheco.

"Many of these shortlisted schemes are recycled, failed proposals. The government insists that eco-towns must be freestanding new settlements. But by refusing to look at alternatives, such as eco-quarters and redevelopment sites already coming through the planning pipeline it is missing a golden opportunity"

Instead of the stupid idea of "Eco-Towns" that will not, in the least, benefit us, we should, nay we must, concentrate instead of greening our existing towns and cities and turning them into eco-towns themselves. This is much more economic as well, and is being advocated by a large number of green architects, planners and developers. It can be done as the achievements in other countries, including the USA, have shown. It can and will work, especially if it is community-led.

Let us green our existing housing stock in our current towns, cities and even villages, build some more needed homes as and where on brownfield sites (they are there, whatever some may like to claim), but let us ditch once and for all the stupid “eco-towns” notion. This is eco-spin and nothing more and about as useful as the eco-button for your PC.

© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008

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Eco Towns – a green oasis or a mirage?

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Are those “Eco Towns” that are currently being proposed a knight in shining armor or are they but misguided desperation?

I must admit that I am not a house builder, a banker or an energy magnate. I am neither a property developer, a broker or an oil buyer. Nor did I benefit from the last umpteen years of house price rising, simply because I have never owned a house, and have been renting always. Nor have I, so far, inherited a house from someone (anyone out there who wants to leave me one in their will?). Also, I have never every even gone down the line of changing my energy supplier to get a better deal and a lower rate. I might get tempted if one came along that would be truly green, so to speak, but so far all I have seen is hype and lies, such as from N-Power. I also do not really have to worry, personally, as to the cost of gasoline or diesel as I do not own nor drive a motor vehicle of any kind.

Having said all that, however, I cannot, but, help noticing that there are some pretty serious goings on in the markets at this moment in time.

Share prices of the major British house builders have fallen by up to, and in some cases by more than, 80% during the last twelve months. There are banks issuing rights calls in order to bolster their threadbare balance sheets and refill their coffers left, right and center and one major bank in Britain – Northern Rock – has already gone to the wall, basically. There there are the major oil suppliers and controllers of this substance who seem to be downing the last few drinks at the bar before time is called. There is all that going on and in addition to that food prices are spiralling ever upwards for the first time in years. These are scary times indeed and many people, here in Britain, and in other developed nations, such as and especially the United States are very worried as to where this is going. It is not, it would appear, the politicians that do the worrying, but the people on the grassroots level. The rise in prices of gasoline and diesel in the United states has led farmers to return to mule power, for instance, and their fuel is about half (and that is a lot by US standards) in comparison to the costs in the United Kingdom.

As prices fluctuate in every direction imaginable and perceivable it is very hard to see any real end to it, presently. So far, to my knowledge, there has not been a single mainstream statement, figure or proposal that clearly points the way back to what was getting to be a very comfortable status quo. When one reads some of the broadsheet newspapers lately it appears to be a page by page roller coaster with one column flirting with the idea that we are heading for global collapse immediately followed by a reassuring, though often more than shaky, article proposing that an end date to the debacle is in sight.

Perhaps in these turbulent times there is a shining knight on the horizon? Is he not right now approaching on his horse? Look it is Sir "Eco Town", the savior of us all. So, at least, we are lead to believe, here in the UK.

"Eco" - what an interesting word. But who really knows what it means exactly? Is it environmentally friendly? Is it fair trade? Is it the new "green"? Is it more than "green"? Is it all of the above? I personally do not really know even despite the fact that I write on “green” issues, and neither, I am sure, do most people. And I am not even sure that the government knows either. At times “eco” seems to be a fashionable term that can be strapped to any concept or plan with the immediate effect of breathing new life and viability in to it., whether or not it can do anything really. Much like the “Eco Button”, the ever so highly praised and hyped tool to reduce your PC's “carbon footprint” (oh, how I hate that word).

How fast are Eco Towns coming to our rescue? Well, not all that fast at all. The first of them, if we are lucky, will be ready in 4-6 years, but knowing how any projects end up in this country it is more like 6-10 years, I should think. Aside from everything else, those “Eco Towns” are going to need an awful of a lot of energy to bring them into being. In addition to that we all will have to buy into the concept for it to work; we have to buy those houses in those “Eco-towns” and move in.

So, once those much-praised “Eco-towns” are built then what do we do? Re we to desert our existing towns and all move into Eco-towns? What good will they be when we have Eco-towns? How will we all cook our tea and whatever in boring old normal town? What about all the old roads, shops, internet cables, phones, sewers, drains, water pipes, electric cables, central heating systems, high streets, the rest of the infrastructure and all that – I do not think that I need to go on? What about all of that and everything else?

First of how many of those “Eco-towns” are there being built? Will it be a chosen 50,000, or whatever the small number may be, who get to live in Eco-town luxury whilst the rest of us all will have to tough it out outside the walls? I suppose these Eco-towns will also be immune to the tempestuous markets? All the food, energy and shelter comfortably catered for within the confines of those gated communities?

The “Eco-Towns” are, the way I see it, nothing but another gimmick of this government. Another silly idea to make themselves look “green”.

Let us “green” our existing villages, towns and cities and through empowerment regain a sense of community and more than just a sense of... let us, in fact, go a create community, real community.

Gordon Brown found himself in the firing line again in the papers not so long ago that for daring to ask the North Sea oil producers to up production and then hinting that nuclear power is the way forward.

The opposition, on the other hand, surprisingly, were pointing out that if 1 in 3 houses were retrofitted with micro-generation and the energy market decentralized we would not need the nuclear power stations.

This does strike a chord with me as empowerment is the fastest way to enable a group – in this case a country – to achieve anything. It also strikes a chord with me as I have been advocating, ever since it made sense to me after reading “Small is Beautiful” just that, namely, small decentralized power generation plants but everyone I have ever spoken to in the field of energy production and government just benignly smiled at me as if I was an imbecile for suggesting that.

Micro-generation and decentralized energy production is, in my opinion, the only way forward. Neither oil, gas or coal, and not even nuclear – unless we can go down the fusion route – will help us. The infrastructure also if way too vulnerable. Local generated heat and power, however, does not suffer from those problems.

The building in of resilience to our communities is what we must do. We must look to build communities that will smooth the transition from an oil dependent community to an alternative form of energy, all the while seeking to drastically reduce the amount of CO2 in response to the changing climate.

And there is also more than one problem that I have with those “Eco-Towns” a-la British Labor (now there is a joke) government (and here is yet another of those joke – government, as they couldn't govern a school let alone a country), but one especially, and that is the fact that, according, so the British government would like everyone to believe, the Freiburg model, about 1/2 of the residents in such “Eco-Towns” will nor be PERMITTED to own a car. Duh? They government is going to order and compel one half of the residents – which half precisely – that they cannot and must not and will not be allowed to own a car? Welcome to 1984. A little late, I know, but arrived it has. The lie also lies in them claiming it to be according to the Freiburg model: in Freiburg it is more than 50% who have chosen – CHOSEN by their own free will – not to want to have a car. Slight difference, is it not. Freely chosen not to have a car or being told you cannot have a car and will not be allowed to have a car. Now, I do not own or drive a car and as a cyclist I would be happy to have a few cars less on the road but... to my dying day I will defend anyone's right to own a car if they so wish.

So, how are we going to mobilize and motivate our communities to vacate their current abodes for pastures greener (or rather "eco") next door without a sense of community? It is community that makes up a village, a town, a neighborhood. What if community could regain itself in situ and can, in fact, "eco" and “green” the existing towns? What is to say that we cannot build resilient sustainability in to our existing neighborhoods without involving the oil intensive construction of yet more estates, and towns, even though those may be “eco” ones?

Personally, I do not think that we need the fabled “Eco Towns”. Instead, what we need are empowered villages, towns and city neighborhoods; real communities of people of all types, ages and classes.

I think that, rather than even thinking about those gimmick towns, those so-called “Eco-towns”, for that is all that those are, gimmicks, we should, nay we must, “green” our existing villages, towns, city neighborhoods, and create real local green communities in the existing places that there are currently. There is NO NEED whatsoever for such “Eco-towns”. They are neither a “green oasis” nor a “knight in shining armor”. They are, in fact, a waste of time and money.

If we go down the road that the current British government seems to have embarked upon, namely that of constructing such “Eco-towns”, we – one – will be wasting lots of money and especially energy and resources and – two – the possibility of using such monies in regenerating our existing villages and towns, our existing neighborhood and “green” those. It can be done, and more than likely a lot easier and a lot better than building those new towns.

© M Smith (Veshengro), June 2008

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