How green is my eco-town: to the urban planner the opportunity to create a whole new town from scratch must be irresistible. Given that the first attempt at such utopia in modern times was the Garden City, landscape planners and managers should also be pleased at the prospect

Green Places, Nov, 2008 by Alan Barber, Junfang Xie

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In setting out its prospectus to create ten 'eco-towns' in England, the Government has also cited the 'New Towns' of the post-war era (1). These set a less than good precedent for the current plan. Ebenezer Howard's concept quickly gave way to a prioritisation of the motor car. Much of the 'New Town' landscape is wasted on unkempt buffer zones and pointless amenity greens. Letchworth Garden City's quaintness has a surprising contemporary relevance, in contrast to the poor quality which pervades its prematurely-aging successors.

There has been condemnation of the Government for not engaging any landscape professionals on the Challenge Panel created to review the bids being received. The danger is that green infrastructure may be seen as mere infilling for the space between buildings, and not as a conduit for natural process with whose grain an eco-town must work. In other words, the planning of an eco-town should start with a thorough assessment of the existing landscape. There is no blank canvas.

There is criticism also for not saying more about expectations for the landscape of eco-towns. However, the Challenge Panel has advised bidding consortiums to "show how a strategy for functional green infrastructure (green spaces and corridors) will provide an attractive setting for development and enable the eco-town to adapt to climate change through measurable reductions in the heat island effect, water management and flood/drought amelioration, increasing biodiversity, fostering local food production and providing good outdoor recreational and leisure spaces" (2).

Fundamental features

This opens up a discussion of some fundamental features of an eco-town. Firstly, they will be mainly high density, mixed use development--a message carried through from the Urban Taskforce Report (3). They will encourage walking and cycling. They will also feature Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS) and local food production. All these impact upon the landscape.

However, 'the deal' seems obscure. Just how much will the developer pay for and how much will Government stump up to enable a viable development. For example, the Government says "Eco-towns will include 30-50% of affordable housing" (4). Anyone vying for money for landscape under Section 106 agreements knows what formidable competition that is. Securing public transport is another commitment which could be very much more expensive for a town intended to have less than 50% car ownership.

There is a very useful indicator of what is expected of green infrastructure in saying "40% of the eco-town's total area should be allocated to green space of which at least half should be public and consist of a network of well managed, high quality green/open spaces which are linked to the wider countryside" (1). The Town and Country Planning Association who champion Garden Cities readily agree with this formula. The public area is a bit more generous than usual; it is the private green space which is cut dramatically. In many English city suburbs, they make up nearly 50% of the land area. We should assume that when the Government say they want "a particular emphasis on larger family homes" (4) they don't mean with gardens!

Wants and needs

This does mean that the public component is going to have to work harder. The Government says it wants "a good range of green spaces and tree cover including community forests, wetland areas, parks, play spaces, green roofs, as well as green town squares and streetscapes" (4). Here is another ambiguity since 'community forests' were first mentioned as being 'around' the eco-town. We take this to entail the requisitioning of substantial hinterland for the purpose. Pockets of woodland within the eco-town would be welcome as a way of underpinning the whole of the urban forest, with trees in every street, and much of the total greenspace being under a canopy of trees by the time climate change starts to bite. Using the scenarios constructed by UK Climate Impact Programme (UKCIP) (5) our towns will need maximum shade well before the end of the present century.

Nevertheless, large community forests are well outside this remit and will have to be planned to integrate with the linear green infrastructure of the town itself, for both wildlife and for foot/cycle routes. On the urban fringe, they may have to compete with bio-mass production, another item mentioned by Government, or even local food production. Providing individual allotments and community gardens is a lovely idea for an eco-town and gets closer to Ebenezer Howard's dream of a self-sustaining settlement. But just how much public space is going to be given over to what is, de facto, private space? Again, the urban fringe must come into the equation, but how?

Sporting chances

We can also ask what happens to sports fields. These are a feature of UK urban settlements, usually taking up as much as 30% of the total greenspace. They may be frowned upon as being low in biological diversity and tree structure but, since our Olympic triumph, we are a sporting nation. So where will it happen? On the urban fringe only? On intensely-used artificial turf surfaces? Only as part of school grounds fully open to community use? These are planning and management issues, to be decided at the outset.