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ARE ECO-TOWNS JUST EGO-TOWNS?

The new towns movement has a questionable 'new town blues' legacy. So, plans for ten new eco-towns must be treated with caution, says CIWEM Executive Director, Nick Reeves.

Hailed as the first wave of new towns to be built in England for 40 years, eco-towns will be zero-carbon, water-efficient and promote sustainable living. They will also provide up to 50 percent more affordable housing for the less well-off and will include more features such as underground recycling systems, free public transport and green routes to school. Eco-towns, the Government says, will pioneer good design and change people's lives for the good of the planet. Convinced? How certain are you of this copper-bottomed opportunity for the UK to become a world leader in sustainable development? And how far will eco-towns mark a real break with some of the pitfalls that bedevil development?

In the late 1940s the then Town and Country Planning Minister, Lewis Silkin, spoke of 'building for the new way of life.' Fast forward to 2008 and his successor, Housing and Planning Minister, Caroline Flint, offers us a more terrifying threat: 'We will revolutionise the way people live.' Of course, Silkin new nothing of eco-towns, or eco-anything else for that matter, but his was the sort of zeal that set the tone for Flint's recent outcry that appeals to authoritarian politicians, luvvie-architects and social engineers intent on leaving a personal legacy. So, I wonder, are eco-towns just ego-towns? Because, throughout history, we have seen ideas for fantasy communities, a new Jerusalem, that leave an uneasy legacy. Eco-towns must not become just another such fantasy.

Caroline Flint claims that she can conjure jobs, shops, leisure and community spirit in these places. I really doubt it. They will surely be the legacy of another defunct theory that future generations will surely come to hate.

Last April, 15 bids for new eco-towns were shortlisted as part of the Government's action on climate change. By the time you read this they will have been whittled down to 10 sites of between 5,000 and 20,000 homes each on the advice of a 'panel of experts' who will look for 'the highest standards of sustainability, affordability and creativity.' (Abstract nouns that are always suspect when used by governments and policy wonks.) And while we are promised water-efficient and energy-efficient zero-carbon homes, it remains to be seen exactly what standards will be put in place for the provision of the green spaces between the places. External space should not be conceived as a bolt-on after the buildings have been designed and constructed…..an unacceptable feature of development past and present.

I have no quarrel with action on climate change or the need for carbon-neutral living. Hey, I'm an environmentalist! We need much more and it is right that planning should play its part. But, the campaign for eco-towns looks misguided and is in danger of being corrupted by egotistical politicians, architectural fantasy and greedy developers and builders, just as pretty much the whole of the post-war, new town movement has been. It is a tradition that runs from Stevenage, Crawley and Basildon to Skelmersdale, Peterlee and Milton Keynes. These ersatz communities were opened by politicians cutting ribbons. Those of the 1960s and 1970s were over-engineered and not only damaged the social fabric of Britain but introduced an alienation, a sort of 'New Town blues.' Although rooted in the genteel Edwardian garden suburbs, the movement grew dark and foreboding, leading to demoralised inner cities and nasty sink estates.  

Housebuilders naturally want to build where it is easy and most profitable, especially on new estates, in rural green belts near centres of employment. It's not the job of planning to stifle that ambition - after all, building is needed - but to steer it in the right direction in the public interest, retaining precious green land and promoting a denser urban fabric.

The Empty Homes Agency is an independent charity. It points out that building new homes emits 4.5 times more carbon than rehabilitating old ones, not least the 288,000 long term vacancies on its database. An eco-town means building from scratch new houses, roads, sewers, shops, schools and all the other basic services. It is barmy to pretend that this is not a distraction and more carbon-efficient than expanding and greening existing towns and cities.

Ministers like Flint and Hazel Blears want between 30 percent and 40 percent of houses in eco-towns to be for the poor and they want half the households to be car free. Presumably this would be the poorest households! But they do not say who will live in these ghettos, or who might want to. The idea that they can be both privately financed and made 'affordable', whatever that means these days, is laughable. A 6,000-house eco-town cannot begin to sustain a full range of services, nor would any developer with any nous, touch an estate where nobody can have a car. To be poor and not have a car in a British new town is sheer hell. That is why the last census showed only 14 percent of residents in Bracknell and 19 percent in Milton Keynes as car-less, against a national average of nearly 30 percent, and 37 percent in London and 48 percent in Manchester. The fact is that people have to escape these planners' dream towns, where they will use their cars because of the absence of good enough public transport, or just because they can. I bet that wild horses wouldn't get Flint or Blears to live in their new towns. But like builders down the ages, they inflict them on the poor and the desperate.

The fact is that Britain has plenty of potential eco-towns and cities. They are called London, Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle, Leeds and so on. They conform to every single one of the Government's objectives. They have an infrastructure of schools, utilities, libraries, parks and roads.  People have shown a desire to live and work in them, and they are settled communities able to absorb high-density living and life-style change without ripping apart the bonds of local leadership.

However altruistic, beneficial or pioneering eco-towns may be, they will always provoke opposition. With the re-emergence of nuclear power and the fiasco surrounding airport expansion at Heathrow, we are in an era where public consultation can be perceived as Machiavellian, conning the public rather than engaging with it. At worst this has created fear. At best, widespread cynicism. Ministers have already got carried away with loose talk about zero-carbon homes. Until renewable energy becomes a significant force in the UK generation market, new homes will use electricity from fossil fuels and produce carbon emissions. And that's before dealing with whether carbon offsetting really works.

No doubt, eco-towns will have a torrid time ahead. Lobbying has already begun and the war of words, on both sides, is fierce. But on an issue of such importance the Government is entitled to lead. We mustn't knock it for that. I give Flint the last word: 'We don't want to create green ghettoes, but dynamic and thriving communities - with the highest standards of design, an acre of green space for every hundred homes, and outstanding public transport with a stop within 400 metres of the doorstep.'