Green and unpleasant

The ecotowns plan, with its proposed nosy-parker scrutiny of residents, is patronising and illiberal

Jonathan Glancey
The Guardian,
Thursday October 2 2008

Pity the residents of what New Labour politicians think of as the strong and joyful ecotowns, one of which might yet blight a stretch of landscape near you by 2020. Not only will they have to live in developer-built dormitory suburbs given a fashionable name, they will also be the subject of unprecedented scrutiny by quango folk who, in a holier-than-thou spirit, will check on just how "eco" ecotown folk will be.
Thermographic cameras will be used to check which homes lose heat, says Cabe, the government's ever-expanding Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment. Will Cabe wardens be sent to patrol ecotown cul-de-sacs squealing "Shut that door" and "Put that bloody tungsten light out"?
This busybody quango also plans to monitor the ecological footprint of the diet of 100 randomly selected residents, as well as calculating C02 emissions from transport within any given ecotown.
Ecotownies partial to lamb cutlets and to cream on their strawberries might yet be watched as closely as al-Qaida suspects. Retailers in these housing gulags, says Cabe, should provide plenty of products with a low meat and dairy content in line with studies showing that a significant reduction in animal product meals could cut the ecological footprint of food by 60%. "Consumer goods", adds Cabe, "account for 14% of an individual's ecological footprint and the target should be to halve the impact from this". We will have to wait and see whether ecotownies will be deterred from eating HobNobs, hummus, imported haricot beans, or all three.
If the silly season was still in full swing, such tomfoolery would be funny. Disturbingly, this nosy-parker nonsense really does appear to inform thinking underpinning Labour's sorry ecotown project. Perhaps ecotown children can be encouraged to report wayward parents to ascetic Cabe commissioners as these guardians of environmental law cycle past. "I caught my dad eating steak and oven-ready chips." Doubtless, one of New Labour's "titan" jails will provide "porridge" to such miscreants. Cabe insists that it's not trying to play a Big Brother role and simply wants to collect useful information about "eco towns", but it comes across as a bully boy body.
Not only is this kind of policing fundamentally against the spirit of British town life, it is also wrong-headed and even hypocritical.
It is wrong-headed for at least two simple reasons. First, it would be unjust to single out one set of townspeople for such petty prying. If ours is to be a land of snoops, then let us all suffer such indignities and, in doing so, learn to fight back with common sense and common decency. Second, every small town used to be an "ecotown". We do not need special ecotowns and their inquisitions. Instead, we need to spur ourselves into living greener lives in existing towns. Crank down the heating and wear a jumper when it gets cold. Build new homes in existing towns and villages. Open farmers' markets rather than plot yet more supermarkets.
Cabe, meanwhile, sees no gap in the logic of, on the one hand, promoting ecotowns and, on the other, of gleefully encouraging new supermarkets in old towns. In my own small Suffolk town, Hadleigh, Cabe has "congratulated" Tesco and the district council for a proposal to build a banal supermarket, with greater floor space than the whole of the existing, chain-free high street, on a much-loved watermeadow long given over to allotments. If this plan were to be given the go-ahead, the town's carbon emission, and traffic, will rise to unhappy and unjustified levels, while local food suppliers and sellers will be eased out of business.
Even as this government and its pointy-headed minions lecture us on "sustainability" and plan their patronising and illiberal ecotowns, they undermine existing settlements that, unknown to meat and dairy snoops, and, innocent of thermographic cameras, are far "greener" - unspoilt and free of government and quango interference - than "blue sky" towns planned by wonkish thinking and bullying edict.
• Jonathan Glancey is the Guardian's architecture critic jonathan.glancey@guardian.co.uk