Should the plans for eco-towns be scrapped?

A shortlist published this week names the first four 'green' communities approved for construction. Is it just tokenism?
Yes: Adrian Ramsay, Deputy leader of the Green Party
There’s an argument that the Government started using the label “eco-towns” to rush through developments it wouldn’t otherwise get away with under its own planning system. In any case, eco-towns are a tokenistic attempt to appear green and do not take into account broader social and environmental concerns.
Genuine eco-towns would be about sustainable communities in the widest possible sense. The Green Party is not convinced that eco-towns live up to this standard. The current proposals are not fully thought through. While the standards for buildings are set high, the proposals fall down in other areas such as transport and jobs.
We want every town to be an eco-town, not simply a label that’s applied to certain developments to make them sound more acceptable. To do this, we need all new developments to be of the highest environmental standard, not only eco-towns.
In general, rather than building new towns, there needs to be more concentration on improving energy efficiency, housing stock and public transport in existing communities. Not enough attention is being given to improving energy efficiency within existing houses to help people to reduce their fuel bills and save carbon.
While we understand the need for new affordable housing, we have concerns about that level of housing growth in the countryside. At present, eco-towns are primarily intended for greenfield sites and will take up large swaths of the countryside. But there are ample brownfield sites around the country that could be used instead — derelict industrial sites or areas with a number of empty homes that could be developed into eco-towns.
Eco-town developments are going ahead without the transport links having been properly considered, without local services and jobs being available to try to minimise the need to travel. Even if the towns are built to a high environmental standard, this will be undermined if the prime mode of transport is car based.
This is the case in the proposals for the Rackheath eco-town near Norwich, which are closely linked to a major new ring road around the city. It suggests the Government is not taking the eco-town seriously. The road would result in a massive increase in carbon emissions and mean the development was entirely car based.
The eco-towns will not create the local jobs and services needed to be self-sufficient. In the case of Rackheath, it is seen as part of Norwich getting bigger — people won’t necessarily be working near home and many will need to travel every day. Rather than the road relieving the city’s congestion problems, it will exacerbate them.
We want strong local communities where there are work opportunities and a full range of services locally to reduce the need to travel. We are not convinced that eco-towns will offer that. There is too much concentration on housing targets and roadbuilding and not on sustainable communities.
No: Gideon Amos, chief executive of the Town and Country Planning Association
The concept of eco-towns is absolutely right in environmental and demographic terms. We have to develop them in an entirely different way to cope with our changing climate and understand better how we can reduce carbon emissions.
It is vital these places work socially as well as environmentally. They have to be places where people want to live, homes where people want to bring up children and invest in their future. They have to be attractive places that work as successful neighbourhoods, not just low-carbon communities.
We believe the successful eco-town sites proposed can achieve this. ln already built-up areas it is much more difficult to put in new infrastructure and provide open space. Building major new settlements means that in most cases a much higher standard of sustainability can be provided through putting in different transport systems and different energy systems, community heat and power, heat exchanges and the kind of infrastructure that you can’t as easily put into neighbourhoods such as Hackney, [East London] where I live.
As new sites, eco-towns also offer opportunities for really high-quality green space — parks, gardens and open spaces that are extremely difficult to provide in existing cities.
There are huge challenges, too. Some of the biggest challenges are getting the public transport right. We want to see eco-town sites with excellent public transport links. We hope priority will be given to those with rail stations. We need tough measures to ensure that car use is kept to a minimum. In our guidance, which is supported by Government, we set tough standards for the maximum number of journeys by cars.
A lot of environmentalists support eco-towns but there were concerns about some of the locations. Some were never likely to be sustainable. Now those have been weeded out, the remaining locations stand up to much better scrutiny. We will be pushing to make sure that’s the case.
It would be foolish to pretend that all the opposition was well founded. Some is based on a simple case of “not in my back yard”.
We need to move away from the old dichotomy of “greenfield bad, brownfield good” and come up with a new form of development, which doesn’t impinge on the environment in the way we have in the past. If we are going to tackle the huge environmental challenges we face, we have to find ways of using land, including greenfield. Some use of greenfield is necessary, although we would like to see most development on brownfield sites.
Every eco-town must be linked to an adjoining and existing town through top-quality public transport. As exemplar new developments, they have the opportunity to boost their neighbouring communities through their investment in new infrastructure and transport services and provide a stimulus to make existing towns more sustainable.