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8th Mar, 2007
Urban Policy Too Timid
So says the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, introducing the report of its study on the urban environment, published on 6 March. The Urban Wildlife Network was one of forty organisations which presented evidence to the Commission during preparation of the study. (UWN Response to Royal Commission pdf). One of only two main detailed reports commissioned as part of the study was on green infrastructure, compiled by Dr. David Goode.
The background to the study is described by the Commission as follows.
'Urban issues are becoming of critical importance around the world and urbanisation is expected to continue, with close to half of the world's population already living in urban areas and some cities now reaching unprecedented sizes.
In the UK, a high standard of local urban environmental quality is characterised by clean, safe attractive streets, and parks and open spaces where people feel at ease. Policy for the urban environment is formulated by central and devolved governments but it falls to local authorities to deliver local urban environmental quality to its communities.
The presence of litter, graffiti, fly-tipping, abandoned cars, dog fouling and loss of play areas or footpaths, noise (from transport, industry and nuisance neighbours), and air, water, light and odour pollution, all detract from local urban environmental quality and consequently reduce the quality of life for those who live there. Housing and transport impinge on biodiversity and landscape.
The study has 4 priority themes: sustainable urban transport; sustainable urban management (Local Agenda 21, EMAS, indicators); sustainable urban construction (resource and energy efficiency, demolition waste, design issues); and sustainable urban design (land use-regeneration, brown field sites, urban sprawl, land use densities). The overall goal of the European Strategy is to improve environmental efficiency of urban areas and the quality of life of urban citizens.'
In key parts of the press release announcing the publication of the study it is said: 'Sir John Lawton, Chair of the UK’s Commission says “Commissioners are astonished that, on the eve of the new phase of urban regeneration and expansion, we lack an over-arching urban environment policy to coordinate the provision of housing, transport, energy and other vital services. Tinkering with any one of these issues in isolation is bound to fail. We can and must do better if we are to meet environmental challenges and improve the health and wellbeing of our citizens.”
The technology to improve urban environmental performance exists, such as much tighter building regulations, or water-metering, but the scale of effort to exploit such technologies falls well below what is required. We do not need to wait for new technologies to be developed; instead we need to create the institutional and social environment which encourages the uptake of existing technology. For example, we already have the means to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from new housing by at least 60%, but this is still not being used throughout the sector. Also, with most of the homes of 2050 already built, emission reduction techniques need to target current building stock as well if we are to make a significant contribution to the UK emissions targets.'
These comments reflect things that we and others have been saying for some time - particularly our apparent inability to apply known and proved techniques for environmental improvement on a wide scale. The comment about coordinating housing, transport and energy has echoes of the attempt to combine some major elements of policy in the short-lived Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions.
The natural environment gets a chapter to itself – much better than the more usual token references and bland assurances which typify government studies and reports. Much of the content will be familiar to those of us who have been working in this field for any length of time. The welcome surprise is that the main issues are not only acknowledged, but linked to a set of recommendations which, if implemented, would help us to make a step change in the protection, management and enjoyment of nature in towns. There is support for sustainable urban drainage systems, recognition that brownfield land is valuable, and that targets for developing it may need scaling down, the danger of planning mitigation leading to replacing wildlife-rich sites with ‘sterile and uninteresting open spaces’, and the need to use permeable surfaces for paving and car parking.
Permeable surfacing is but one of the recommendations. Extracts from others include:
Altogether a very welcome endorsement of the principles and practices that UWN and others have been promoting. The Royal Commission does not, of course, seem to have any power in these matters. We must hope that it has some influence, and that mechanisms can be found and applied to take its recommendations forward.
The main link to the Report is http://www.rcep.org.uk/urban/report/urban-environment.pdf
