The control of urban sprawl

The Control of Urban SprawlChris Couch and Jay KarechaThe Past.It can be argued that the improvements in systems urban transportation in the late 19th century led to the first wave of urban sprawl in Britain. The last quarter of that century saw a dramatic fall in the density of new working class housing developments as the introduction of suburban railways, horse-buses and later, trams, permitted the colonisation of large areas of cheap land beyond the urban periphery. However, the dependency upon public transport routes tended to lead to a star-shaped pattern of urban growth that retained some access to the countryside through the ‘green wedges’ that remained between the growth corridors.Control of this urban sprawl was one of the earliest reasons for the introduction of town planning in Great Britain. The Housing, Town Planning Etc, Act 1909, for the first time permitted local authorities to prepare town planning schemes for land beyond the existing urban area that was liable to be developed in the foreseeable future. Although there was no attempt to limit the amount of land to be developed, land use zoning and controls over the density of development gave planners an opportunity to determine and manage the pattern and form of urban growth.By the end of the first world war, new housing policies were introduced to meet an acute housing shortage. The Ministry of Health for the first time subsidised the building of council housing (social housing) from central government funds. Influenced by the ‘Garden Cities Movement’ and the Tudor Walters Report (1918), the Ministry encouraged the building of large low density ‘cottage estates’ on the edge of major cities. Changing economic circumstances also led to a boom in speculative private housebuilding for owner occupation. These estates too comprised sprawling, low density, housing built on green field sites. These twin strands of residential expansion were both supported by and encouraged investment in urban public transport systems, most notably in extensions to the London Underground.By the end of the twenties there was growing concern and opposition to the unprecedented scale and extent of urban sprawl that seemed to be enveloping every city in the country. A new Town and Country Planning Act had been passed in 1932 but with little effect on sprawl. In particular,“there was one aspect of suburban development which caused particular public and political concern in the 1930s building boom. This was the tendency for arterial roads to be subject to ill-considered ribbon development of cheaper housing extending out well beyond the more continuous built-up areas. The practice saved the developers the cost of building proper residential roads, but damaged the scenic quality and undermined the efficiency and safety of main roads by mixing local and through traffic. It was disliked even by many of the right-wing opponents of town and country planning” (Ward, 1994, p48).The Restriction of Ribbon Development Act 1935, gave highway authorities specific powers to prevent this abuse. Nevertheless, neither Act had any significant impact on the total volume of urban sprawl, especially as around one third of the new housing was planned and developed by local authorities themselves and most of the rest was facilitated and controlledby other public policies in some shape or form. Between 1922 and 1939 over 340,000 hectares of rural land were converted to urban uses: a 40% increase in the total urban area of the country (Ward, 1994, p49). It was therefore inevitable that questions would be asked about how sprawl might be controlled and whether its form should be better planned. Supporters of the ‘Garden Cities Movement’ had long argued that urban growth could be accommodated in planned and self-contained satellite towns that would combine ‘the best of town and country’ and avoid the monotony and lack of amenity of ever-sprawling suburbs. Another strand of argument called for the introduction of ‘green belts’ around and between cities to prevent unplanned urban incursions into the countryside and the coalescence of adjoining settlements.In his Greater London Plan of 1944, Patrick Abercrombie put forward proposals for the planning of the capital in four rings: an inner urban ring (the pre-1914 city) which would be subject to urban renewal; a suburban ring (mainly developed between 1919 and 1939) where little change was anticipated; a green belt where virtually all urban development would be prohibited; and an outer country ring where a number of satellite towns were proposed to accommodate London’s need for growth and the overspill caused by the renewal of the inner ring.The New Towns Act 1946, allowed the Government to establish New Town Development Corporations to develop new or satellite towns around London and other major cities as a mechanism for containing urban growth and sprawl within planned settlements. The Town and Country Planning Act 1947, extended the obligation to produce development plans to all local planning authorities in order to plan the use and development of land throughout the country. Land saving, controlling urban expansion and a disdain for suburbia were emerging issues debated by planners during the post-war years. In 1955 Circular 42/55 allowed local planning authorities to formally incorporate ‘green belts’ into statutory development plans, so providing them with greater powers to control and limit urban sprawl than they had ever had before.But urban sprawl continued, partly fuelled by a massive programme slum-clearance in all the major cities. Urban populations fell as cleared areas were rebuilt at lower densities and many cleared households were moved out to new peripheral council estates, expanded towns and new towns. At the same time economic growth combined with low interest rates supported a second boom in speculative building for owner occupation, only this time demand was coming from households who were car-owners and able to consider living at ever greater distances from the urban core and no longer tied to public transport routes. Urban sprawl began to fill the rural gaps in the star-shaped city and create more circular urban forms, divorcing more urban dwellers from easily experiencing the countryside.Throughout the period of the slum clearance programmes, from the 1930s to the 1960s the major cities had been losing population. Until late in the period this reduction in urban density was perceived as beneficial for it was associated with (though not the cause of) improvements in housing conditions and public health. It also provided space for new schools and other amenities. However, between the late 1960s and early 1970s there was to be a sea-change in urban policy. Whereas falling urban densities had been perceived as beneficial, the huge falls in urban populations now being recorded were perceived as problematic, particularly as the local tax base began to decline at the same time as residual (non-migrating, non-sprawling) populations were tending to be disproportionately old, poor and dependent upon local authority services. Local communities were increasingly critical of the slum clearance process and the lack of quality in the replacement housing offered, be it in situ or in overspill locations. At the same time central government was becoming concerned about the costs of slum clearance and seeking cheaper alternatives less demanding upon public expenditure. By 1968 it was also becoming apparent that many inner city areasharboured concentrations of social problems and deprivation. This powerful cocktail of pressures led to the beginnings of a new policy known as urban regeneration. Slum clearance was to be replaced by area improvement and attempts were made to reverse urban decline and tackle deprivation through a series of new managerial and fiscal measures. Thus from this period urban sprawl is not only seen as a problem of inefficient urban growth that detracted from the amenity of the countryside but also as a phenomenon that damaged the inner cities and therefore needed to be brought under yet further control. (It is interesting to note however that echoes of the ‘slum clearance’ type policies have again re-emerged in UK cities (such as Liverpool) where under-populated areas are again being cleared to be replaced with lower density housing under the Housing Market Renewal Initiative.)The urban regeneration approach is typified by Merseyside County Council whose strategy proposed to:“Concentrate investment and development within the urban county and particularly in those areas with the most acute problems, enhancing the environment and encouraging housing and economic expansion on derelict and disused sites. It would restrict development on the edge of the built-up areas to a minimum. There would bea reciprocal effort to enhance and conserve the natural features of the county’s openland and its agriculture while ensuring that its capacity to meet the county’s needs for leisure, recreation and informal education is exploited” (Merseyside County Council, 1975, p8, quoted in Couch, 2003).Such an approach was complemented by central government’s ‘Urban Programme’, which, since 1968 had been an instrument for subsidising public investment in inner urban areas, and the ‘Inner Areas Partnerships’ instigated under the Inner Urban Areas Act 1978. Although critical of the partnership idea, the incoming Conservative Government in 1979 maintained a commitment to urban regeneration that facilitated the re-use of vacant and derelict urban land by means of ‘Enterprise Zones’, ‘Urban Development Corporations’ and ‘Urban Development/City Grant’. This so-called ‘property-led’ approach to urban regeneration saw major successes in the redevelopment of urban land during the 1980s and early 1990s that undoubtedly contributed to a slackening in the rate of urban sprawl. Declining urban populations and a downturn in economic activity, especially in the north of England, also reduced demand for urban expansion.However, the Conservative Government had an ambivalent view of green belts and the release of land for housing development. Initially the government sought to reduce the effectiveness of green belts in order to facilitate more private housing development but so moves were opposed by an alliance of environmentalists and Conservative MPs whose constituencies might the be recipients of unwanted urban sprawl. In 1984 the government settled for housing circulars (9/80 Land for Private Housebuilding and 15/84 Land for Housing) that required local planning authorities to consult with housebuilders to ensure a five-year supply of developable land. This ‘predict and provide’ method of determining the amount of land to be zoned for housing inevitably had the effect of requiring constant additions to the amount of rural land zoned for future urbanisation on the periphery of cities: in other words the circulars encouraged urban sprawl.At this point it is worth noting some characteristics of the relationship between successive governments and the property development industry. It was developers who played a large part in encouraging the government to take seriously the problem of derelict urban land (the waste of a valuable resource). And it was private housebuilders who lobbied to maintain a steady supply of developable rural land. On the other hand, by the mid-1970s, with the exception of London, there was virtually no new private housing investment within existing urban areas of the major conurbations in England and the conventional wisdom of the time suggested that private investment could not be attracted because of a host of socio-economicand environmental factors. Liverpool City Council in 1975 took the unprecedented step of offering for sale housebuilding land in the inner city. They had one bidder: Wimpey, who, paying around £75 per building plot, successfully built and sold a development of more than 150 dwellings. Further developments followed. Also in Liverpool, Barretts successful converted and sold blocks of redundant council flats. Thus began what has now become commonplace: at the right price private developers proved themselves willing and able to invest heavily in the redevelopment and regeneration of inner urban areas.Virtually all British governments since the 1950s, especially those on the right, have been committed to the idea of a ‘property owning democracy’ within which encouraging home ownership (owner occupation) has been an important policy goal. The effect of this has been to increase owner occupation in Great Britain from 29% in 1951 to 70% in 2001. By the millennium more than 80% of all new housing was built speculatively for owner occupation. This has significant implications for the dynamics and control of urban sprawl. Virtually all control of urban sprawl involves the state intervening in the private market, hardly any investment is controlled through the direction of public investment. An essential feature of the private owner occupied housing market is the need to maintain, and preferably increase, property values. In these circumstances land with development potential is ever more valuable, the profits from development higher, and the pressure for development greater. It is this pressure that has to be controlled by the planning system if urban sprawl is to be brought under control.Through much of the 1980s the Thatcher Government pursued a neo-liberal ideology, viewing town and country planning as little more than an unnecessary impediment to private enterprise. However, towards the end of the decade their approach began to change. A combination of an emerging international concern for the environment (The Brundtland Commission had reported in 1987) and in 1988 the Department of the Environment introduced a series of Planning Policy Guidance Notes (PPGs) in order to clarify and strengthen the aims of aims of development plans across the country. An important driver of policy change at this time was the publication of This Common Inheritance (The Environment White Paper (Cabinet Office, 1990) which required a review of all planning policies in light of the conclusions of the Brundtland Report.One of the most important PPGs affecting urban sprawl was PPG3 ‘Housing’. First published in 1988 and slightly modified in 1992 this document pursued the ‘predict and provide’ approach in order to ensure ‘a continuous supply of housing land which addressed market demand’ although in a modest concession to the environmental lobby there was the ‘encouragement of local authorities to make optimum use of brownfield sites’. To be fair to the Government, by the mid-1990s they had stated another, parallel policy goal of increasing the amount of housing to be built on existing urban land, to over 50%.It was the ‘new’ Labour Government, elected in 1997 that moved away from the inevitability of ‘predict and provide’ to a more sophisticated approach to housing land allocations and release known as ‘plan, monitor and manage’. What this meant in practice was that a revised PPG3 ‘Housing’, in 2000, called for a ‘sequential’ approach to the release of housing land in which local authorities should ‘provide sufficient land, giving priority to re-using previously developed land within urban areas, bringing empty homes back into use and converting existing buildings, in preference to the development of Greenfield sites’ (Lowe H, 2003, p18). Figure 1 provides an indication of the growing effectiveness of planning and urban regeneration policies in controlling the sprawl of housing developments beyond existing urban areas. It shows the proportion of new dwellings built on previously developed land rising from around 55% in 1989 to over 60% in 2002.Figure 1. The proportion of new dwellings built on previously developed land.Another dimension of policy that is relevant to the control of urban sprawl is contained in PPG6 ‘Town Centres and Retailing’. Since 1996, PPG6 has required a sequential approach to commercial development whereby: ‘there should be a preference in the first instance for town centres, followed only then by edge-of-centre sites and out-of-centre schemes where these are well served by public transport’ (Mappin G & Allmendinger P, 2000, p194).Figure 2 shows how the growth of out-of-centre retail schemes have gradually been brought under stricter control in recent years.Figure102030405060199519961997199819992000Figure 2. Major Out of Centre Retail and Leisure Applications.A recent evaluation of PPG6 published by the ODPM found retailers and developers are tending to alter ‘their development strategies and store formats to keep them in line with PPG6….One of the clear effects of PPG6 has been to bring about an increase in the number of refusals of applications for out of town development’ (CB Hillier Parker, 2004, p10). It was also found that:“in the comparison retail sector, one of the most marked effects of PPG6 has been toeffectively bring to an end the supply of new regional shopping centres….In the retailwarehouse sector, the evidence suggests that the supply pipeline has fallen, and thereare examples of new edge-of-centre retail warehouse developments, which successfully combine the benefits of this format with a more central location…whilst…In the convenience sector…there is evidence of an increase in openings of town centre stores and neighbourhood stores, and a significant decline inthe pipeline of out-of-centre stores” (C B Hillier Parker, 2004, pp11-12).However, the same research also comments that whilst the policy guidance purports to cover all ‘key town centre uses’, there has been, in practice, a strong emphasis on the planning and control of retail developments, with ‘little or no useful guidance on leisure, offices and other town centre uses’ (ODPM, 2004, p8). The data indicates that the amount and proportion of out of town and out of centre leisure developments increased over the period 1994 – 2001 (ODPM, 2004, p63)A third element of policy guidance, PPG13 ‘Transport’ has sought to:o Promote choice (of mode of transport) by increasing the relative advantage of means of travel other than the car, especially walking, cycling and public transport;o Reducing dependence on the private car; ando Increasing the competitiveness and attractiveness of urban centres against peripheral development (Carr C & Docherty I, 2000, p220)However, it is in the field of transport policy that government policy has been least successful. The provision and quality of transport infrastructure has some causal relationship with urban sprawl. But whilst the laying down of suburban railways and tramways helped shape suburban growth in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the more recent car-based suburbanisation process has needed no such investment. Instead, in more recent times, it is urban sprawl that has tended to dictate the location of peri-urban highway investment and to a lesser extent, the provision of public transport services. Indeed, the failure to provide adequate opportunities and support for walking, cycling and public transport in the UK, especially in areas of urban sprawl, has led to a continuing growth in the use of the motor vehicle for more and longer journeys, as shown in figure 3.Figure 3. Road Traffic Volumes.Whilst the aims of this policy guidance are laudable, it remains to be seen over time how effective they will be in achieving more sustainable patterns of urban development and reducing urban sprawl. One of the more intractable problems lies with the transport system. Whilst policies may call for a shift in modal split, decades of under-investment in provision for public transport, cycling and walking make significant changes in patterns of travel extremely difficult to achieve.Nevertheless, today, in 2004, the rate at which urban sprawl is occurring in Britain is lower than at almost any time over the last century. This has been achieved by a combination of socio-economic circumstances combined with strong planning controls at the urban fringe and effective subsidies and managerialist interventions to encourage the regeneration of older urban areas.The issue facing policy makers is whether these policies can remain effective into the future and whether they should be strengthened to reduce urban sprawl still further and encourage the type of compact urban development that the Government and the environmental lobby now favour.The FutureThe question now is how can policy be developed to further reduce urban sprawl and to reduce the adverse impacts of such sprawl? Beyond the trite ambitions for more ‘compact cities’, ‘decentralised concentration’, ‘greening the city’ and ‘reducing car-dependency’ there are difficult questions about the precise nature of the policies to be developed, their implementation, effectiveness, side-effects and political acceptability.The following discussion is structured around two issues:• How might urban sprawl be reduced, through policy changes at the national and local levels of planning?• How might the adverse social, economic and environmental consequences of urban sprawl be reduced?The evidence used in the discussion has been derived from:• the findings of the Liverpool/Wirral case studies about the causes and consequences of urban sprawl;• the conclusions of the URBS PANDENS ‘Stakeholder Workshop’ held in Vienna in January 2004.• policy debates in the planning literature;• a survey of expert opinion in North West England1.How might urban sprawl be reduced, through policy changes at the national and local levels of planning?Evidence from the Wirral case study.From our own earlier paper (Couch & Karecha 2003a), based on a study of trends in Wirral MBC, we noted a number of causal influences on urban sprawl, particularly in relation to residential locational choice.Changes in housing costs appeared to be a very significant influence. Firstly, particularly in the inner areas of Wirral and amongst younger householders, being in an area of affordable housing was a frequently cited influence on household locational choice. That is to say lower dwelling prices stimulated their demand. On the other hand, amongst movers to the outer areas of Wirral, ‘trading-up’ was the most frequently cited reason for moving. This would conform with the notion of owner occupied housing as an investment good and suggest that rising dwelling prices affected their locational choice and stimulated demand in the outer areas.Income levels appeared to be significant in that those likely to be on lower incomes (those not in employment and non-car owners) are more influenced in their location decisions by proximity to shopping facilities, railway stations and bus links: features that are more difficult to provide in sprawling locations. On the other hand those likely to be on higher incomes (professionals and managers and 2+ car owners) were slightly more influenced in their location decisions by quietude and proximity to countryside/coast: features more associated with sprawl.Infrastructure investment was an influence on some groups. Movers in all areas and especially the elderly frequently identified good road connections as a very important or crucial influence. The elderly were also frequently influenced by proximity to a railway station and being in an area of good bus services.Age structure clearly had important implications for urban sprawl. The elderly identified many more very important or crucial influences on household location decisions than younger age groups. Household structure was also important. The inner and outer areas exhibited quite different characteristics in terms of household types, with single adults, sharing adult households and single-parent families more represented amongst movers to the inner areas1 It was our intention to survey expert opinion using the Delphi technique. However, despite contacting a number of experts from the private and public sectors, the response rate in the first round of consultation was poor. We therefore modified the process and rather than have a series of successive rounds of consultation in order to move towards consensus on policy, we moved straight to the preparation of our own draft paper and invited expert comment through interviews and correspondence.and adult couples, two-parent families and the single elderly more represented amongst movers to the outer areas.The quality of the environment was an important influence on household location decisions. Being in a low crime neighbourhood and being in a quiet neighbourhood were amongst the most frequently cited influences on location decisions in all areas and across all age groups. In the outer areas and amongst the elderly, proximity to the countryside/coast was another very frequently cited environmental or landscape influence. On the other hand being near a park was of only limited influence on any group.However, within a labour market area, such as Wirral, neither a change in the place of work nor a desire for greater proximity between home and work seemed to be significant causes of household moves or choice of location.These findings suggest that any future policies intended to reduce residential urban sprawl need to:• Tackle perceived levels of crime and lack of quietude and environmental quality in existing urban neighbourhoods;• Improve the profitability to owner-occupiers of home ownership in existing urban neighbourhoods.• Deal with the issue of owner-occupied housing being an investment good and the perception that house prices increase faster in peripheral locations.Evidence from the ‘Stakeholder Workshop’.As part of the workshop activity around 30 stakeholders (expert professional planners and academics from the seven case study areas) were asked to rank 13 possible causes of urban sprawl in terms of their importance. Each individual stakeholder was limited to voting for a maximum of only 4 possible causes. The results are shown in table 1 below.Table 1. Stakeholder ranking of the importance of potential causes of urban sprawl.Causal factor Number of votes achievedPersonal lifestyle choices and behaviour 23Land use planning and property taxation22Dwelling prices and income changes 18Infrastructure investment 17Land speculation 11Economic change 6Inward investment 6Quality of landscape 4Demographic or household changes 4Social segregation 4Migration 1Lack of space in the inner city 1Quality of townscape 0Whilst the exercise might be criticised on a number of grounds (the definitions of some factors are ambiguous; the stakeholders were not randomly selected nor evenly representative of the case study areas), the results are nevertheless interesting.Overall there was an impressively high level of expert agreement about the major factors causing urban sprawl in a variety of different cities across Europe. Personal lifestyle choices and behaviour are perceived to be the most important cause. Coupled with the third mostimportant cause, dwelling prices and income changes, this clearly suggests that there is a strong demand-side dimension to the creation of urban sprawl. To this extent it may be argued that developers are merely responding to the desire of the population to live at certain densities; in certain types of environment; in certain locations; in affordable and, in the case of owner occupation, profitable dwellings.On the other hand there is also expert agreement that the planning system can encourage urban sprawl through land use zoning and providing infrastructure investments such as highways and utility services. Other important factors are thought to be local variations in property taxes and land speculation by potential developers.Thus responding to these arguments, governments wishing to control urban sprawl would need to:• Reduce household demand for urban sprawl, either by satisfying that demand in other locations or changing the nature of that demand;• Strengthen land-use zoning policies against urban sprawl, and/or strengthen the implementation of existing policies;• Re-orientate infrastructure investments away from areas of potential urban sprawl;• Reduce spatial differences in local property tax yields;• Limit the scope for land speculation at or near the urban fringe.Evidence from the survey of expert opinion in North West EnglandRespondents were asked to consider changes in planning policy that would reduce urban sprawl in North West England.At the national/regional scale of planning, the bulk of responses focused on the importance of brownfield development and development within existing urban areas, and the protection (and also the extension) of the greenbelt, as central aspects of policy responses/actions for the reduction of urban sprawl. It was also argued that there was scope for more effective implementation and enforcement of existing land use planning policies that were not being adhered to as strongly as they might be. Other responses discussed the merits of improving the quality of existing urban areas as a measure to stem the demand for and the attractiveness of ‘urban sprawl’ residential locations. There was also some discussion over whether environmental issues could be raised in terms of importance, over and above economic and social matters. One suggestion was that quality residential development could be channelled into land adjacent to rural settlements, with the view being that this could be preferable to sprawling suburbs. A further suggestion was that settlements could be categorised to form a hierarchical list starting with ‘the most preferred settlement for development’, moving to ‘the least preferred settlement’, ordered according to categories such as accessibility.At the metropolitan/city scale of planning, the discussion focused on the challenge of making cities attractive to people other than the young. There was some comment on having very clear and firm boundaries for urban areas set in local plans, and also having more precise and directive details for example on matters such as site capacities. A suggestion was made that by a better integration of (public) transport planning and land use planning, that urban sprawl could be reduced.At the local/neighbourhood scale of planning, there was some debate as to whether urban sprawl could be addressed at this level with some participants believing that it was not possible. Among the suggestions among those who did answer, was the view that the promotion of mixed communities might form part of the solution for reducing urban sprawl, presumably because it was felt that this could create places where the more affluent would。