The Lady Protests Too Much – Andrew Motion on Brownfield Sites
From this weeks latest Trotskite Rag The Lady
[brownfield] housing has created new communities from derelict urban sites, of which we have an almost unlimited supply – currently enough for 1.5 million new homes and increasing all the time.
Almost unlimited – thats too great a claim and an unwise choice of words, you could use the same logic to say that there is an unlimited supply of greenfield sites (of which of copurse there is around 9 times more), a line that CPRE have rightly argued against.
Of course it is not almost unlimited, especially when considered geographically, in Rest of South East for example, it could take barely 250,000 houses, far less in West of England and East Anglia.
The real issue is whether the rate of increase of brownfield sites is sufficient in all areas to mop up the rate of increase in demand for housing.
Posted on January 4, 2013, in urban planning. Bookmark the permalink. 4 Comments.
Brownfield capacity is significantly higher if you include potential redevelopment (densification) as well as currently known ‘available’ sites. Most of our existing towns/ cities (even London) are low rise-predominantly 2 storey. Redevelopment of even a relatively small amount of this with more urban (even 3/5 storey not necessarily high-rise) typologies could achieve significant numbers of new homes and also make existing transport infrastructure and local retail centres more viable should we choose to plan for this.
We simply can’t equate brownfield hectares to greenfield hectares.
Brownfield sites aren’t simply greenfield sites which have become a bit grubby.
A brownfield site can often be polluted and thus require various expensive remediation processes to minimise any health risks.
Additionally, a brown field site will almost by definition be in an unattractive area.
Never mind: we can always dump the ‘little people’ on these sites and leave the nice rural sites and the gentile suburbs to ‘real people’.
Most previously developed sites are existing residential (even with the garden redefinition) so not necessarily unattractive.
Also most ‘pollution’ on most brownfield sites outside major industrial areas is little more than a little spilt oil on former garage sites etc. very cheaply cleaned up.
Spelling correction: I meant of course ‘genteel’ not ‘gentile’ …