The Big Picture

Where should we build houses?

Current plans require that Greater Nottingham provides space to accommodate approximately 60,000 new houses by 2026. I shall start by unashamedly paraphrasing material from an article in the Guardian by Simon Jenkins (09/10/09). Any new development (houses and/or stadium in our case) that dumps 1000's of tons of concrete, bricks and tarmac on to greenfield sites cannot be classed as ‘environmentally friendly'. As an example, to build the Leicester City football stadium it took 20,000 bricks, 6,000 tons of steel, and 2,500 tons of concrete. Many scientists now believe that at least 5 percent of humanity's carbon footprint comes from the concrete industry, both from the energy used to produce the material and from the carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted during the production of cement, one of concrete's principal components. The carbon footprint of bricks is not much better. Add to this the fact that the occupants of these new rural housing estates will all need cars to deliver their kids to school and commute to work, and we might rightfully conclude that the ecotown or totally ‘carbon-neutral' housing estate does not exist - unless of course the occupants decide to live in mud huts, burn wood and walk to work.

So where should we live? Jenkins' goes on to discuss a book ‘Green Metropolis' by David Owen, who advocates that we should look to the cities for future environmentally friendly living space. The rationale is that cities are warmer - therefore winter fuel costs are lower, but also the residents do not need to spend hours each day commuting, thereby saving on fuel and quite possibly the cost of running a car altogether. For Nottingham this model could make sense! Surveys by both the Council and the Office for National Statistics on Previously Developed Land (the new brownfield!), show that Nottingham has sufficient land and/or vacant property suitable for redevelopment to give approximately 23,000 new houses. Whether or not this number includes the 12,000 vacant houses in Nottingham is not clear. However, what is clear is that there are opportunities to begin fulfilling the regional housing requirement before going anywhere near the Green Belt! However, as Jenkins' notes, what frequently stops us making full use of these opportunities is greed - for property developers there is more profit to be made by concreting over acres of virgin land, than there is in tailoring small individual sites to accommodate new or refurbished houses. Having said that, Nottingham does actually have a good track record for utilising PDL (brownfield) sites. 

So where does this leave Rushcliffe? The plans require 15,000 new houses with 10,600 in urban areas and 4,400 in non-urban areas? Very recently, Rushcliffe, together with many of the councils that constitute Greater Nottingham, participated in an extremely detailed analysis of the region - looking at such issues as flood risk, transport/accessibility, ecology/land quality, and the Green Belt. The report (Appraisal of Sustainable Urban Extensions, 2008, 199pp) gives a very rigorous assessment of the region, and for Rushcliffe identifies two areas suitable for development, namely Edwalton (1,800 houses) and Clifton Pastures (7,500 houses), which taken together could more or less fulfil the urban requirement. Interestingly, the same report specifically identifies the proposed site for the new football stadium and 4,500 houses as being unsuitable for development - the main concerns being connectivity (with Gamston), transport (heavily congested A52) and penetration of the Green Belt. Since I live in the Gamston area, I should declare a degree of enlightened self-interest, but given the level of analysis that has gone into the above report, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of pounds of council tax payers money, it would seem to me that to go against the report's recommendations would require a counter argument of comparable intellectual depth and detail. Despite the pretty pictures that appear in the local newspaper and on the Rushcliffe Borough Council's website, I am not convinced that argument is being made.

Paul Randle, Deputy Chief Executive of Rushcliffe Borough Council, has responded to this blog post below

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