steve hesmondhalgh

Tag: housing

  • Green Belt: The Sacred Cow Grazing on Our Planning Future

    If land were religion, the Green Belt would be its high priest. Revered. Untouchable. Endlessly invoked in speeches and consultations as the last bulwark between concrete and countryside. Say the phrase “Green Belt release” in a public meeting and you can watch elected members age visibly before your eyes.

    But beneath the reverence lies a policy creaking at the joints, weighed down by decades of confused thinking, public misunderstanding, and political timidity. The question is no longer whether the Green Belt needs review — it’s whether we’re capable of admitting it.

    What Was the Green Belt For?

    The Green Belt wasn’t designed to be a beauty contest or a landscape designation. It wasn’t about protecting England’s green and pleasant land in general. It was a policy tool with clear strategic aims, introduced after the Second World War to:

    • Prevent urban sprawl
    • Protect the setting of towns and cities
    • Avoid the merging of neighbouring settlements
    • Encourage urban regeneration by containing development within existing areas

    It was, in theory, a bold and rational spatial device — a ring of restraint around major urban areas, shaping growth inward rather than outward.

    It wasn’t a promise that every green field would be protected. Nor was it based on ecological value, biodiversity, or landscape character. Yet over time, these misconceptions have grown roots of their own.

    Is It Still Doing That?

    In some places, yes. But in many others, the Green Belt is now doing something else entirely — and not always for the better.

    Rather than stopping sprawl, it often pushes it further out. Development leapfrogs the belt, landing in towns and villages beyond it. The result? Long commutes, car dependency, and splintered communities. Meanwhile, the inner edges of cities — close to jobs, services, and public transport — remain frozen, even where land is of low landscape or ecological value.

    The idea of “urban containment” works best when there’s a strong policy to build up, not just out. But the pressure on land and the scarcity of brownfield sites in many areas mean that containment has turned into constraint. And constraint, without direction, creates sprawl by stealth.

    It’s also worth saying — quietly, because this tends to ruin dinner parties — that not all Green Belt land is lovely. Much of it is unremarkable: intensively farmed, inaccessible, ecologically poor. You can’t walk through it, picnic in it, or enjoy it from a train window. It is “green” in planning terms only — and sometimes not even that.

    Why Don’t We Reform or Remove It?

    Because, quite simply, it is politically radioactive.

    Any attempt to review or redefine the Green Belt is met with howls of betrayal. National politicians know this, and local politicians feel it — in their inboxes, on doorsteps, at public meetings. Defending the Green Belt is electorally safe. Challenging it is not.

    Never mind that many people conflate Green Belt with “all green fields.” Or that they assume it’s about beauty, when it’s about boundaries. These myths are now baked into the public consciousness — and they’re not easily undone in a planning policy footnote.

    The result? Endless tinkering. “Exceptional circumstances” here. Strategic swaps there. Quiet incursions through local plans, but no national reckoning. We’re rearranging the deckchairs while pretending the ship is unsinkable.

    The Problem With Tweaks

    The idea of treating the Green Belt as permanent — as something beyond review — is oddly unplanning-like. Everything else in planning is negotiable. Everything else can be tested, balanced, consulted on. But the Green Belt is often treated as dogma, not policy.

    And when we do tweak it, we do so under immense pressure. Sites are carved out through bruising local plan examinations or court battles. The burden of proof is heavy, the politics even heavier. So instead of a rational, national conversation about growth, we end up with a patchwork of exceptions — each one fought for like a planning war of attrition.

    Meanwhile, homes are still needed. Infrastructure still ages. And policy limps on.

    What Might a Rational Policy Look Like?

    Start with a clean sheet. Ask: where should growth go, based on need, sustainability, connectivity, and environmental value?

    Some areas of Green Belt might still be essential — for setting, separation, or containment. But others, frankly, are candidates for review. And not because we want to pave paradise. Because we want to build homes in places that make sense.

    We should be protecting landscape, nature, and accessibility — not lines drawn in 1955 on the basis of how far a city had spread post-war. We should stop pretending that all Green Belt is sacred, and instead start treating it like the policy tool it was meant to be: strategic, revisable, and responsive.

    Conclusion: The Sacred Cow Needs a Vet

    The Green Belt served its time. It brought discipline to post-war growth. It helped shape cities and protect countryside. But we are now using it to fight a very different battle — against a housing crisis, against climate goals, against economic inequality.

    And in that battle, the Green Belt is not always on the right side.

    Yet despite the urgency, too often the loudest voices in the room belong not to planners, nor to those affected by housing need, but to local chapters of the CPRE — well-meaning, undoubtedly passionate, but often unqualified and unaccountable. Many worship at the altar of the Green Belt with a fervour that borders on the devotional. Their objections are predictable, relentless, and almost always against change.

    The question is: should we really allow such groups, however earnest, to shape national planning outcomes? Is it right that housing delivery, urban sustainability, and spatial policy should be hostage to those who view any development as a threat, and who see Green Belt as sacred ground, not strategic tool?

    It’s not heresy to ask. It’s just planning.

    Let’s stop treating the Green Belt like a relic beyond question. Because if we can’t even ask whether this tool is still fit for purpose, we’ve already given up on planning as a profession — and on homes as a right, not a privilege.

  • Inoffensive by Design: How ‘Character’ Is Killing Character

    New housing is timid. Not understated. Not elegant. Just timid.

    We talk endlessly about respecting “local character” as if it were some sacred text — one we must interpret carefully and never deviate from. But more often than not, “character” is just shorthand for “don’t frighten the neighbours.”

    The result? Entire estates that could have been built anywhere. Three-bed boxes in compliant red brick. Token gables. Faux chimneys. Heritage by spreadsheet.

    And all in the name of “context”.

    We’ve mistaken repetition for reverence. Somewhere along the way, “contextual” became a synonym for “copy-paste.”

    What Do We Even Mean by ‘Character’?

    Let’s be honest — nobody really knows.

    Is it style? Materials? Roof pitch? Is it the curve of the road, or the fact that there’s no pavement on one side? Is it the view of the church spire from a layby near the recycling bins?

    Ask ten planners and you’ll get ten definitions. Ask a committee and you’ll get a leaflet quote.

    “Character” has become a convenient umbrella for objectors, officers and councillors alike. It’s used to oppose the unfamiliar, resist the modern, and excuse the dull. Sometimes all three.

    We throw it around like it’s quantifiable. But what we’re really doing is policing anything that dares to stand out.

    The Real Consequence: Timid Design

    Developers, understandably, play it safe. Why risk bold design if it means delay, committee, and a possible refusal? Why go near “contemporary” when it only takes one councillor to call it “out of keeping”?

    So we end up with endless applications that blend into a beige sea of inoffensiveness. Streets designed not for place-making, but for avoidance. Avoidance of controversy, of risk, of anything that might require explanation.

    Planners don’t help. Too many design comments focus on whether something “respects the grain” or “reflects the prevailing vernacular.” Too few ask whether it’s any good.

    The result is housing that looks like it was assembled from a nationwide kit — the same porches, the same window proportions, the same brick-effect panels.

    It’s not protecting local identity. It’s manufacturing national monotony.

    And let’s be clear — we’re not preserving history here. We’re preserving mediocrity. We’re holding up 1930s suburbia like it’s some kind of design benchmark, when half of it was built without a shred of architectural ambition.

    A Word on Design Codes

    Design codes aren’t the villain. When used well, they raise standards, give clarity, and stop the worst excesses.

    But when followed rigidly — or written to pander — they stifle imagination. They produce developments that tick boxes, avoid objections, and utterly fail to excite.

    We’ve created a planning culture where the path of least resistance is always the path of least quality.

    If a developer wants to try something genuinely different, they don’t look to the code for guidance — they brace for battle.

    This is how we end up with places that have no connection to geography, climate, history, or anything human. Just the hollow reassurance that it looks like the last one that got through planning.

    When Did We Become So Afraid of Boldness?

    That’s the question planners, designers and councillors should be asking themselves.

    When did bold design become so threatening?
    When did we decide that anything striking was “out of character”?
    When did place-making give way to appeasement?

    Not everything needs to be iconic. But we ought to expect something that reflects the time it was built in. A willingness to speak the language of today, not whisper through the voice of the past.

    Because if we only ever build to imitate, what will future generations look back on and say: yes — that was ours?

    There’s a danger in overstatement, yes. But there’s just as much danger in perpetual understatement. We’re raising entire communities without architectural identity, then wondering why they feel disconnected and unloved.

    Closing Thoughts

    This obsession with character — this fear of straying from it — has robbed us of architectural courage.

    I was a partner in an architectural firm for 5 years. In that time I moved from safe design principles to a far bolder approach. My success rate amongst LPA’s dropped from around 90% to nearer 60% in those 5 years.

    But bold design is not about erasing the past. It’s about building the present. A present that’s confident, specific, and unapologetically of its time.

    Let’s be clear-eyed: most new housing doesn’t “respect local character.” It mimics a softened version of a version of a version. It’s a photocopy of familiarity.

    And it’s dull.

    Respecting context doesn’t mean copying it. It means engaging with it — responding to it — and sometimes challenging it.

    Because if we never take a risk, we’ll never build anything worth remembering.