Tuesday, 27 November 2012

Urban density and the green environment

Remaining treeAt the end of this article about urban density and NIMBYism, Kaid Benfield suddenly strikes right at an issue that has long bothered me. When developers win their ways with the density card, the local green environment usually doesn’t stand much chance. I think that has knock-on effects in terms of sociability and health which remain largely unrecognised.

Benfield writes:

‘if we designed density so that it brought more, not less, nature into communities, density could become far more appealing and popular. And I would particularly urge that the nature we integrate into development – plantings, water, trees, open space, green roofs, living walls, and so forth – be designed to serve multiple purposes simultaneously. A menu of choices for multitasking might include, for example, green infrastructure to catch and filter stormwater, places of play for kids and respite for adults, plantings that maximize the absorption of carbon dioxide while releasing oxygen for cleaner and fresher air, green spaces that reduce the heat island effect, and/or signature public spaces to create a sense of place.’ 

I’d add that I think we need to be sharper at getting quickly from having a few examples of good practice to ensuring the dominance of such an approach as standard practice.

The pic above I took in Luton, England, about three years ago, from a rolling bus.

 

 

27 Nov 2012 20:28:04 | Space and place

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Social exclusion and social policy: what has equality got to do with it? Browsing in a bookshop yesterday I noticed this simple introductory remark on the dust jacket of Joseph Stiglitz’s The price of inequality: ‘The impact of inequality on societies is now increasingly well understood - higher crime, health problems and mental illness, lower educational achievements, social cohesion and life expectancy.’ Inequalities reinforce social exclusion: it's hardly a contentious assertion, it's been around for a while, the data seem to support it, but is it really ‘well understood’? Understood as well as, for instance, the principle that people who are in positions of privilege, wealth and power will distort whatever they have to, in order to protect those positions? No it probably isn’t, not in the context of Westminster and the outlook of the influential Centre for Social Justice. This was made clear to me at the launch of the CSJ’s second ‘Breakthrough Britain’ programme the other day. The new programme addresses the same six themes as the first: family breakdown; economic dependency and worklessness; educational failure; drug and alcohol addiction; serious personal debt; and the role of the voluntary sector. The reports of the first programme, published in 2007, were sub-titled ‘policy recommendations to the Conservative Party’. So has no progress been made on these themes in the interim? Are social conditions worse, or better, in the CSJ’s eyes? Perhaps they are comparable. We know that inequalities have widened; but perhaps that doesn’t matter? The six themes strikingly avoid any reference to disadvantage experienced collectively, or to collective responses, thus reinforcing the notion that poverty and social exclusion are just experienced at the individual or household level and have to be addressed by the individual or household. I’m not sure why another bash at them is needed (I mean at the themes, not the people) nor why other forces that contribute to or might help reduce exclusion are not being considered. So when, after the introductory speeches, Titus Alexander asked, from the floor, where the principles of equalities might feature in the process, it seemed a wholly reasonable question and an opportunity for the chair to say something like ‘yes of course, it’s fundamental, obviously we didn’t have time to cover everything in our introduction, but…’ Not a bit of it. The idea that inequalities have anything to do with the problems of disadvantage and poverty in this country – or that addressing them might have anything to do with the solutions – was abruptly dismissed, on the grounds that the data do not necessarily explain why some countries have relatively high income inequality but fewer negative social indicators. (It might depend on which indicators you choose to look at I suppose). (Re-reading my post from a previous CSJ thematic launch, I note there was a pertinent question dismissed on that occasion too). A short while later, another voice from the floor challenged the chairs running the six inquiries to think long term about the potential to reduce the roles of the state to zero and encourage the voluntary sector to...

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