Greenbelts or Green Wedges?

摘要

If you're like me, you've somehow come to believe that greenbelts are vestiges of the Middle Ages. It's easy to visualize a castle or town wall, dotted with gates, surrounding and defending the more densely developed town, which is then encircled by the rural area-the greenbelt-that provided the food for those inside the walls. Historically, that is indeed the case; formally and legally, it is not. As a planning tool, the greenbelt-an area surrounding a city in which development is res'tricted-is a relatively recent phenomenon. And in England, greenbelts are currently the focal point of an intense debate about housing affordability and the efficiency of the country's planning system. Greenbelts find their origins as a city planning concept in the garden city movement of the early 20th century. A green "ribbon" five miles from central London was first proposed by Dame Henrietta Barnett in 1910. Dame Barnett's proposal was an extension of her ideas for Hampstead Heath, a "garden" suburb for London, which she had proposed with Ebenezer Howard, the founder of the garden city movement. But it took another 25 years until this proposal was formalized (the London County Council Scheme of 1935), another three years until the concept appeared in legislation (the Greenbelt Act of 1938), and six more years before it was formally proposed in a plan (the 1944 Greater London Plan). The Town and Country Planning Act of 1947, the basis for England's current land-use planning system, added impetus to the movement by advocating better separation of rural and urban areas.