Land Use Planning is Critical to Transport

The location of present and future development has a dramatic effect on traffic demand. Low density building increases traffic. For hundreds of years most urban dwellers have sought to live on the edge of town. Until the industrial revolution only the rich could do so and by necessity the rest of the urban population lived cheek by jowl in the city centre. Since the arrival of first the train, then the bus, and now the car, residential development has occurred to satisfy this demand. Unfortunately, a development on the edge of town in one decade becomes a suburb in the next as each generation leaps over the previous one to reach that elusive paradise. Even green belts, although relatively successful, have not been able to stop the onslaught of development.

Spreading development at ever lower density increases the demand for transport. For this reason the ETA believes land use planning and control is vital to reduce the impact transport makes on the environment.

To stop this seemingly relentless devouring of our countryside without halting the economic growth which people crave, a planning system needs to contain elements which will allow flexibility within an overarching structure. To this end the ETA recommends that, although the current planning classes system remains intact, there be three basic land categories: urban, suburban and rural. Urban land would be that which is within 800m of a settlement centre; suburban land would be developed land outside of urban areas; and rural land that which is outside urban and suburban areas. The division between urban and suburban land would be determined by the distance from a settlement centre; the division between suburban and rural would be the planning use to which the land has been put (or has planning permission for). In urban areas, development would be allowed to proceed with the permission of the town government – sites of county, national and international importance would be safeguarded. Permission from neighbouring towns might be required should the proposed development be seen or heard from those towns. In rural areas (over 800m from a village centre) only development for farming, forestry and mining and for the protection of wilderness would be permitted.

Development in the suburban land category would require planning permission from the town government in a similar fashion as in urban areas. However, before that permission could be sought, the applicant would have to purchase the “right to develop”. For example, if a developer wished to build new offices on land designated as suburban they would have to purchase old offices of greater floor space and plot size within the suburban area of the same civil parish and convert them to a lower class of development (for example, residential). To gain permission to make such a conversion the developer would have to purchase old residential properties which exceeded the floor space and plot size within the suburban area of the same civil parish and convert them to a lower class of development or to agriculture. Once the class of land is defined as agricultural the land category changes irrevocably to rural.

In fact, a developer would not need to undertake such complicated actions as a market in such “rights to develop” would develop. Indeed, even a futures market in “rights to develop” could occur for the larger towns and cities.

The effects of such a policy would be to end urban sprawl as no town could grow larger than 1,600m across.