All three pictures above from I-BBC:  "brownfield" across the pond is any urban or rural land up for re-use - not the land in GREENBELT (at left).

"Brownfields" in UK means land reused, whether urban or rural;  "brownfields" U.S.A. - style here.

Q&A: England's green belt  
Many believe the English countryside is under threat

Think tank the Social Market Foundation has warned that two million homes will have to be built on green belt sites to meet government plans to tackle the housing shortage.  But what is the English green belt and why does it exist?

What is the green belt?  Green belt is a planning tool, first introduced for London in 1938 but rolled out to England as a whole by a government circular in 1955.  It urged local councils to consider designating green belts where they wanted to restrict urban growth.

Green belts now cover 13% of England (around one-and-a-half million hectares). Wales has one green belt, between Cardiff and Newport, while Scotland has seven and Northern Ireland has 30 - each has its own policy guidance.

Green belt in England is protected both by normal planning controls and against "inappropriate development" within its boundaries.

Where is it?

There are 14 separate green belts in England, varying in size from 486,000 hectares around London to just 700 hectares at Burton-on-Trent.

What is the green belt for? 

Green belt aims to stop urban sprawl and the merging of settlements, preserve the character of historic towns and encourage development to locate within existing built-up areas.  The quality or appearance of land is not a factor in its designation as green belt and it does not have to be "green".

Richard Bate, of planning consultancy Green Balance, says its primary function is to "encourage development to go to the places where it will do most good and to discourage it in places where it will do quite significant harm".

Is green belt different to a greenfield site?

Yes. A greenfield site is a piece of land that has not got development on it, while green belt has specific planning restrictions.

So, what is a brownfield site?

Brownfield land is another term for previously-developed land in rural and urban areas.  However, it does not include agricultural or forestry land or buildings.  Government policy calls on local planning authorities to maximise the use of previously-developed land.  Its target is for 60% of new housing to be provided on brownfield land.

When were green belts established?

The green belts around London, Birmingham and Sheffield were among the first to be established in the 1930s.

The first official proposal "to provide a reserve supply of public open spaces and of recreational areas and to establish a green belt or girdle of open space" was made by the Greater London Regional Planning Committee in 1935.

WHY HAVE A GREEN BELT?
Source: CPRE/DCLG


Housing 'will hit green belt'  

The Town and Country Planning Act 1947 then allowed local authorities to include green belt proposals in their development plans.

And in 1955, the government set out a green belt policy asking for local authorities to consider protecting any land acquired around their towns and cities "by the formal designation of clearly-defined green belts".

The aims of the policy were to prevent urban sprawl and protect the countryside from further encroachment. Mr Bate said the pressure for major expansion of towns and cities in the post-war period led to the urgency to develop a policy on green belt land.

Is the green belt under threat?

Countryside campaigners have long accused local authorities and the government of allowing too much development in green belts, which they claim are being eroded.

The Campaign to Protect Rural England says green belts are being nibbled away at a rate of more than 800 hectares (1,977 acres) a year. But the Department of Communities and Local Government says that since 1997, green belt has actually increased by 64,000 hectares (158,147 acres).

Mr Bate also believes the green belt is here to stay.  He said: "It has been going a long time and for almost as long as green belt has been going, there have been claims that green belt has been getting in the way of development and should be relaxed.

"But the fact that there are these claims that it should be relaxed is proving that it is doing its job."




Location of "greenbelt"in UK

House plans 'will hit green belt' 
The need for affordable homes has been put top of Mr Brown's agenda

About two million homes will have to be built on greenfield sites to meet the prime minister's plans to tackle the housing shortage, a think tank warns.
Gordon Brown has pledged three million homes will be built by 2020, mainly on previously developed brownfield sites.

But a Social Market Foundation study claims two million homes would have to be built on undeveloped countryside or green belt around cities and towns.  The government reiterated that it plans "robust protection" of the green belt.

Realistic density

Mr Brown has put housing at the top of his agenda since he became prime minister and announced plans to increase the rate of new development.  He told MPs last month: "Putting affordable housing within the reach not just of the few but the many is vital both to meeting individual aspirations and to securing a better future for the country."

But Mr Brown also pledged the government would "continue to protect robustly the land designated as green belt".

Some 60% of the proposed new homes would be built on brownfield sites under government plans.  But the SMF study suggests even if the new homes were built on a density equivalent to London only 2.1 million would be on brownfield land and this would mean some parks and gardens being paved over.  The report found that on a more realistic housing density, "almost two million homes would need to be built on non-previously developed land".

The SMF concluded: "It will not be possible, even if those living in towns and cities accept the loss of their gardens and parks, to meet the UK's housing needs through previously-developed land alone."

'Scrubland'

It also suggested that the target of three million homes was "likely to be the minimum needed" as supply was failing to meet demand in a "fundamentally unbalanced" UK housing market.  The SMF also added that the green belt, which was planned to prevent urban sprawl, contains ex-industrial sites and scrubland and "was not as green as people believe".
 
The think tank suggests there may be a case for reconsidering the future of the green belt which often protects "neither wildlife nor areas of outstanding beauty".

The SMF's director Ann Rossiter said the UK faced "tough choices" in meeting its housing need and had to tackle the "not in my backyard" mentality. She told BBC Radio Five Live: "We have to face the fact that if we want our kids and our friends' kids to have somewhere to live that's of a decent standard, those homes are going to have to go somewhere.

"And maybe they have to go in the field next to our house, and maybe they have to go near the view that we've always loved - but that's the reality of the situation."

Market forces

But Richard Bate, from planning consultancy Green Balance, said the green belt served a number of crucial purposes.  These included serving as a distinction between town and country, preventing parts of towns and cities becoming derelict and stopping nearby towns and cities merging into each other.

"Simply letting the market rip in areas where it would like to go - very often in green belt areas - won't necessarily put development in the places that will do the most good for everybody in town and country alike," he told Radio 4's Today programme.

Housing and Planning Minister Baroness Andrews said the government believed it was possible to build the homes needed by future generations while protecting the environment and green spaces.

"Our clear priority for development will remain brownfield land - already 74% of new housing is being built on brownfield land, up from 57% in 1997," she said.


Forget me, forget me not (the planning concept of greenbelts)

One day all this will be multi-occupancy units 
By Finlo Rohrer , BBC News Magazine 
13 June 2007

Homes are springing up in back yards as the property boom continues. MPs are fighting for a bill to curtail the practice, but does the squeeze on land mean gardens are endangered?

So there you are living in leafy suburbia, children playing in lovingly tended gardens and along comes a property developer.  Sadly, the only trees he's interested in are the ones that go to make banknotes. And he has a plan for that house for sale next door.  Housing is a burning issue. Perhaps the burning issue that the next prime minister will face.
 
An increasingly solitary population, immigration, wealthy second home-owners and the general mania for house-buying are putting immense pressure on some areas of the country.

One of the results is "garden grabbing". Developers buy a house with a generous garden, apply for planning permission to demolish the house and build either flats, or even a mini-estate in its place.

The charity Garden Organic is leading the fight against the phenomenon. It says an area the equivalent of 2,755 Wembley pitches will be lost to new housing in Britain over the next decade.

This is happening because the law allows gardens to be classified as "brownfield" sites, in the same category as former industrial and commercial property. Councils have targets to meet for new houses and for brownfield building - thus gardens are being lost, the campaigners say.

The effect is a rash of flats and new houses replacing gardens in high-price areas.

There goes the neighbourhood

John Owen, a former local government officer from West Bromwich, is watching his leafy neighbourhood being transformed. After 40 years in the same house, he is at breaking point.

 
The view can get rather grim
On one side, developers are building 13 three-storey terrace houses in what had been the gardens of seven houses. On the other side, five houses have given way to a development of 44 flats. It is too much for the Owens.

"We are moving house as a consequence. It wipes out the character of a neighbourhood. We have lived here 40 years. In the whole area trees have been chopped down and buildings developed. The whole area is sliding downhill."

And for Mr Owen it's not about preserving his neighbourhood for the haves with their big gardens, and keeping out the have-nots keen to jump on the property ladder. A tree-filled area helps everyone, even those living in homes without gardens.

"Even in a single-storey house you can see trees on your skyline. And there is the quietness."

For the property developers, the motivations are obvious. Without the need for new roads or services, profit margins might be higher. And a dense development in an established suburb can be a safer bet than a genuine brownfield site.

Put bluntly, given the choice of moving to a purpose-built flat on the site of an old heavy metals factory, many buyers find they hanker for a berth in Acacia Avenue.

GARDEN GRABBING

"It is an anomaly most people don't know about and are shocked when they discover it. Most people think gardens are quite green, but they are treated the same as railway sidings and derelict gasworks," says Tory MP Greg Clark, who masterminded the bill with Labour's Chris Mullin.

"Greenery is incredibly important in towns for cleaning the air. Family homes are being knocked down, but the biggest shortage is of family homes."

And the notion that this wave of garden grabbing is providing affordable housing for first-time buyers is false, the Tunbridge Wells MP says.

"The threshold [for social housing provision] is usually 15 units. It's amazing the number of developments that come in at 14."

Green and pleasant land

Apart from the loss of green spaces, trees and barriers to traffic noise, current occupants are often left facing a brick wall through their kitchen window. In particularly expensive areas like London, new buildings perch uncomfortably in former gardens, looking rather like a game of residential hide-and-seek.

But the Department for Communities and Local Government argues that gardens can already be protected by local authorities, and designated as non-brownfield, and that the bill is unnecessary.

It says 18% of all new dwellings are on residential land, up from 11% in 1997. But that includes a house being turned into flats, or a demolish-and-rebuild project that occupies the same amount of space. It keeps no separate statistics on how much garden space has been lost.

"The bill is out of date and impractical. Councils already have the power to protect gardens and new planning rules that came into force in April have strengthened those powers further," a spokesman says.

But for the opponents of garden grabbing, local authorities are under immense pressure because of targets for building and the drive for high-density housing.

"They are bedevilled with meeting targets. The inclination is to pass things regardless," the disgruntled Mr Owen says.

And the challenge that faces the country on housing is staggering. Prices continue to spiral and last year, 160,234 new dwellings were built in England, a mere 780 more than in 2005. The average house in England and Wales costs £179,935.

There is immense pressure on the government to provide more houses, and some wonder whether greenbelt land will have to be sacrificed in order to meet the need for affordable houses.

Television gardener Diarmuid Gavin said the loss of gardens, while sad, might be viewed as acceptable if it saves vast areas of the countryside from being built on.

"People are getting used to the fact that gardens are getting smaller. It's why a lot of TV shows are patio shows or city gardens. They are gardening or designing them more intensely. People don't have the time - a lot of people want a manageable-sized garden.

"It is not nice for anyone who is interested in gardens but it is the new reality. We haven't got the space anymore. People come first and they need a place to live."

So enjoy the view out your window, while it lasts.
 

First two sites eyed for 'brownfield' assessment
Norwalk HOUR
By ROBERT KOCH
December 4, 2007

NORWALK — The Norwalk Redevelopment Agency hopes to begin its "brownfields" assessment work at the Webster and South Norwalk Train Station parking lots.

On Thursday, the Common Council's Planning Committee will consider the agency's request to allow Vanesse Hangen Brustlin, Inc., to perform test borings in the Webster lot at 30 Monroe St., and at the train station parking lot at 55 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

The two sites are among 20 locations prioritized Vanesse Hangen as candidates for U.S. Environmental Protection Agency brownfields clean-up efforts. Such efforts are aimed at cleaning up former industrial sites, known as brownfields, for future uses.

The test borings would determine what, if any contamination, exists at the train station and Webster parking lot. The 20 locations lie generally south of Washington Street, where various industries once operated.

"We think the properties that we have the best chance to use the money on are the ones that we have access to — publicly held sites," said Michael Moore, senior community development project manager at the Redevelopment Agency, referring to the two lots. "Access is the main item. We have to get access onto the site. Other properties are privately held, and we have to work with the property owner. So we want to show the EPA that we can use the money and this helps. There will be other publicly held sites in the future, but those are the first two."

The agency's request to allow Vanesse Hangen to enter the two sites and conduct "sub-surface investigation" is part of Phase 2 — prioritization and assessment — of the brownfields clean-up initiative.

In Phase 1, Vanesse Hangen found more than 200 former industrial properties, which may or may not be contaminated based upon their histories, according to the agency.

The Webster parking and South Norwalk Train Station parking lot fall within the parameters of the Webster Block Planning & Urban Design Study and South Norwalk Planning Study, respectively. The environmental assessments sought by the agency aren't necessarily aimed at seeing the two conceptual plans to fruition. Rather, they are aimed at better understanding what contamination may or may not exist on the two sites.

"As we begin to look at master planning for the area, understanding the environmental situation, with regard to those sites, will be helpful," said Timothy T. Sheehan, Redevelopment Agency executive director. "It's always helpful to have an understanding of the environmental condition of the property."

The city is using a $400,000 EPA grant to identify, prioritize and assess brownfield sites in Norwalk.