Sustainable Communities

The Potential for Eco-Neighbourhoods

Hugh Barton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781317973300
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Local & Regional Planning Public Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

'This book re-addresses the concepts of neighbourhood and community in a refreshing and challenging way. It will be of immense benefit, not only to town planners but also to al those professional and voluntary groups and politicians who seek to create the new communities of tomorrow'From the Foreword by Jed Griffiths, Past President of the Royal Town Planning Institute.There is widespread support for the principle of creating more sustainable communities, but much hazy, wishful-thinking about what this might mean in practice. In reality, we witness more the death of local neighbourhoods than their creation or rejuvenation, reflecting an increasingly mobile, privatized and commodified society.Sustainable Communities examines the practicalities of re-inventing neighbourhoods. It is neither an idealistic, utopian tract nor a designer's manual, but is, rather, a serious attempt to address the real issues.This collection of expert contributions: * examines the nature of local community and methods of building social capital* presents the findings of a world-wide survey of eco-neighbourhoods and eco-villages with case studies from the United Kingdom, Europe, America and Australia* develops a fresh perspective on the planning and design of neighbourhoods in urban areas, based on the eco-system approach* explores practical programmes for local resource management and the implications for community-based decision-making* provides a detailed appendix listing current eco-village and eco-neighbourhood schemes by countryWritten by an interdisciplinary team of social and environmental scientists, town planners and urban designers, this is a thought-provoking and important contribution to both the theory and practice of the development of sustainable communities.

PART I

SETTING THE SCENE

1

CONFLICTING PERCEPTIONS OF NEIGHBOURHOOD

Hugh Barton

‘Unless we are guided by a conscious vision of the kind of future we want, we will be guided by an unconscious vision of the kind of present we already have’ The Edge (1995)

INTRODUCTION

Neighbourhood is a loaded concept. To some, particularly children and old people, it appears a self-evident reality, familiar and homely, providing daily needs and a community of shared experience and mutual support. Place communities are increasingly recognized by social care and health professionals as important for mental health and social inclusion, and by the police for security. Urban designers are promoting the concept of mixed use ‘urban villages’, providing convenient, convivial and enlivening pedestrian-scale environments. To others, however, the concept seems passé if not faintly ludicrous in the light of contemporary lifestyles. The development industry emphasizes individual consumption at the expense of community cooperation, mobility not stability, internet rather than interplay. Neighbourhood, while in principle a good thing, is perceived as running counter to dominant, multifold trends – a nostalgic concept harking back to a pre-motor, pre-phone age when many people lived out much of their lives in one locality. The social failure of some outlying urban estates built on ‘neighbourhood’ principles in the mid-century, still suffering problems of isolation, poverty, anomie and decay, is perceived as a cautionary tale for would-be community constructivists. The town planners and the house builders therefore collude in avoiding any hint of community planning even while the politicians appeal to the ‘local community’ to lend credibility to their pet projects, and the media employ ‘community’ loosely to draw people into engagement with local stories.

Part of the difficulty in achieving clarity in this tangle of ideas is confusion over concepts. There is a minefield of divergent interpretations, so it is vital to exercise some terminological caution, and recognize the seeds of ambiguity and dissension in words so glibly used: ‘neighbourhood’ and ‘community’. The first section of this chapter draws distinctions between the two concepts examining their professional and academic resonance. The following section then provides an introduction to the equally slippery term sustainable development, and that leads naturally to the question of what might constitute a sustainable neighbourhood or community. Two antipathetic pictures are given: one of which points to an idealized vision of a healthy, ecological, convivial neighbourhood; the other which portrays the reality of current suburban development, where the principle of neighbourhood is almost dead. In this context official policy, albeit ostensibly geared to sustainability, has a hard task. A brief review of European and UK policy is then linked into the prevailing research and professional agenda which, at least from the town planning perspective, has tended to sideline locality. Finally the chapter sets out the agenda which the book as a whole is intended to address.

NEIGHBOURHOOD AND COMMUNITY

The term ‘neighbourhood’ has the conventional meanings of ‘neighbours’ or ‘people of a district’, or ‘the district itself’ (Concise Oxford). In its third (and I think dominant) meaning it implies a locality which is familiar or has a particular unifying character, and this is the meaning adopted here. Neighbourhoods have something in common with rainbows. Each person carries around her or his personal image, depending on her own position and experience. Such ‘mental maps’ are relativistic, individual perceptions which may or may not relate to a functional locality – ie the catchment zone of a local centre.

At the professional level ‘neighbourhood’ has a venerable ancestry stemming from Ebenezer Howard and Raymond Unwin early in the twentieth century, and subsequently gelled by the first generation British new towns. In Harlow and Stevenage, and later Runcorn, the neighbourhood is a discreet residential area with a population of 4–6000 supporting a primary school and a local centre, more or less physically separated from adjoining localities. This concept received a bad press from the social analysts of the 1960s and 1970s who equated it with the idea of social engineering – the artificial creation of a community by design – which they observed did not accord with the reality of individual and social behaviour in an increasingly mobile age, and was based on false perceptions of the designers’ role and power (Dennis, 1968; Goodman, 1972). Unfortunately that image of discreet, fixed neighbourhoods, and the subsequent strong reaction against any hint of physical determinism, has tainted academic debate ever since. Theories about neighbourhoods have progressed little since the era of new town plans, and any skills developed then have been forgotten or sidelined.

In practice, in the UK at least, most decisions have been effectively made by the development industry. New residential areas have been, and are being, defined not by any understanding of local accessibility or the pedestrian realm – let alone ‘community’ – but by market interests and land ownership as mediated by the planning system, creating a fragmented car-dependant pattern.

In historic towns and cities neighbourhoods are neither the stylized neat catchment zones of tradition nor the atomized housing units of the house-builders, but something much more organic: neighbourhoods blend into each other as part of a wider urban continuum. There are few firm edges but rather there is permeability between one area and another. Land use and social character are often much more diversified than more recent peripheral estates or new town neighbourhoods.

In this book ‘neighbourhood’ is defined as a residential or mixed use area around which people can conveniently walk. Its scale is geared to pedestrian access and it is essentially a spatial construct, a place. It may or may not have clear edges. It is not necessarily centred on local facilities, but it does have an identity which local people recognize and value. ‘Community’ is quite different. It is a social term which does not necessarily imply ‘local’. It means a network of people with common interests and the expectation of mutual recognition, support and friendship. While ‘interest’ communities of work, school, club or leisure activity normally do have a specific locational focus this is not necessarily the case (witness the rising tide of internet communication) and often that location has little to do with the home base. With high mobility and individual lifestyle choice propinquity is no longer a prerequisite for association. Nevertheless the locality may provide the focus for a number of overlapping and interacting interest communities or activities – children in school, scouts and guides, baby-sitting circles, surgeries, local shops, pubs, allotments, churches – which together with casual public realm meetings make for much more social interaction than the sum of the parts. In some contexts family or specific ethnic connections further reinforce this. However, ‘place community’ does not imply the existence of the discreet and cosy (or even claustrophobic) close-knit community of the traditional village. Rather a looser network of local association where neighbourhood is one of the common factors.

It is worth, then, distinguishing the different facets of neighbourhood. In the first place there is the functional neighbourhood: the locality seen as the base for home life, and perhaps for educational, retail, leisure and employment activities. This is typically a town planner’s view of neighbourhood. The loss of local activity and services is commonly seen by environmentalists, residents and government as a social and environmental problem.

The second perspective is the neighbourhood seen as a place, as an aesthetic experience, to do with its historic association as well as its sensuous quality, and linked to residents/users perceptions of their own ‘home’ territory. This is more the domain of the urban designer. Its importance has been redis-covered in recent years with the renewed emphasis on local distinctiveness and quality.

Thirdly there is the neighbourhood as the locus for community. Community is made by people, and people often belong to diverse interest-based communities which barely touch the locality. But many households also have locally-based activities which intertwine to give a sense of a local network of mutual support.

To a significant and damaging degree these three facets of neighbourhood are addressed by separate sets of professionals and separate literature, sometimes exacerbated by national boundaries. For example the American urban designers literature on new neighbourhoods is unfamiliar ground for most British planners, schooled in a more functional perspective which itself has been largely sidelined by market pressures and the sociological critique. But the reality is that all three perspectives are critically important in moving towards a more sustainable pattern of living. It is part of the purpose of the book to cultivate this more integrated view, grounded in a belief in sustainable development.

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Sustainable development is a phrase more honoured in the breach than in the observance. It is often used, with casual abandon, as if mere repetition delivers green probity. This is especially the case in relation to land use plans which lay claim to sustainability while promoting a continuation of established development patterns that, as we shall see, belie it. The phrase, ‘sustainable development’ is itself a paradox. It appears to put together two irreconcilable principles, that of environmental sustainability and economic development. Indeed this tension has led to two interpretations of sustainable development, one ecocentric, which puts global ecology first; one anthropocentric, which puts human well-being first. An ecocentric view leads to the identification of limits to population and economic growth, in the interest of sustaining and enhancing natural ecosystems (eg IUCN, 1991). Techniques of ‘environmental capacity’, take this starting point; and one widely-praised planning system – New Zealand’s Resource Management System – ostensibly works on this basis, putting biophysical issues first (Barton, 1997).

Conversely the most internationally accepted definition of sustainable development is people-centred: ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (WCED, 1987). The UK government puts it even more simply: ‘sustainable development is about ensuring a better quality of life for everyone, now and for generations to come’ (DETR, 1998d). Such definitions imply that we value the natural world not primarily for any abstract innate virtue it might have but because it is critical to our life support and we gain pleasure from it. So it is in our vital interest to ensure that the Earth’s life-enhancing and life-supporting qualities are not compromised.

At the extreme, these two standpoints may rationalize different strategies – contrast for example the priorities of the nature-loving ‘eco-warriors’ with those of local politicians favouring job creation. Both groups may appeal to sustainable development to justify their stance. But the point of the concept is to avoid polarized options and seek solutions that successfully marry human welfare and ecological robustness. The central purpose of this book is to examine the potential for just such a holistic approach at the level of the local community.

Carew-Reid et al (1994) produced a set of six principles which they suggest could provide the underpinning for sustainability laws and policy (see Box 1.1).

Local Agenda 21

The programme of action towards sustainable development launched by the 1992 ‘Earth Summit’ in Rio de Janeiro under the banner Local Agenda 21 (LA21) makes considerable play of the role of citizens and the importance of drawing all sectors of society into engagement with the goal. LA21 calls for participation of local communities in the process of development. It does not see such involvement going as far as citizen control (at the top of the ‘ladder’ of participation – Arnstein, 1969) but rather a process of devolution taking place within a framework set by the local authority (LGMB, 1992). Selman (1996) suggests that this active citizenship as advocated by LA21 is something of a ‘Pandora’s box’ for government at both levels, having to balance the need for political legitimacy and fairness with real ownership of the process by local people.

BOX 1.1 PRINCIPLES OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

• The public trust doctrine, which places a duty on the state to hold environmental resources in trust for the benefit of the public.

• The precautionary principle (erring on the side of caution) which holds that where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environment degradation.

• The principle of inter-generational equity, which requires that the needs of the present are met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

• The principle of intra-generational equity, stating that all people currently...