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There are fairly strong
national policies to cover the preservation of ecologically
valuable habitats and species in our cities.
The application of these
policies has tended to be based on an "island" approach -
one which involves drawing a line round an area of land, so
preserving it from development - an approach which takes no
account of the role of the surrounding land cover in the
continued existence of a particular habitat. In some cases,
where the natural topography dictates, these areas are in
the form of corridors, but they are still on the whole dealt
with by the planning process as if they are isolated
"islands" of relatively valuable habitat.
Conserving these
"islands" of land once they have been designated as of value
is much more haphazard - well done in some urban areas, but
neglected in others. National policies have so far been of
little help in this and where unscrupulous landowners have
let an area of land decline, often over several decades,
there have been many cases where once ecologically valuable
land has been reallocated as developable, at great profit to
the landowner.
There has been a general
presumption in planning policy for some time that "nature in
cities" is a good thing and wherever possible local
authorities have sought to protect areas identified as of
some ecological value. However, when up against the
employment prospects offered by those wishing to develop a
particular area of land, or the income prospects for a city
in allowing a taxable use of land, there is really little
contest. This is an area of planning with which local
pressure groups have been much involved as they vainly try
to protect their favourite areas of "rough" land.
In effect, long-term
landscape management and habitat conservation is haphazard
in many of our urban areas and most often in the hands of
the voluntary sector which has to raise private funds to
undertake any necessary work and sometimes even to purchase
the land. There are sad stories of local nature conservation
groups cherishing small areas of land only to find that "the
planners" let housing, roads or some other development take
over.
There are strong
national and now local policies in place to enhance
biodiversity, with performance indicators set out by the
DETR at national level. However, I would argue that the lack
of any overall planning framework concept such as "urban
greenstucture plans" means that the "island" and
"firefighting" approaches are still the norm in relation to
managing biodiversity in our cities. We lack a mechanism
which not only preserves the best of what is left of nature
in our urban areas, but also allows us to develop effective
city-wide strategies to enhance biodiversity through
utilising the full range of greenspaces in a city, including
the domestic gardens, industrial land and all private and
public agency land.
The rural fringe of most
cities is strongly defined in local planning documents, even
when "Green Belt" land is not so designated. There has been
much public debate in recent months in the many local
settlements being earmarked for expansion to meet the
present housing demand about whether development should be
allowed in rural fringe sites.
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In Denmark there are
national policies on the protection of valuable habitats
(Nature Conservancy Act 1992/1997). This refers to all
areas, so even if cities are not mentioned specifically,
they are generally included.
In rural zones, there
are preservation lines (dunes, forests, water bodies, etc.),
which do not apply within the existing urban zone. However,
together with preservation of valuable landscapes, they are
important in relation to urban growth in protecting these
zones and areas from urban development.This Act thus partly
determines the greenstructure in the newer parts of towns
and cities.
Another important Act is
the Urban and Rural Zones Act from 1970, which together with
the Nature Conservancy Act and the Planning Act (regional
and municipal planning - also originating from the 1970s),
has kept a clear demarcation between urban and rural areas,
which is characteristic for Denmark. The Acts ensure that
urban growth happens as a combined result of planning and
political interests.
The result is rarely an
"island" approach, but due to more linear valuable
landscapes (coastal, river valleys etc.) greenspaces are
more frequently wedges (e.g. the Copenhagen Finger plan).
Where natural landscape
features are rare, i.e.. there is no landscape to protect,
the fate of the new greenstructures in the urban growth
areas depends on the local city council.The municipality
itself determines the size, location, content and quality of
the designated green areas.
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Planning Policy issued
at national level:
Piano Territoriale di
Coordinamento - PTC
Co-ordination Land Plan
- (law n. 1150/1942); it can act as a landscape plan and
must take into account the following norms and policies
stemming from other specific plans:
- Piano Paesistico
(Landscape Plan) - (law n. 1497/1939 and following
modifications)
- Piano di Bacino
(Hydrographic Basins Plan - (law n. 183/1989)
- Piano per il Parco
(Parks Plan) - (law n. 394/1991); it is an attuative and
political tool, it defines natural protected
areas
- Norms for special
areas, as mountain areas.
Plan issues at
provincial level:
Piano Territoriale
Provinciale - PTP
Provincial Land Plan -
(law n. 1150/1942); an intermediate planning tool between
Regions and Municipalities
There is little about
nature within cities.
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Under the new Planning
Policy Guidelines 2000 it is anticipated that there will be
instructions to local authorities to retain and maintain all
officially designated Parks, Public Squares, Recreation
Grounds and Playing Fields (many of the latter have already
been sold to be built over in the past decade). there is
also a recognition at last that we need to enhance the
social and cultural value of these official "Urban Open
Spaces".
However, these
officially designated Public Open Spaces are only a small
part of the "greenspaces" of our cities and the "unofficial
greenspaces" are likely to continue to be under pressure
from developers under this new Planning Policy Guidance.
Coupled with the stress on densification as a means to cope
with our very high housing demand - estimated at plus 1.4
million homes over the next 20 years - this leaves many more
"naturalistic" city landscapes vulnerable to developers.
There are several instances of recent local planning
enquiries where developers have won the right to build on
"greens" of long-term standing, just because they have never
been officially designated as "Public Open Space" by the
local authority even though they have been well used by the
local people as recreation spaces.
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The Danish Ministry of
Housing and Urban Affairs has in a recent action plan for
urban policies included the urban green by promoting nature
in cities a separate action area, the pursuit of which is
currently being discussed in the ministry.
The Danish Ministry of
Energy and Environment has in their 1999 (annual) account
included policies on nature and environment. These state
that existing urban green spaces must be protected and
developed, large as well as small local green spaces, and
that nature ("wild" and "manicured") must be better
integrated as part of the municipal planning as well as that
urban allotment areas must be protected.
However, greenspaces in
other land use areas than public open space, e.g.. in
residential and industrial zones, are not protected in the
same way. They are only protected by municipal regulation on
maximum building density and open space requirements, which
may be changed by the local plan procedure. These
"secondary" greenspaces, which frequently comprise large
parts of the urban greenstructure, are never visible in the
formal greenstructure plans, and thus - except for a few
fine municipal exceptions - have little political interest
so far.
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In Italy, main task
could be parks management; according to their dimension and
location they could be managed by different authorities, for
instance, in the case of Rome, there are municipal parks,
provincial parks, regional parks.
A design unit that can
be identified by "open spaces" does not exist, neither at
legal nor at spatial management level; so open spaces have
no specific rules, but they can be planned according to the
above mentioned Ministry Decree n. 1444/1968, at national
level, or to PPI law, at local level.
Planning issues at
municipal level are covered by:
- Piano Regolatore
Generale - PRG
Urban Master Plan - (law
n. 1150/1942); it foresees several planning tools; among
them:
Piani Particolareggiati
- (Specific Plans) - (law n. 1150/1942 and following
modifications); for what concerns urban spaces and green
design, we can refer only to urban planning standards
(Ministry Decree n. 1444/68) where the minimum standards for
facilities and public spaces per inhabitant are defined;
moreover, for what concerns parking spaces , the main tool
is law n. 122/1989 (the so- called Legge
Tognoli).
Piani di settore
(Sectorial plans) - these are plans with specific goals,
including aspects related to green.
Programma Pluriennale di
Attuazione - PPA (Long-term Attuative Plan) - it can last
3-5 years
Programmi Integrati di
Intervento - PPI
Integrated Interventions
Programs (law n. 179/1992) - these are programs for the
upgrading of the building and of the environmental contexts,
that can be promoted and approved by each municipality; they
cannot be subordinated to PPAs; in them special issues
are:
-the soils plan -
qualitative enhancement of public and private outdoor spaces
-the area plan/ the
urban rehabilitation program - they concern works aimed at
carrying out, managing and upgrading public areas, also with
regards to urban furniture
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The special urban
landscapes of the older Parks and Residential areas as well
as City Centres which survived the devastation of 1960s
planning practice have been well protected for several
decades by policies allowing them to have Conservation Area
status. However, the lack of money at the local authority
level to maintain these landscapes and in the case of
housing the lack of a mechanism to enforce maintenance by
landowners has led in many cities to a continuing
deterioration in their visual quality.
In the case of Urban
parks this deterioration has been associated with social
problems which have alienated the local people from use of
the parks. It is understood that both these issues are being
addressed in the new planning policy guidance.
Many Parks are at
present being revitalised using a mixture of EU funding,
Heritage funding from the State Lottery and locally raised
funds. However, the problem of how to pay for their
maintenance after the rehabilitation has rarely been
properly addressed so the high cost approach that has
resulted from this system may well backfire - few of the
redesigns appear to have taken sustainabilty
seriously.
Again the lack of an
overarching concept in relation to "Greenstructure" has
meant that each of these rehabilitated parks has been done
as an isolated project rather than as part of an overall
strategy for a city which would have included the financial
aspects of the long term maintenance of city owned open
spaces.
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Apart from what has
already been said above, densification within an existing
area or renovation projects (including open space
renovation) often leads to loss of landscape and loss of
mature trees.
This deterioration in
local urban landscape quality is due to partly lack of
knowledge about tree growth, but also partly because of the
way in which the contracts are organised. The actions of the
various subcontractors and their professional advisers are
not properly co-ordinated and the actual economic spending
for the different parts of the job not properly balanced so
that landscape work is not properly funded. Also in relation
to tree stands in especially housing developments we
experience a problem of neglect of necessary pruning of
trees which mitigates against proper development of large
trees and stands of large trees.
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There are no national
policies, but in some cases local ones, according to PPI
directions. Particular spatial configurations,
representative of historical values or local landmarks (for
instance the Pine tree and the panorama of the Gulf of
Naples), are safeguarded as "Natural Beauties", by law n.
1497/1939. According to this direction, a very recent law
set the "status" of monument for old, historical
trees.
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There is no policy in
England and Wales with regard to urban greenstructure
planning. the concept is missing from the Planning
System.
The lack of
greenstructure planning in England has been all too obvious
this week in England when vast acres of new housing,
industry and shopping built on floodplains has been
inundated! The cost to society of not having greenstructure
planning a part of which would have identified the
floodplains as land not to built over - is immense. The
insurance bills for this week will be economically damaging
never mind the very large number of home owners who now
discover they own unsaleable houses.!
The curious thing is
that a version of "Greenstructure Planning" did operate from
the 1950s to the early 1970s in the planning of the British
New Towns - all of which had Landscape Plans which were
based on a thorough study of the local natural and physical
environment. The result was that the built-up areas of most
new towns strongly reflected the local topography - keeping
well clear of the valleys - the floodable land as well as
preserved the most valuable natural habitats within the
designated area boundaries incorporating them where possible
into the linked greenspaces system which was another
by-product of almost all the landscape plans produced for
these new settlements.
The concept that
governed the spatial layout of the New Towns - that the
physical and natural environment should determine the
arrangement of the "built form" needs to be urgently
revisited and rethought. I would suggest locally appropriate
"Greenstructure Plans" are the means to do this. The
original concept can now be updated in light of our
increased understanding of the need to act sustainably in
our interaction with the natural and physical environment -
issues relating to biodiversity and climate change as well
as our increasing understanding of how human attitudes and
behaviour patterns are influenced by nearby greenspaces need
to be integral to such plans.
For such "Greenstructure
Plans" to be effective they need to be of equal importance
to a town's Infrastructure Plans and its Economic and Social
plans in the decision making process. In addition the last
week's flooding has shown us that any effective "Urban
Greenstructure Plan" will have to take into account a city's
impact on areas of land well beyond city boundaries both
upstream and downstream.
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The Planning Act ensures
that that municipal planning provides the objectives for the
development and land use of the municipality, including
"Greenstructure". However, Greenstructure here just means
the public open spaces and does not include all the other
greenspaces which make up a city.
The municipality itself
determines the size, location, content and quality of these
designated greenspaces. Once laid out as green area in the
land use plan, these areas cannot be built on without a
local planning procedure which involves public
participation. This means, that it is fairly difficult, but
not impossible to change the landuse. We have seen examples
where parks, allotment gardens and forest areas have been
imposed on or eradicated by public buildings, housing or
infrastructure developments.
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There is no urban
Greenstructure Planning in Italy. There are however some
examples of large "green" systems which are protected such
as as fluvial parks within cities, and so on.
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