Explore Challenges
- Countryside in Crisis?
- The Energy Water Food Stress Nexus
- Unsustainable Fishing
- Keeping pace with a digital revolution
- Global health in the 21st Century
- Adapting to an urban future
- Educating for tomorrow
- Digital technology in Africa
- Persistent poverty in Britain
- Can the UK ever be sustainable?
- Plastic pollution in the oceans
- Natural disasters: how to improve?
- Not In My Back Yard
- Digital Divide in the UK?
- Importing goods, exporting drought?
- Britain’s ageing population
- Engineering our climate
- The future shape of Capitalism
- Migration: skills and the job market
- Razing the Rainforest
- London under water
- Concreting the countryside
- Future of low carbon energy
- Africa in the 21st Century
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Concreting the countryside
How should we accommodate the housing expansion in London and SE England? Should we be building on greenfield or brownfield land?
PROFESSOR PETER HALL
MARTIN CROOKSTON
SIMON JENKINS
- TALKS
- FOCUS
- 60 SECONDS
- INTERVIEWS
- NEWS
Tour of Staiths South Bank, Gateshead with Wayne Hemingway
A tour of the Staiths South Bank housing development in Gateshead with Wayne Hemingway
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Introduction by Simon Jenkins
Simon Jenkins, Guardian columnist and Chairman of National Trust, introduces the speakers Sir Peter Hall and Martin Crookston
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The Thames Gateway
Europe’s largest regeneration project, stretching 40 miles along the Thames Estuary
Four ‘eco-towns’ earmarked for government funds
- Source: BBC News
8th February 2010
Four "eco-towns" due to be built in England are to receive a funding boost of £60m to be spread over the next two years, the government has announced.
Taylor Wimpey new home orders swell by 28%
- Source: The Times
- 18th January 2010
Taylor Wimpey, the UK’s biggest housebuilder, today revealed it has entered the new year with a 28 per cent rise in orders for new homes as improved conditions and rising prices had enabled the group to reduce its debt.
Grey to green - new publication from CABE
- Source: CABE
- 26th November 2009
New CABE report on how we shift funding and skills to green our cities. Green infrastructure does not receive anything like the investment or management that goes into grey infrastructure.
Housebuilding figures down
- Source: Shelter
- 28th October 2009
Revised figures published today for the past 12 months to June 2009 show that housebuilding is in even greater decline than shown in previous government figures released in August.
Eco towns get green light despite local opposition
- Source: The Times
- 17th July 2009
Ministers gave approval yesterday for the building of four “pioneer” eco-towns and insisted that at least 10,000 homes would be in place by 2016 in the face of local opposition.
Four sites to become ‘eco towns’
- Source: BBC News
- 16th July 2009
The locations of four new "eco-towns" have been announced as part of scaled-down government plans. They are Rackheath, Norfolk; north west Bicester, Oxfordshire; Whitehill Bordon, East Hants; and the China Clay Community near St Austell, Cornwall.
No 10 denies ‘housing cash row’
- Source: BBC News
- 30th June 2009
Downing Street has denied reports that there is no agreement over funding for Gordon Brown's plan to build an extra 20,000 affordable homes in two years.
Eco-towns cannot go ahead without support of local community say townhalls
- Source: The Daily Telegraph
- 7th April 2009
Eco-towns could be illegal because of a failure to consult properly, according to legal advice given to town halls.
Eco-towns plan undermined by official report
- Source: Financial Times
- 25th March 2009
Gordon Brown’s plans for a generation of 10 new “eco-towns” have been further undermined after their financial prospects were questioned for the first time by the government’s own advisers.
Artificial trees and brightened clouds may help to cool us down
- Source: The Times
- 15th March 2009
Techniques for geo-engineering are coming under serious scrutiny as temperatures and CO2 emissions continue to rise
House prices ‘could fall by further 55 per cent’
- Source: The Daily Telegraph
- 12th March 2009
House prices may fall by a further 55 percent and there is a "very real probability" that Britain will be bankrupted, a leading investment bank has warned in a private note to clients.
Number of new homes ‘needs to more than double’ to meet population demand by 2031
- Source: The Daily Telegraph
- 11th March 2009
The number of new homes being built needs to more than double to meet population demand by 2031, official figures are likely to show today
MPs criticise housing department
- Source: BBC News
- 4th March 2009
A major Whitehall department lacks the skills needed to put vital policies into operation, MPs have said.
Build 100,000 affordable new homes in next two years, government told
- Source: The Guardian
- 23rd February 2009
Newly formed 2020 Group says building mroe homes would boost economy and save thousands of jobs
Quarter of UK homes to be offered green makeover
- Source: The Guardian
- 9th February 2009
More than one in four homes in the UK will be offered a complete eco-makeover under ambitious plans expected to be announced this week to slash fuel bills and cut global warming pollution.
Gordon Brown orders thousands of new council houses
- Source: The Times
- 30th January 2009
The biggest council house building programme since the 1950s was ordered by Gordon Brown yesterday as he urged town halls to rescue the construction industry and help to kick-start the economy.
Campaigners lose eco-towns appeal
- Source: BBC News
- 28th January 2009
Campaigners have lost a High Court challenge to the government's plans to build as many as 10 "eco-towns".
Fierce opposition forces Brown to shorten eco-towns shortlist
- Source: The Independent
- 12th January 2009
Only five proposals for environment-friendly settlements make the grade, officials say
Architect slams ‘dismal’ UK design
- Source: The Guardian
- 3rd December 2008
One of Prince Charles's allies in his battle against modern architecture has attacked the "disappointing to dismal" design of British postwar towns.
Boris Johnson to end London’s hobbit habit with 50,000 new homes
- Source: The Times
- 20th November 2008
The Mayor of London refused to scale back his housing targets despite gloom in the sector, because while times were “incredibly difficult”, it “doesn’t mean for a second that we should abandon our ambitions”.
New question marks over eco-towns
- Source: BBC News
- 4th November 2008
Nearly all the locations earmarked for new eco-towns have question marks about them, ministers have acknowledged.
The Environmental Audit Committee release new report on government housebuilding plans
- Source: www.parliament.uk
- 3rd November 2008
The Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) release 'Greener homes for the future? An environmental analysis of the Government’s housebuilding plans'
MPs say downturn could save greenfield land from developers
- Source: The Guardian
- 3rd November 2008
The government should revise its target to build 3m new homes by 2020 in the light of the economic downturn, which gives ministers a chance to save greenfield land from development, a committee of MPs says today.
Britain’s environmental heritage at risk, warns CPRE
- Source: Daily Telegraph
- 27th October 2008
Britain risks losing its "fabulous inheritance of landscape and wildlife" as the Government allows developments - including its flagship eco-town projects - to spring up across the countryside, the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) has warned
House building ‘at lowest level for 50 years’
- Source: The Daily Telegraph
- 3rd October 2008
The number of new homes being built in Britain has fallen to the lowest level for more than 50 years, research suggests
How do you know if it’s an eco-town?
- Source: www.cabe.org.uk
- 25th September 2008
The government’s eco-towns initiative has started a number of debates – about their size and the choice of locations, and how lessons from new towns can be applied to the existing built environment.
Eco-town project likely to go to High Court
- Source: The Daily Telegraph
- 11th September 2008
A judge has ruled that a judicial review of the whole eco towns programme should go ahead
Tesco pulls out of eco-towns project at Hanley Grange
- Source: The Times
- 29th August 2008
A quarter of the developers on the Government's shortlist of 15 eco-towns have now abandoned the schemes, which have prompted widespread protests.
An interview with the Housing Minister, Caroline Flint
- Source: The Times
- 27th July 2008
Government Housing Minister Caroline Flint says the 15 potential ‘eco-towns’ in the UK can provide more affordable housing in areas under pressure both in terms of supply and affordability, but admits some greenfield sites will be lost.
Housing and Regeneration Bill passed
- Source: www.parliament.uk
- 27th July 2008
The Housing and Regeneration Bill 2007-08 passed by Parliament in July aims to, among other things, reform social housing and social housing regulation, and support the delivery of 3 million new homes.
Millions more homes needed by 2020
- Source: The Daily Telegraph
- 26th June 2008
The Government has been told that in order to make housing more affordable 3.48 million new houses need to be built by 2020. The article details which areas are most in need of new affordable houses to be developed and how this should be approached.
Most ecotown sites ‘unsuitable’, say experts
- Source: The Guardian
Just one of the 12 sites competing to become one of Gordon Brown's ecotowns is currently considered suitable by the government's green consultants.