Who killed the eco-town?

Architects' Journal

Eco-towns are dead. Architects, planners and developers alike are asking: who killed them?

Gordon Brown wanted to unveil plans for 10 carbon-neutral communities that would deliver up to 200,000 new homes on cheap government-owned land in the greenbelt by 2020.  The idea was that the eco-towns would be so enthusiastically received that they could simply be parachuted into existing local authority development plans and fast-tracked through the system so that building could get started as quickly as possible. Developers flocked to get involved in what they saw as a great commercial opportunity – all in the name of being green.

For better or for worse, this grand plan is not going to happen. What is going to happen is that, early next month, the government will announce, with great fanfare, the location of Britain’s first ‘eco-towns’. One that will definitely make the cut is Rackheath, a 3,500-home scheme on a former Ministry of Defence site in Norfolk. Another that is strongly tipped to come on stream is St Austell, a 5,000-home scheme on the site of a former china clay pit in Cornwall. Both proposals are local authority-led and are in existing development plans.

But these are not the brave new ‘Brown’s towns’ that were envisaged. ‘Rackheath and St Austell have some possibility of being built,’ said a source close to the eco-towns initiative. ‘Most of the others are absolutely dead in the water. You will never get a development of 10,000-plus homes anywhere in England and drop it out of the sky without a consultation process.’

So what went wrong? One person close to the scheme, who does not wish to be named, says: ‘It goes something like this. Someone told the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG): “Why don’t you propose greenfield sites in the middle of nowhere and call them eco-towns. It will be a great way of beating the system and getting over regional planning guidance”.’

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