green planning 1996

introduction

On 17 January 1996, the Scottish Ecological Design Association held a Green Planning conference in Glasgow as part of The Planning Exchange seminar series of continuing education for planners. Attended by 60 participants and speakers, the event surveyed aspects of today’s green agenda. Sustainable development may have become a talisman of the times, but what does it signify for planners in practical terms? Are the changes that planning can influence any more than just marginal? If only long term results are possible, are tidal forces in the development process, or ways in which we are using the environment, remorselessly carrying these advantages away? Are cultural changes going to be more important than policy ones? And are people informed and empowered to unlock the resources and enterprise which can make a difference in their own locality? The papers that follow set out to look at these issues. SEDA is founded in the belief that environmental understanding and design can make a difference, but our perspective needs realism as well as enthusiasm.

So the proceedings begin with David Jarman’s sharp reminder that meeting local needs locally depends on more than the simple disposition of land uses. His personal view of Sustainable development from theory to practice exposes the difficulties of transposing city-centric and rural ideas of sustainability to in-between areas like West Lothian where most new growth occurs. We may seek to reduce the need for travel. But travel by car he points out, whether to work, to school, to shop, or to leisure activity, has come to be valued in itself, with a vast web of journeys disposed over an almost infinite number of origins and destinations.

David Jarman says that deflecting this inherited momentum of personal preference will take more than the little we can do under existing powers to rearrange development locations or transport infrastructure. It is, he argues, more a matter of education in community benefits, and going with the grain of awareness, acceptance and self-interest. And he suspects that society will only adapt to threats to its existing lifestyle when it meets them nose-to-window. He elaborates on the distinction between hard and soft sustainability. He suggests some hard new powers for government to consider. Planning authorities, he reckons, will be left to juggle with softer issues which are difficult to be definite about. They may be able to justify decisions in sustainability terms only on rare occasions where site-specific reasons can be found.

Picking up the issues raised in his paper, from lowland crofting to central Scotland’s place in Europe, David Jarman would argue of course that planning is no mere controlling mechanism. It can have the power to inspire and transform. To see how sustainable development policies can be made effective, we can look at a ready-made example, where a planning authority has used the language of design to transform negative forces into positive ones. It shows how fair and consistent controls are welcomed when it can be demonstrated vividly that there are practical ways of doing things better.

Five years ago, Moray District found itself up against a threat to its local environment; massive numbers of applications for new houses in the countryside, with no consistent policy basis on which to determine them. The story of how this was turned round is the subject of Paul McTernan and Nick Brown‘s presentations on putting green planning policy in place.

Paul McTernan’s paper gives us a fascinating insight into the difference that clear planning and design policies can make. Slow decisionmaking, inconsistent decisions and a rash of unsympathetic housing development across the district -these were Moray’s lot in 1990. The Chief Reporter wrote of “near Delphic policies for rural development control which have given rise to an increased number of appeals from aggrieved applicants... ...policies invite the suspicion that rural applications are determined by prejudice, favour or caprice.” The planning response was to put in place a new strategy strongly focused on the community’s stated aim of regeneration and protection of the natural environment. This would give development controllers a proper set of tools to work with. As Paul McTernan says: ”we felt we had to raise expectation levels, embrace new advancements in building technology and ecological design and move the entire debate into the realm of the 21st century”. The planning response made full use of local expertise. Summers were spent in village halls and community centres exploring what policy would work to safeguard local welfare and environment. Councillors, community councils and associations helped to identify boundaries, development opportunities and amenity areas for the 73 rural communities and gave local advice on practical points of ground conditions and drainage. Consultation was also sought with every agent and architect in the District. The strategy has been clearly explained and illustrated, with applicants encouraged to recycle derelict sites and reuse existing infrastructure. Paul McTernan’s paper describes results that speak for themselves. More is now approved, and more quickly, because the standard of applications has been transformed.

Moray’s approach emphasises rural communities and the reuse of derelict sites and buildings. But new housing in the open countryside is not prohibited, and Nick Brown’s paper takes us inside the design philosophy which informs the policies and illustrations of the Moray plan. “A designer, like a cook, has to establish his ingredients and recipe.” Nick Brown wants us to focus on qualities, not on the minute detail of solitary elements. He describes the major issues for Moray and explores the inner meaning of vernacular architecture. What he seeks is a mindshift, a radical change in housing design practice where the priorities are regard, respect and integration, not “decorative bedroom balcony with panoramic views”, or ”arched entranceway with optional bullnosed reconstituted stone panels.” When, he asks, will a main elevation again openly greet the visitor, with a front door which says “do come in” as opposed to “welcome to my double garage”?

One of the most notable results of the Moray design initiative has been the effect on designs submitted, and Paul McTernan and Nick Brown showed plenty of examples of these. The next paper presented in Glasgow was an illustrated one which likewise stressed the indivisibility of design and place. In preparing proposals, how does a designer respond to ideas about sustainable development?

Michael Thornley is an architect who attended the 1994 Battleby conference on Energy conservation and sustainability issues in a Scottish context organised by RIAS, EDAS and SEDA (see notes on page 71). His presentation on Green Schemes: projects at Whinhill and Kinlochleven concludes that green initiatives are unlikely to succeed without the full participation of the users in the planning process, and that emotional and spiritual issues should not be ignored in the drive towards the functional and economic justifications for green planning. Michael Thornley describes the thinking behind his approach to these projects. Both projects are at the initial, concept stages and may or may not be implemented.

At the start of the Green Planning afternoon session, the twin concepts of ecology and economics are brought together by Gordon Cox of Tweed Horizons in his paper on Sustainable business. As business manager of this centre for sustainable technology promoted by Scottish Borders Enterprise, he has tried to realize the links between environmental concern and economic development. The sustainable development agenda is very firmly established, not something quirky, he argues, and so we should see sustainable development targets as real business opportunities. The centre at Tweed Horizons aims to capitalise on these opportunities for the future benefit of the Borders and of Scotland. Gordon Cox takes us through some of its achievements and potential.

Howard Liddell and Drew Mackie of Gaia Planning present the next paper: Energy conservation and planning which parallels their approach to a recent study commissioned by The Scottish Office. Although individual planners and local authorities may be aware of a responsibility to encourage energy conservation, the speakers find no commonly accepted way forward. Their presentation covers some of the key themes they identify as most important, and offers a matrix of planning levels and topics where action through the planning system could be valuable. Liddell and Mackie describe promising possible actions under a number of heads: the form of development (Landscape, landform, layout and built form); transport, mixed use; optimising compactness (without overlooking the inevitable complications); regeneration and reuse; agency coordination; energy partnerships; local energy management; education and auditing. They point out that much of the work on the relation of urban form and energy use centres on transport issues, and warn that planners will need to take a broader view if energy conservation is to become a fully effective concept in day-to-day work. Planners will also need to find ways of talking about sustainability that are accessible to the general public who must start to own these ideas if they are to be effective - simple rules of thumb that allow local people to judge projects “in terms of how they improve or damage local sustainability.” Starting with professional education, they argue, energy conservation must become a normal part of planning not the special preserve of experts. And they see Local Agenda 21 as giving a new framework that can be used as a base for actions and initiatives.

The next paper is from Islington’s Ian Crawley, who had addressed RTPI’s Training Conference on Are You Delivering Quality? at the Strathclyde Business School in 1993. At that time, he had told his audience: “Lets not kid ourselves. Planning in particular, and local government in general, deserved much of the flak it received in the 80s.” Why? Along with a couple of other reasons, because planning was secretive, the public were excluded, and people had few rights and were unaware of even these. He had thrown in the story unfavourably comparing the average Council office with McDonalds: “McDonalds is bright and clean, they always seem to be open, service is prompt, the staff is helpful and polite and always apologise when they are unable to answer problems.” What can this speaker tell us today about steps to enable local communities to become more involved in environmental decisions? Local empowerment is a crucial issue for green planning, a key plank of the agreements by world governments at Rio. One approach to these issues is set out here in Ian Crawley’s paper, Agenda 21 and local empowerment. Scottish readers thinking about schemes for decentralisation will be interested in Islington’s 12 multi-service Neighbourhood Offices each serving around 15,000 residents and each with a Neighbourhood Forum, annually elected. They may also be intrigued by the use of officer delegation as a way to involve local groups in decisionmaking. “For example, I have 100% delegated powers for planning applications if a Forum’s Planning Sub-Group accepts my recommendation. If not, and a compromise cannot be agreed, the report is referred to the Council’s Development Sub-Committee for decision.”

Tim Birley, Director of the Centre for Human Ecology at the University of Edinburgh, presents the final paper Sustainable development: a positive agenda for planners. With a long record of interest in sustainable development, both in academic work and government service, Tim Birley is emphatically positive without underestimating the difficulties. Like Gordon Cox, he argues that sustainable development is mainstream and increasingly part of our day to day business. Like Patrick Geddes, he wants us to keep our sights on the bigger picture, while taking all the small, practical steps we can to make a difference. Sustainable development means widening the scope of consideration in any decision. It means thinking about a long timespan. This is what planning is all about, too. Planning can’t claim responsibility for all of the sustainable development agenda. But it is in a special position, says Tim Birley, because of its statutory basis within the democratic process. And the kind of policies which have been at the heart of our planning system in Scotland will be reinforced by and aligned with sustainable development. Tim Birley sees special opportunities for planners to engage with sustainable development issues. The first is through the establishment of the unitary authorities in Scotland. The second is through the Local Agenda 21 process and its related potential for partnerships. Local Agenda 21 will mean forming links with neighbouring authorities, with other public agencies, with the business community, and with other interest groups, to find shared ways forward. Tim Birley sees big potential here for remotivating the profession.

Illustrations which informed some of the presentations on the day cannot be printed here, but Colin Ward’s address to the SEDA AGM is intended to more than compensate. Thanks to the participation of the Planning Exchange and the efficiency of their organiser for the event, Jacqueline Balloch, it was a pleasure for me to set up and chair this Green Planning conference on behalf of SEDA. With a bow to Patrick Geddes and Rocco Forte, we can all thank participants and speakers for making the day so worthwhile. Read the papers and see what you think.

· Roger Kelly is a principal planner with The Scottish Office Development Department.

GREEN PLANNING papers presented in Glasgow on 17 January 1996

david jarman

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT - THEORY TO PRACTICE

A personal view from Scotland’s Central Belt

There are no original ideas and sustainable development is a new label on an old bottle. In 1972 for example, the President of the RIBA, Alex Gordon, launched a seminal campaign under the banner Long Life, Low Energy, Loose Fit. This still encapsulates what sustainable building and design should be about. As a green student in Sheffield at the time, I wrote a brilliant article for the back page of Planning newspaper, applying this philosophy to our field. I sat back awaiting response and acclaim. Reaction : nil.

Only slightly daunted by this little object lesson, I have been trying to put green planning principles into practice in a typical non-city slice of Central Scotland ever since. Present state of balance sheet : rather heavily in the red I fear. In other words, I have promoted or been party to a tidal wave of pretty mediocre and inherently unsustainable development, while only securing a smattering of quite tiny and marginal steps towards a more diverse and self-sufficient environment and economy in West Lothian. O mea culpa. No wonder I have a split persona, with my public actions for the community I serve quite at odds with my private values and the causes I espouse elsewhere in Scotland.

Of course, there is a very good justification for this state of affairs, and its name is economic development. When a traditional mining and manufacturing area is hit by deindustrialisation, the lame ducks have their necks wrung, and unemployment touches second worst in lowland Scotland, then high-minded thinking for the longer term goes out of the window. All development that creates jobs and activity is good development (and might sustain communities that would otherwise disintegrate socially).

Now the wheel has turned again, the phrase “sustainable development” has reached us, our unemployment is happily back down to the national average, and we have less excuse not to take that longer view. But what do we make of it?

First, a criticism deflector : I am consciously not going to try and define “sustainable development”, nor give its pedigree in planning history or official guidance. Practising planners are far too busy to research these things; they assimilate the concept from odd journals and seminars, and get on with using it as another convenient piece of jargon in their daily wars of words.

In fact and slightly to my surprise, my colleagues do not make an awful lot of it. They are all aware of it, and feel it has vaguely positive, unthreatening connotations, a good thing to be associated with. But they do not see it as directly relevant to the actual planning tasks they are engaged in. It is rather difficult to incorporate in 98% of our development control decisions, whether as a condition, a reason for refusal, or even a planning gain. Or in negotiations with Local Enterprise Companies over environmental improvement schemes. Or even in the legally-scrutinised text of most policies in our local plans, in any way that has real meaning and added value. We are swimming along with sustainable development as if it were a warm bath - very comforting, but doesn’t get you very far.

My own acquaintance with sustainable development was at this slender feel-good level until a year ago, when by chance John Thomson at Scottish Natural Heritage invited me to be “the district planner” at a think-in on the subject. This panicked me into a private brainstormer to dredge up some thoughts to contribute : and very much to my surprise they were all of the Emperor’s new clothes variety. In mulled-over form, here they are. As a deliberate provocation to debate and an antidote to conventional wisdom, I stand by them : please do not take this to mean that I am opposed to the underlying aspirations. My argument is over the role of planners and the planning system, with the means at our disposal.

Key thought: Planning for sustainable development is essentially a city-focused or city-centric concept; or it is a concept for remote areas and isolated communities. It is much harder to apply to the in-between areas, where the growth is nearly all happening. Discuss.

PLANNING SUSTAINABLE LOCATIONS FOR EMPLOYMENT

Time was when business and industry were intimately mixed with where people lived, because most people had to walk to work. One of planning’s great achievements was to unravel all this. Thus in West Lothian we have Livingston new town with large industrial estates dispersed around its periphery as far removed from housing as possible, and almost impossible to serve by public transport.

Our recent notable inward investment successes have featured large high-tech factories on green field sites close to motorway junctions and not served by regular bus services : Sun near Linlithgow, Digital near Queensferry, Motorola near Bathgate. Each has a vast employee car park. More such sites are being promoted. (Of course, Motorola has a sustainable long-life building, and employs a lot of people to make a low-material-content high-value-added reasonably-durable product which might reduce unnecessary travel, but that is not a planning matter).

Beyond West Lothian, on the edge of Edinburgh, a great new concentration of potential employment is emerging at the Gyle / Edinburgh Park. The radial bus routes from West Lothian do not detour through it. It is seen as inaccessible to non-car owners. It may acquire a railway station - but only once much of the workforce has got used to travelling to work by car on the new M8 extension.

Of course, many West Lothian residents enjoy excellent access to Edinburgh city centre by train and bus and were able to travel sustainably to work at the Scottish Office - until it moved to Leith (with a vast employee car park and no Metro).

What can we do? Altering this geographical inheritance of valuable fixed investment is a practical impossibility so long as workforces are predominantly organised in offices and factories. The stock of sites for future employment development in West Lothian is already owned and serviced for the next decade in similar dispersed locations. Neither the Lothian Structure Plan 1994 nor our Local Plans have anything to say on more sustainable locations; nor could they be expected to other than in a tokenistic manner.

PLANNING SUSTAINABLE SETTLEMENT PATTERNS

People have an astonishingly elastic propensity to travel - whether to work, or for other purposes. Travel is widely regarded as an acceptable, even pleasurable activity - especially in your own car with your own comforts, communications and sound system. It might even be seen as a “displacement activity” - an apparently purposeful way of spending time which postpones actually doing something more positive. People will therefore quite happily contemplate travelling an hour or more to work, whether they are covering 60 miles in that time or sitting in traffic jams for most of it.

For so long as this attitude to travel time prevails, and for so long as the right to travel is not rationed or restrained, it will be quite futile to plan sustainable settlement patterns, in the hope that balanced residential and employment development will reduce the total volume of travel to work.

Livingston new town has achieved an almost exact balance of working population and employment opportunities, quite remarkably. However all this effort is undone by the fact that half the residents commute out, and half the workforce commutes in, mostly by car. This could have been predicted from the early experience of the English garden cities, which despite their commendable promotion of industry also took care to locate on the main railways radiating from London - to which many of their people have always commuted.

In West Lothian, care has been taken over many years to promote higher quality housing opportunities for the managers of the new industries. So the top people at Motorola travel from east Fife, Largs, Pitlochry, Abington, and Helensburgh - at the last count only one lived in West Lothian.

As well as in-car quad stereo, socio-economic factors which militate against planned endeavours to reduce car travel to work include:

· The growth of two-career households, whose workplaces may be 50 (or 500) miles apart.

· The growth of early returns to work, requiring parents to travel to a place of childcare or school as well as a place of work (often impractical by public transport).

· The greater frequency of job changes, thus negating any initial decision to live close to work.

· Even for those who stay with one employer, the growing tendency to relocate periodically, to operate from multiple locations (hot-desking around them), to expect staff to do business on the road, to operate flexible hours.

· The growing proportion of self-employed, small firms and consultants who take their business to the customer rather than operate from a fixed base.

· The growing tendency to add other trip purposes onto the return from work - the supermarket, the cinema, the sports centre.

To what extent do we as planners, thinking of sustainable settlement patterns, still instinctively envisage the traditional head of household travelling in by train at a set time from his suburban home to the bank headquarters in the city where he will always work, and the traditional female shop assistant travelling in on the bus to the city centre store?

The reality in central Scotland is of a vast web of journeys dispersed over almost infinite permutations of origins and destinations, and over time, for a diverse range of purposes. A proportion of these journeys will statistically always be conducive to walking, cycling, lift-sharing, or public transport. However, the massive and accelerating dispersal of employment, housing and other activities since the war, together with the falling real cost of motoring, make the vast majority of non-local movements car-dependent for the foreseeable future. Efforts now to plan the location of new development to reduce travel need can only have the most marginal of impacts on this supertanker of inherited momentum.

There appear to be two counter-arguments to justify such planning endeavours. One derives from the law of intervening opportunities - that given equal qualities, people will choose the nearer destination - and thus that if things are concentrated closer to each other, total travel will be less. I would like to see this transport modelling approach verified by empirical research: if we plan a new housing estate opposite a high-tech factory, you can predict that next to none of the house purchasers will actually work there. People are not naturally loyal to their most local supermarket, hence the need for Clubcards. Nor do they necessarily follow the nearest football team. More seriously, this theory may work in the case of the isolated city with surrounding small towns and suburbs (although the surge of long-distance travel around Inverness belies this), but not in a complex urban region such as Central Scotland where people from Fife commute to West Lothian and West Lothian residents shop in Edinburgh, Glasgow or Stirling at will. In other words, the simple spatial model is negated by extreme elasticity of demand for travel, by unpredictable outcomes of interacting locational decisions, by inflexibility of residential location making it difficult to adjust rapidly to changes in the location of journey attractors, and by sheer cussed human behaviour : it seems that people actually prefer not to live too close to their work - that has the wrong social status, as if the grass has to be greener 20 miles away.

The other counter-argument is the Doomsday one : even if you can swan about freely now, you’ll be jolly glad we planned your homes near the shops and offices when the petrol runs out or the climate goes off the scale. Leaving aside how mummy-knows-best arguments might be defended on appeal, the reality is that society will adapt to such threats only when confronted nose-on-windscreen with them, whether physically or through the price mechanism. Obvious adaptations will include:

· More remote housing losing value or being taken up by telecommuters;

· Intensification of occupancy of centrally-located premises and sites;

· Changing habits to reduce travel frequency and distance, such as shopping by touch-screen or more locally, social networks shrinking geographically, further growth of home entertainment.

A SUSTAINABLE LOTHIAN STRUCTURE PLAN?

The 1994 Structure Plan has to propose a settlement strategy to meet the possible demand for another 30,000 houses in Lothian. All other issues are really secondary and consequential : it tacitly acknowledges that strategic decisions on transportation, economic development and other infrastructure are made elsewhere and to a different timescale of politics and quango contracts. It does not pretend to be a fully integrated development strategy (since this is impossible in a mixed economy) and cannot therefore seek to be fully sustainable.

Its chief proposal is a major incursion into the Green Belt, taking out the South-east Sector. The Secretary of State’s proposed Modifications leave this proposal essentially intact. At first sight, this is the most sustainable location for 5,000 houses, as close as possible to Edinburgh city centre. In the absence of any rail route in this sector, or of any prospect for a Metro, the Plan relies on radial bus routes for sustainable transport. There is however no analysis (despite requests in consultation) of the way the private housing estates of outer Edinburgh actually function today. In the absence of any major new employment in the sector - the proposed General Hospital is a relocation of the Royal Infirmary, to which many existing staff will no doubt travel without moving - it is perfectly possible that a large proportion of its residents will commute by car round the City Bypass to Leith, or Maybury, or further afield rather than to the city centre by bus. This will only exacerbate pressure for widening the Bypass to six lanes. The alternative, as also for innumerable non-work purposes, will be uncontrollable rat-running through the suburbs.

It is interesting to speculate whether deliberately locating 5,000 houses in a free-standing settlement at a railhead some miles beyond the city would be just as sustainable in overall travel terms, and would influct much less “traffic cramming” on the suburbs within the Bypass.

The main effect of the Secretary of State’s proposed Modifications has however been to make it much harder to locate new housing close to railway stations. This is because the Plan made the tactical error of naming the vocal, well-heeled communities of Currie and Longniddry as favoured candidates. He blows cold on major development being rail-served as a prerequisite, and remarkably advocates express bus routes as just as acceptable. Given that under deregulation these can come and go at the operator’s whim, no-one is going to invest in a house on the strength of an express bus being there in 5 years time. (Or does this make their provision as a Section 50 requirement acceptable and in perpetuity?).

New settlements are almost off the Structure Plan agenda anyway because of the market downturn, but the Modifications perhaps wisely blur the distinction between them and planned expansions. There has to be a large question mark placed over the willingness or ability of the private sector to forward fund the primary school and other infrastructure for a village of 5,000, let alone the secondary school on top for the settlement of 10,000 which current opinion has it is the minimum for sustainability in terms of some local self-sufficiency. For so long as scattered incremental growth can be eked out without any one developer having to pick up the tab for crossing a big infrastructure threshold (a Trunk Sewer?!), this will be the unplanned pattern of settlement - and no doubt as sustainable as any other.

PLANNING FOR SUSTAINABLE RETAIL & LEISURE DEVELOPMENT

West Lothian is the second largest non-city district in Scotland (148,000). It has no sub-regional shopping centre within it or even close.

Livingston’s Almondvale expansion will bring it to only 400,000 square feet, anchored by BhS/Asda. All our residents therefore have to travel 10-30 miles for their higher-order shopping, to Edinburgh, Falkirk, or the Gyle (which with its M&S is still not of course a recognised sub-regional centre, it just draws trade from the west half of the Region).

On the face of it then to approve a Factory Outlet Centre in West Lothian is not only good for the local economy and well attuned to local consumers’ needs, it is also highly sustainable. Or is it? It has been heavily attacked in planning (not community) circles as undermining existing centres (which draw their trade from West Lothian), and as not being bus or rail-accessible. It is criticised as inessential, frivolous leisure shopping, daytrip bargain hunting, burning fuel on a needless run down the motorway, in contrast to the serious business of dragging the kids in on the bus to purchase white shirts and black shoes in Princes Street. It would now be taboo under the Retailing NPPG and the Modifications which reverse the Structure Plan’s support for the concept.

But hold on. Are we not daily urged by our LECs, Tourist Boards and politicians to promote leisure and tourist developments in pleasant rural locations? Country Parks, Heritage Centres, Holiday Villages, motor rally circuits, new out of town football stadia, and of course those elusive private funded Theme Parks such as Legoland - we must have chased half a dozen such concepts in West Lothian alone, and are still pursuing feasibility studies for a major leisure project. Car-served almost exclusively - even out of town shopping centres tend to spawn regular bus and coach services.

Why is a family or a bunch of friends in a car on a weekend shopping-for-pleasure trip wrong, but on a weekend trip to Deep Sea World or Culzean House right? If West Lothian’s Factory Outlet Centre does go ahead at Westwood, as approved, perhaps we can measure the distances people drive to it - and ask them where else they normally go at weekends. For most people in Central Scotland it will be a shorter journey than going to the seaside. And if society regards the mark of a successful Sunday as a run in the car to somewhere at least an hour away where they can spend a few quid, what right does the planning system have to arbitrarily restrict their choice and type of destination on “sustainability” grounds?

Stray thought: Some of the most sustainable people are the unhealthy computer nerds and Internet freaks. Some of the least sustainable are the mountaineers and ornithologists who drive hundreds of miles at weekends to bag a Munro or twitch a rare bird, after religiously cycling to work all week.

LOWLAND CROFTING - SUSTAINABLE RURAL DEVELOPMENT?

No discourse on West Lothian is complete without this pioneering initiative, which is actually endorsed by the Structure Plan and even more warmly supported by the Secretary of State’s proposed Modifications.

It was heavily criticised by colleagues in Strathclyde for being, among many other crimes, unsustainable - an excuse for suburban lifestyles in the countryside. Leaving aside energy-efficient buildings, woodlands, and reed beds to focus on travel, the interesting question is whether the crofters make the same number and type of journeys as town-dwellers, but travel more miles, or whether they spend the same number of hours in their several cars and 4-wheeldrives, thus making less short repetitive journeys to collect little Johnny or a forgotten item of shopping. Research is needed.

Already half of them are running some kind of business from their crofts - is this good, in reducing peak hour journeys to city work, or bad in generating business traffic in country lanes? There are no easy answers in sustainable thinking.

PLANNING FOR TRANSPORT

Ten years ago we reopened the railway to Bathgate. The consultants predicted that it would draw 300,000 passengers a year, mainly from the buses, some from cars. In fact it carries three times that number, without reducing the frequency of the parallel and still commercial bus routes, and without any detectable relief to carborne traffic and congestion. Much of the travel simply did not take place before - whether new opportunities for work or education, or OAPs taking coffee in Jenners. Good for the community - but how sustainable?

Even more interestingly, not one of the purchasers of a hundred adjacent Wimpey houses in Bathgate had done so because of the railway, and few used it regularly. Likewise, there has been no clamour to build around the Livingston North Station. Yet the three stations’ car parks are having to be doubled and tripled in size.

Deterministic assumptions about improving public transport facilities must be avoided. Quite often they may be counter-sustainable. The Bathgate area is now accepted as part of the Edinburgh housing market area, partly because people can now commute to a railhead from a wide radius. Increases in public transport capacity such as rapid busways in Edinburgh’s western corridor may only serve to increase total volume of travel.

By contrast, we in West Lothian are strong supporters of the Fastlink from the M8 at Whitburn to the M74/M6. This strategic north-south route will carry relatively low volumes of long-distance, primarily commercial traffic. It will reduce journey distances to eastern Scotland by 25 miles compared with the Bellshill dogleg, which for existing traffic must be a sustainable good. With hardly any intra-Scotland traffic potential it is unlikely to generate a lot of new traffic. It could even reduce the need for widening the existing motorways, which really would induce traffic growth. A hard one to call, in the current climate!

TRAVEL TO SCHOOL

In the unitary West Lothian a new service area embraces planning and transportation. All of a sudden, I can see real opportunities for sustainable activity, whereas confined to the levers of land-use planning powers it is hard going to find any.

One early example concerns travel to school. There has been, nationally, an extraordinary surge in the proportion of children ferried to school by car. Ostensibly this is because of concern over road safety (now there’s a vicious circle!): I suspect there are media-fuelled fears of attack and abduction, and also (especially among new car owners) a wish to flaunt it, and an inability to say no to little Morag on a wet day.

Breaking into this means education (of parents, teachers and children), which means awareness, consciousness-raising, prioritisation, motivation, and peer-group acceptability (street cred). It means incentives (prizes for posters, awards to school funds). It means putting personal benefits - health, social contact, learning to cope with traffic - alongside the community losses - pollution and twin-peaks traffic congestion. Last and least it means physical facilities - cycle routes and lockers, safer pavements and crossings, bus services; human facilities such as “walking buses” are more important.

There are clear parallels here for development planning. It is not a question of where houses and schools are located (let alone of catchment area reviews to save crossing main roads!). It is only marginally a question of transport infrastructure. It is certainly not achievable by ordering people about. It is a matter of going with the grain of awareness, acceptance, and self-interest (pecuniary and other personal rewards).

Key thought: There is no such thing as sustainable development. In the sense of new buildings and works on new sites, it is a contradiction in terms. Therefore the only truly sustainable thing a planner can do is to prevent development. We have made a small start in Linlithgow, where the Reporter to the Local Plan Inquiry accepted that the town had reached (arguably, exceeded) its long-term limit of acceptable size. Discuss.

HARD AND SOFT SUSTAINABILITY

or SUSTENTION AND MUDDLING ON

I came across a really useful word recently which no-one else has heard of. Not being an academic, I don’t have the source on a file card, but I think it came from Canadian forestry practice. The word is sustention. It has to be thought about a bit, like this:

Sustain - sustainability (Can you keep it going continuously?)

Retain - retention (You have held it up, you have not lost it, you continue to have it). Thus:

Sustain - sustention (You are keeping it going continuously).

The point about sustention is that it is a hard concept, it is definite and measurable : if not necessarily a guaranteed outcome, it is at least a clear, operational intent. By contrast, sustainable development is a soft concept.

Sustention or “hard sustainability” applies where there is substantial control over the system, particularly its direct inputs and outputs, within a natural and political environment which may introduce some unpredictable variations. Thus if landowners so choose, or if governments so regulate or incentivise, farming, forestry, fisheries and wildlife habitats can be operated on sustention principles, disrupted from time to time by flood, fire, or changes in EU subsidies. Sustention forestry simply means timber extraction without reducing the diversity, quality and productivity of the forest.

Certain man-made systems can also be closely regulated to achieve “hard sustainability”. The railway system has a maintainable infrastructure, and for a measured input of affordable subsidy gives an output measured in a national timetable, subject of course to natural and political disruption from time to time. Water supplies, telecommunications and (depending on time frame) power supplies are likewise. In Denmark they have a system in place which is moving towards full sustainability of energy supply - sustention - administered interestingly by the planning authorities.

Where, however, a system operates primarily by free market forces, comprising a myriad of individual decisions which cannot readily be regulated or even influenced, then sustention cannot be practiced. This is the realm of “soft sustainability” in which development planning struggles to find its niche. Society is not like a farming system, where the inputs of organic fertiliser and outputs of wheat can be determined, and quotas can be set : the inputs of house purchases and outputs of trips to work can be measured, but in a human behavioural system we cannot hope to ordain either the fine detail or the total outcome of who buys and works where.

In Robert Owen’s New Lanark, the place of residence, of shopping, of education, and of leisure time of each worker was controlled, for the sustention of a great manufactory for so long as the external environment remained favourable. In Livingston, in Scotland, in the democratic world, only “soft sustainability” can now be sought : persuading people that they ought to pollute less and consume fewer unrenewable resources.

PLANNING’S ROLE : WHITE KNIGHT OR FALL GUY?

Progress from soft sustainability aspirations towards hard sustention of our living environment can only be made with public support. At present, energy is far too cheap, and travel is too cheap, and aggregates are too cheap. Arguably, housing is also too cheap : the Sustainable Structure Plan of the future would permit no negative-net-impact greenfield development (or legislation should place the full public costs of it on the purchasers) thus suppressing new household formation and under-occupancy. No government will tax or legislate to these sustainable ends in our present society. The only exception may be in city centres and other specially sensitive locations (the Forth crossings?) where local taxes or regulations may be acceptable, because the adverse consequences for health or congestion are transparently clear and because alternatives are available.

But the government is under pressure internationally to be seen to be sustainable, and there is also a groundswell of public concern over the environment so long as it doesn’t effect what I do. The government needs some apparently bold initiative which is politically harmless - a cosmetic, a placebo.

At last year’s PTRC European Transport Forum, the chief author of the English PPG13 told delegates “we can’t rely on techno-fixes or pricing, but we can now take decisions about where we put things”. My fear is that the planning system is that convenient cosmetic or placebo. And that when our plans don’t yield reductions in travel, we will be blamed just as we were for tower blocks and motorway spaghettis.

In touching at last on what we think of as the sustainability guidance note, it is worth remembering that PPG13 is simply entitled “Transport” (for which there is still no Scottish equivalent). In this paper I have dealt almost exclusively with the location of development as it affects total travel. The Local Agenda 21 approach is a quite different matter, exploring the corporate ability of the Council to tackle sustainability - again with planning having a rather marginal contribution to make. If the government were to get serious about the role of planning, it would arm us with (inter alia):

· Powers to require zero-energy building design.

· Powers to regulate sustainable sourcing of construction materials.

· Policies to integrate new commercial and business developments into streets with limited, shared parking and multiple uses. (Instead of the present pavilion blocks and retail sheds in seas of tarmac).

· Powers to regulate all forms of public transport.

· Powers to offer incentives to non-car travel, and to employers to recruit locally.

· Requirements to prepare local energy self-sufficiency plans, on the Danish model.

PPG13 now has an accompanying glossy Guide to Better Practice subtitled “reducing the need to travel through land use and transport planning”. Those words - reducing the need - are worryingly prescriptive. Skimming through it on the odd train or two confirms my expectations - it is heavily city-centric, with a gesture towards rural areas, and leaps from vague rhetoric to examples of the most minor impact. Only one case is given which is relevant to high-growth hinterlands such as West Lothian or Strathkelvin or Gordon - Wansdyke near Bristol where a 1,000-house village expansion is praised apparently because it is on a main bus route, and has a park-and-ride at the edge of Bath!

PUTTING IT TO THE TEST

The real test of whether sustainability can hold up as a valid aim of planning comes of course on appeal. The legalistic approach is to push aside the broader policy aim and to demonstrate that the site in question cannot be proven to have the adverse consequences on travel or other aspects of unsustainability claimed by the policy. In consequence, the planning reaction is also to push aside the inherently unquantifiable and uncontrollable policy argument, and to rely on hard and site-specific reasons for refusal, such as infrastructure and landscape quality.

We believe Linlithgow is the first town in Scotland to be defined as reaching its “limits to growth” - yet this now prevents us from promoting local employment sites to try and reduce its heavy out-commuting. If we zone a site in a good, motorway-accessible location for employment, we run the risk of losing it on appeal to yet more housing - because there is no proven demand for business space (no existing supply!) and no evidence that new local businesses would employ mainly local people - Sun Micro certainly doesn’t.

If developers go along with sustainable development policies, it will either be because they are releasing land in locations where the market wants to go (South-East Edinburgh), or because the requirements of the policy (commuted payments in lieu of parking space - or cycle racks in front of the retail warehouses), are financially tolerable.

It will be easier to secure apparently tough sustainable policies and decisions in sectors such as retailing - where John Gummer has made town centre protection fashionable again - and mineral extraction - where landscape and NIMBY pressures rather than principled sustainability will push towards recycling and foreign sources of supply.

I look forward to seeing a hard line taken and sustained through appeal on a contentious residential or business park development, where there are no traditional contra-indications and no easily-developed acceptable alternative sites.

DECLINING SUSTAINABILITY: WEST LOTHIAN 1956 AND 1996

In January 1956, passenger services were withdrawn from the railway between Edinburgh and Glasgow through Bathgate. This was way before Beeching (in 1963) and also way before the M8 started. It signified the self-contained nature of the West Lothian economy, and perhaps the cultural isolation of its ironfounding, coal mining community. Production of those two staples was hardly sustainable - both have virtually ceased - but with that given income base, the West Lothian community very largely took care of itself. Its commercial centre of Bathgate, though small, had a department store, a cot-to-coffin Co-op, a full range of local produce on sale, a cattle market, a cinema, even its own distillery. You could buy a Hepworth suit or any item of ironmongery. All have since gone, and have not been replaced yet in Livingston (where the town centre cinema came and closed).

The settlement pattern of West Lothian in 1956 had evolved from its modest agricultural origins to reflect the distribution of coal, oil shale, and ironstone - the walk to works, pit, or refinery. As a loose grid of a dozen small burghs and large villages arrayed along three east-west main roads, it was easy to provide each with schools, churches, and a water supply, and to link them with efficient bus services. This open matrix settlement structure proved readily adaptable to incremental growth, and also to movement between jobs, for example as pits opened and closed.

This sustainable pattern of home-work relationships and local service economy began to disintegrate in 1960 when the Leyland truck plant was parachuted in as an act of regional policy. It imported nearly all its components and exported nearly all its product. Worse still, it drew labour from a wide radius, even beyond West Lothian, by works buses and increasingly (as a high wage, strike prone employer) by car : significantly the plant was planted right beside Scotland’s first arterial trunk road, the A8, allowing rapid access without affecting neighbouring towns. Its 150 acres of bare concrete have no foreseeable prospect of redevelopment, and are today used for parking imported cars on.

In January 1996, West Lothian is a fully integrated part of the East Central Scotland economy. The second wave of inward investment - silicon glen - also draws its workforce by car from miles around. At least it is more diversified than the Leyland/Plessey hegemony, and does not depend on bulk import of raw materials. The more important underlying trend is the mushrooming of small, locally-controlled businesses of all kinds, most of them servicing West Lothian and Central Scotland companies and communities rather than supplying products to the hi-tech firms or to export.

The settlement pattern today is recognisably that of 1956, fattened up, plus Livingston grafted in as a new heart; the West Lothian Council is making its headquarters there, in the year that it ceases to be a New Town. Now in theory, expanding West Lothian’s population by 50,000 within that flexible urban matrix should have made it more self-sustaining, more able to support higher-order services (as was the grand concept of the Greater Livingston Growth Area in the Lothian Regional Survey and Plan of 1962). As we have seen, that critical mass has never quite been achieved, always overtaken by the frantic metropolitanisation of Central Scotland. If only ... Heriot Watt University had located in Livingston, Jackie Stewart had agreed to invest in West Lothian rather than at Ingliston, the Gyle had been refused and the Leyland megacentre approved ... would these “decisions we can take about where we put things” have made West Lothian, or Scotland, more sustainable?

In our Local Plans (for I must make one mention of them) we have been campaigning vigorously for the M8 Corridor of central West Lothian to be recognised as West Lothian’s principal growth area. This is now clearly endorsed by the Structure Plan and its Modifications. The reasoning was economic - it is where the people and accessible sites are - and environmental - it is the least sensitive, most spoiled area. It also now appears (post-rationalising as we do) to chime in with sustainable development tenets - it is a linear growth corridor on public transport routes with existing infrastructure.

But in reality, if current trends continue, I find it difficult to see that locating yet another 10,000 houses in central West Lothian will enable it to cross thresholds of self-sufficiency : they will not bring the funding for the proper Higher Education facility we lack. One third of each new estate will still commute to Edinburgh, and one third to elsewhere in Scotland, as at present.

Only in the last few months we have begun to see chronic congestion creeping into the road network around Livingston, not just the commuter routes to the city. The amount of movement between West Lothian’s towns and villages is accelerating, as extended families live further apart, as young Murdo is ferried to basketball in a school in another town, as Fiona goes into business selling aromatherapy around the county instead of working in the village chemist. I begin to sense that our great asset of a loose-knit, flexible settlement structure, with almost every community safely bypassed, is on the brink of being over-fattened. The communities themselves are beginning to rebel against peripheral accretions : they don’t want to coalesce with their near neighbours. Yet if greenfield new settlements are ruled out by the Structure Plan Modifications, or more likely by development economics, the logical conclusion of our M8 Corridor and the Region’s Central West Lothian Core Area is its coalescence as an amorphous urban sprawl, subdivided by tokenistic greenways along pylon and pipeline routes.

“Contributors from around the world debated the prospects for sustainability in the future. Their conclusions reminded one of the Scots legal verdict, Not Proven” (PTRC conference report).

A QUESTION OF SCALE -SCOTLAND AS A CITY REGION IN EUROPE

My own experience of West Lothian within its Scottish context suggests that its development over the last 40 years - whether planned pro activity or reactively - has very largely made it less self-sustaining than it was. I find it difficult to see how we might plan the development of West Lothian any more sustainably from now on, with the process and attitudes at our disposal.

It is tempting to take refuge behind SNH’s concept of “the precautionary principle” - if in doubt as to whether development is sustainable, refuse it! This is perhaps easier to apply and to get away with in relation to the sustention of natural and semi-natural systems than to the soft sustainability of urban systems. (I commend SNH’s attempt to define the S-word in their mud-brown paper Sustainable Development and the Natural Heritage).

It is also tempting to conclude wearily that more research is needed (for appeal-proof evidence) and more education (of ourselves, our politicians, our public).

As a congenital optimist and believer in public service planning, it grieves me to have penned such an unremittingly negative paper. How much easier to praise the virtues of public art or geomorphological authenticity! I turn for final positive inspiration to the Geddesian injunction that we must plan at the right scale. I believe that:

· Efforts to achieve sustainable development primarily through land-use and transport planning at Local and Structure Plan levels are futile, being of marginal impact and unpredictable in their consequences.

· The settlement pattern of developed Scotland is largely fixed and is capable of adapting to more sustainable modes of operation by technological, economic and social evolution in response to governmental, free-market and community pressures.

· The relevant minimum scale on which to plan for human-system sustainability is Central Scotland (Ayr to Dundee), as a city region of European significance.

· The relevant minimum scale on which to plan for natural-system sustainability (including energy and minerals) is the whole of Scotland.

· The appropriate bodies to pursue sustainable planning and policy are therefore those at Scottish level and higher.

Local Planning Authorities owe their prime responsibility to their own local communities, unless and until central government instructs that there is an over-riding national priority. As a local government planner, I should therefore not be surprised if I progress from promoting economic development and growth at all costs to raising the hurdles higher and higher in front of developers, in response to a maturing and more prosperous community.

The most successful regions in the Europe of the future will be those with the most sustainable environments (some parts of Scotland would do well to learn this lesson quickly). Our real aspiration as planners should then be to practise in a climate where new development is the exception rather than the rule, where it has to pass the most stringent tests of zero net environmental impact or better, and where the Scottish economy can afford the luxury of turning down investment which is genuinely beneficial.

Late extra: Scottish Office sources say that our version of PPG13 on Transport is due out for consultation by mid-1996. A spokesman opined that “land use planning can help to reduce the need for travel in an incremental way at the margins over a long timescale”.

· David Jarman is Head of Strategic Planning and Transportation, West Lothian Council.

GREEN PLANNING papers presented in Glasgow on 17 January 1996

paul mcternan

HOUSING IN THE COUNTRYSIDE

Getting Moray’s policy into place

Perhaps the most appropriate context in which this conference can consider the green credentials of Moray’s approach to the subject of housing in the countryside, is the recently published Scottish Office White Paper on the Rural Environment. Articles in recent planning journals have raised the age old question of the compatibility of a strategy for the sustainable development of the rural economy with increasing public demands for greater protection of the rural environment.

In Moray we did not set out on a green agenda. Rather, the challenge we addressed was heavily directed by a social and cultural agenda demanding a response to the structural decline in rural services and population levels we had witnessed in Moray for decades, the need to promote regeneration and the compelling desire to improve standards of practice in the design and procurement process through which this regeneration could be achieved. Having been invited to address this conference therefore, on the back of winning a commendation from the Saltire/Sir Patrick Geddes Award in 1994, and winning outright the APRS Award for 1995, we would hope to argue the case that there is no discernible difference between a green agenda and the social and culture agenda under which we embarked in Moray. The issue is one of managing human interaction. The skill is one of finding balance.

Housing in the Scottish countryside is an enormous issue spanning subjects as varied as social housing policy, living standards and conditions, access to employment, access to services and facilities, transport and immobility, cultural traditions and regional identity, affordability, architecture, environmental protection and landscape impact.

I suppose that what we, who practice the art of country planning are seeking, is a pragmatic and positive approach to the paradoxes that have perplexed planners for a generation; how to balance job creation with protection of the rural environment; how to meet local housing needs whilst recognising that new technology and increased person mobility mean that commuters want to live in the countryside too; and how to reconcile the desires of those who see the countryside as a place to be wrapped in aspic and rural dwellers who depend on it for their livelihood.

In their recent guidance to the new Councils on rural strategies, COSLA made the important recognition that rural sustainability should not be seen to reinforce the “no development” ethic in the countryside. It must be recognised that sustainability is about safeguarding the future of communities and not simply an environmental issue. It cannot for example be interpreted as narrowly as to relate only to the need to reduce the use of motor vehicles. The fact is that school children require transport, health care has to be provided and bins must be collected. These services are not necessarily going to be made efficient or more secure by less people using them. By their very nature services must be provided to serve a geographically dispersed population. This is the price of a living countryside. The alternative is to condone de-population, a minimised service provision and the lack of support for the future of our more remote rural areas.

The preparation of Moray’s policy document took almost 4 years. It was in draft form before the Scottish Office issued Planning Advice Note 36 (Siting and Design of New Housing in the Countryside), and preceded the publication of the excellent “Tomorrow’s Architectural Heritage”, supported by the Countryside Commission for Scotland. It pre-dates the Scottish Office Reports on kit house design (John Richards), and the RIAS compilation “Fields of Vision”. These publications have made a great contribution to stimulating the debate on housing in the countryside heard on the conference circuit in recent years, but to affect actual change on the ground, the debate must move forward and evolve a practice and methodology which is capable of implementation. By 1991 Moray had begun to evolve such methodology and advance planning practice in this field further than any other Planning Authority in Scotland.

The challenge was to produce a Planning policy for housing in the countryside which reflected the peoples express wish to permit regeneration and new house building, yet gave a lead in establishing new standards of environmental sensitivity rarely seen outwith Britain’s national parks. To do so required a fundamental re-assessment of the Planning approach which departed from the usual restrictive practice of “a presumption against” to a positive acceptance of change, within the context of a strategy to sustain and revive a vibrant rural culture at ease with itself and its natural environment.

Work commenced on a review of policy in 1989. The late 1980’s witnessed a significant increase in pressure for house sites throughout rural Moray causing the numbers of planning applications submitted to rise by over 200% between 1987 and 1989. With hindsight this increase can now be attributed to 3 primary factors: Firstly the de-regulation of agriculture, which reduced levels of protection afforded to agricultural land for its productive capacity, and introduced the concept of diversification, encouraging farmers to become multi-disciplined businessmen seeking to supplement farm incomes from a variety of sources. Many farmers believed that housing was the new cash crop and sought to develop as many “awkward corners” of their existing landholdings as possible.

Secondly, the market for rural house sites was being fuelled by the arrival of new households from outwith the district borne of the southern property boom, seeking “the good life” opportunity in Scottish Highlands. Commuting trends locally were also on the increase. In a survey of new house buyers in 1992, we discovered that only 5% came from rural Moray. The majority of households were affluent (2 cars, 4 bedrooms) and this was to be their first experience of rural living.

Thirdly pressure was brought to bear by the activity of a number of local housebuilders and developers, who spotted an opportunity to profit from this market and actively set about acquiring rural farms, selling off the buildings, planting subsidy crops on what productive land was left (one such farm was the first to attempt to grow commercial cannabis in Scotland), and trying to get as many housing consents on the remainder as possible. These were subsequently marketed these in publications such as Country Life, The Daily Telegraph and even in Spanish Estate Agencies on the Costa Del Sol. We perceived the situation to be serious.

The Planning problem was assessed as a combination of 4 main components.

1. There was a complete absence of a clear Planning strategy. We had little knowledge of what changes were actually occurring in the countryside, how communities were affected and what effect this level of development activity could have on existing economic social and environmental structures.

2. The Development Control policies which were in place were poorly communicated and reactive in nature. These policies were not aiding consistency, failed to provide definition and were constantly causing problems at appeal.

3. There was the restricted ability of local agents. In Moray we estimate that 90% of all applications submitted are by agents who are not qualified architects. Hence the skills base is low and perhaps this helps explain why the majority of houses built are procured from limited range of kit house brochures. There was little general awareness of the sensitivity of building in the rural area and a notable lack of awareness of developments and practices in ecological design.

4. The inherent vagaries of the political system. The elected members were unclear as to what kind of countryside they wanted to create. A minority amongst them favoured a totally laissez-faire approach and were successful in breaching policy on many occasions. Matters reached a peak at one particular Planning Committee in 1990 when the Planning Committee approved 14 consecutive applications for individual houses contrary to the Directors’ recommendation. Such inconsistency was rife and thereafter, until the new policy was put in place, the Director of Planning issued a memo to all Planning Staff advising that they were no longer in a position to offer the public advice on what the Council’s policy was and that enquiries from the general public should be directed to the individual elected members. The situation was probably best summed up by the Scottish Office Chief Reporter Sandy Bell who commented on one of the many planning appeals lodged over this period

“Moray District Council has been muddling along on near Delphic policies for rural Development Control which have given rise to an increased number of appeals from aggrieved applicants.......The present policies invite the suspicion that rural applications are determined by prejudice, favour or caprice. The framework for objective decision taking is lacking.”

The Planning impact was therefore assessed as:

· An absence of control; proliferation of house building activity unrelated to social, economic or environmentally sustainable principles.

· Housing by Mail Order : The widespread procurement of standardised suburbia eroding local distinctiveness and Regional identity.

· Cumulative environmental impact: combined threat to landscapes, the natural environment and local bio-diversity.

The Planning response was first to establish and put in place a strategy strongly focused on the community’s stated aim of regeneration and protection of the natural environment. As a key element, the strategy would have to embrace change, not reject it. A new set of statutory policies was required which would give Development Controllers a proper set of tools with which to work, providing definition and clarity and being devoid of ambiguity.

Good communication was essential to change attitudes, hence the requirement for the production of comprehensive guidance to educate, inspire and inform. If we were to initiate a fundamental change in direction, it was vital that we brought the community with us through every step. To raise awareness requires education, to pioneer advancement requires inspiration and to do both effectively requires quality information. We felt we had to raise expectation levels, embrace new advancements in building technology and ecological design and move the entire debate into the realm of the 21st century.

The method to deliver this change was quite clearly through the review of the development plan. We decided that the one way we could raise awareness of this change of direction was in the production of a separate and fully inclusive document on the subject of housing in the countryside. All policy information and guidance would be contained under one cover which could be detached from the main body of the Local Plan and distributed independently. As a communication medium the document had to be top quality with full graphic expression. Black and white photocopies with simplistic sketches and “do’s or don’ts” graphics would not be good enough. We invested £20,000 in the production of a document over 100 pages long, in full colour and heavily illustrated. We printed 500 copies in March 1993 to find that 2 years later we were completely sold out, (at £10 per copy). It has proved excellent value for money.

The consultation exercise on the Plan was vital to its success and subsequent passage through District Council Committees. After the first draft was published, the Summers of 1991 and 1992 were spent in village halls and community centres throughout rural Moray, exploring with Associations and Community groups what policy would work and safeguard their welfare and environment. Councillors, Community Councils and Associations helped in the identification of boundaries for the 73 rural communities. They participated in the identification of gap sites, renovation/restoration opportunities and amenity areas and provided local advice on practical matters such as ground conditions and drainage. Consultation was then sought with every agent and architect in the District in order to understand the communication interface between applicants and developers and the practical difficulties they experience in the design and procurement process. Wider views were sought with professional bodies representing planners, architects, surveyors, environmentalists and ecologists. The help of universities was enlisted; Dundee, Strathclyde and Aberdeen, as was the assistance of groups such as EDAS, The Royal Fine Art Commission and SNH. This helped to place Moray within a wider national context and provided and insight into practices and experiences elsewhere. It also provided a welcome reassurance that the direction was right and the practice sound.

The strategy which evolved centred around 3 distinctly separate forms of development or “Options” as we refer to them in the document:

· Option 1: Rural Communities

· Option 2: Re-use of derelict sites

· Option 3: New-build in the open countryside

Option 1 was a settlement based strategy using the well established methodology of the settlement envelope identifying boundaries, opportunities for infill and redevelopment, and allowing for the protection of spaces and features of environmental amenity. The second option centres on the spirit of renewal and the considerable opportunities that exist to restore and renovate in preference to new build. Moray, like many parts of remoter Highlands has a considerable number of properties in a state of decay and dereliction. This is an opportunity to re-cycle not only building sites but also building materials. Finally option 3 deals exclusively with new build in the open countryside, i.e. a new house on a virgin site. Our approach to this option will be dealt with in greater detail in my colleague’ presentation to follow.

THE STRATEGY

The “options” relate directly to the main choices open to prospective applicants. Although clearly inter-related, they have been identified as mutually exclusive in terms of the Planning policy and guidance. I will deal here with the first two options, Nick will deal exclusively with the third:

Option 1 - To target existing communities as a preferred location for new housing in order to maximise social benefits and help sustain essential services (schools, halls, shops, bus services etc.).

Moray’s distinctive rural personality was found in its small villages and rural communities. They exhibit the imprint of history, record past fortunes and express the modest character of Moravian identity. Like many rural communities in remote areas of Scotland, many have suffered decline.

In its first 5 year lifespan, this option of the strategy will enable people to take advantage over 350 housing sites identified in 73 rural communities throughout the rural area. The objectives set are quite clearly to encourage people wishing to build in the countryside to locate within existing communities, and to meet the demand for housing sites within the rural area in a more efficient, community orientated and planned way.

In terms of the impact on the local environment, development will precede on the basis of the most sophisticated analysis of character and location for such small communities contained in any development plan. Gap sites, new-build and redevelopment opportunities have been pinpointed with specific reference to the distinctiveness of the locale. The character descriptions, which identify dominant architectural styles and specify the protection of local amenity, (burns, watercourses, trees, hedgerows etc.), combine to give direction on how to introduce new development sensitively.

Option 2: Re-use of derelict sites and buildings -To seek the restoration and re-development of the built heritage of the rural area by encouraging the re-use of sites and buildings thereby sustaining the historic settlement pattern and utilising existing infrastructure.

The technological advances on employment changes during this century have left their toll on the countryside and many 18th, 19th and 20th century structures lie vacant. Empty cottages, farmhouses, steadings, mills, churches and schools feature in the landscape as monuments to a previous epoch.

The prime emphasis on this aspect of the strategy, lies with renewal. Applicants are encouraged to re-cycle derelict sites, re-using existing infrastructure such as roads, water supplies and drainage facilities. It encourages the uptake of existing capacity in the settlement pattern and avails of established sites with ready provided access and very often, shelter. The Local Plan document provides guidance on all aspects of the re-development process, the re-use of materials and specific advice is provided on best practice in respect of the conversion of mills, churches, schools and farm steadings.

IMPLEMENTATION

Implementation of the policy was measured in a survey of applications spanning an 18 month period between January 1994 and July 1995. Over this period a total of 240 applications had been received, from which 176 decisions had been taken. The Council approved 132 applications (75% were refused 44 (25%).

ANALYSIS OF APPROVALS

Option 1: Rural Communities	*51 (38.5%)*
*Option 2: Re-use of buildings and sites*	*46 (35%)*
*Option 3: New building in the open countryside*	*35 (26.5%)*

The analysis of approvals suggests that the strategy has been successful in meeting the central objective of directing development away from the open green field sites to regenerative opportunities primarily in the rural communities. At 38% of approvals, Option One applications form the majority quoted under the policy, suggesting that the practice of actually identifying building opportunities on plans contained within the policy document has been particularly successful. Furthermore the planning methodology of identifying and retaining the built character of these areas, through the identification of character features and architectural styles, has proved particularly effective - (100% of detailed applications have been approved under this option).

Option 2 applications (re-use of derelict sites and buildings) have accounted for 35% of approvals (46 houses) indicating a relative success in directing demand towards restoration and redevelopment opportunities. In quality and quantity these applications have been impressive and indicate a spirit of revitalisation and renewal of both settlement pattern and built heritage, previously absent in the year’s preceding the policy. Changes in VAT regulations for the renovations and conversion work have assisted the economic advantages of this option, but the quality of a number of developments recently completed vindicates the emphasis devoted to this strand of the strategy.

Option 3 proposals (the new house in the open countryside), accounted for only 25.5% of approvals over the survey period. As this option would have accounted for the predominant number of approvals prior to the policy, (perhaps as much as 75%) it represents a notable success that the plan led strategy to highlight opportunities elsewhere in the countryside and to raise the awareness and sensitivity of careful siting and design has been effective.

The improvement in overall quality of applications is most notable under Option 3. Due to the detailed advice offered within the policy document, a period of consistent decision taking by the Planning Committee, (only 3 applications overturned in the last 10 Committees), and the adoption of greater sensitivity on the part of agents and applicants in the selection of house site and design, the overall quality of applications has much improved. It is therefore not surprising that the rate of approval has seen a steady increase as predicted.

APPROVAL RATE

1992	1993	1994	1995
*51%*	*66%*	*75%*	*79%*

KEY FINDINGS

· The plan-led strategy is working. The policy has put in place a strategy for rural development hither to absent from previous Local Plans, placing existing communities at the heart of re-generative strategy aimed at sustaining fragile rural services and facilities and safeguarding the natural environment.

· Pressure has been directed away from open countryside sites to existing communities and redevelopment sites. Siting and design controls coupled with better guidance for applicants and agents, has reduced the number of poorly sited and designed new dwellings. Thanks to the success of Options 1 and 2, attracting potential applicants to choose sites in rural communities and derelict sites, an estimated 73% of new development has taken place on the existing settlement pattern, i.e. 73% of proposals have utilised sites and infrastructure are already established in the countryside.

· 86% of refusals under the policy one for new build (Option 3) indicating the dominant consideration afforded to landscape in the natural environment.

In terms of the Development Control policies I would highlight a number of minor points:

· There are no exceptions for need. Should a case for personal circumstances arise the Members are encouraged to use the departure process to allow consideration.

· On re-use of derelict sites the Council operates a defined level of evidence, i.e. old maps, and old photographs will not be acceptable as justifications for replacement proposals. The building on the ground must be substantially in-situ.

· All new sites must have established boundaries (not artificially created).

· Detailed applications only will be entertained for proposals in Areas of Great Landscape Value and for applications for groups of houses. This minimises speculation and encourages the comprehensive treatment of sites.

· Finally in terms of ground water pollution and the accumulation of septic tank drainage, all proposals must undertake a soil porosity test to establish the suitability of ground conditions at outline stage.

Finally, in these days of performance targets, a word about efficiency and decision times. As I have already pointed out, one of the enduring benefits of such a detailed and applied approach to rural housebuilding is the increase in quality of application submitted. Quality in terms of site selection, landscape treatment, orientation and of course design and material finishes.

Communication between officers, agents and applicants has benefited greatly from this. Those long protracted negotiations which were so much part of the decision process in the past (and arguably achieved so little) are no longer so commonplace today. Pre-application advice is easier to give and is much more consistent. As a result decisions and recommendations are more straightforward and applications are being dealt with more quickly (i.e. within the 8 week target). Approval rates have increased (a stated aim at the outset) and Member support has consequently been sustained.

The success of this policy in winning a commendation from the Saltire Society/Patrick Geddes Award for 1994, and winning outright the APRS Annual Award for 1995, is a measure of how Scottish professional planning opinion has judged Moray’s approach. Success in these awards has come as a result of the policy’s ability to be both ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’, demonstrating that change in the countryside can be managed in a manner that promotes both opportunity and restraint.

· Paul McTernan is a Senior Planning Assistant with Moray District Council

GREEN PLANNING papers presented in Glasgow on 17 January 1996

nick brown

HOUSING IN THE COUNTRYSIDE

Moray’s design approach

Let us say that a building occupies land, that can obviously feed people, support wildlife, or simply provide visual pleasure,

and let us say that this building gives nothing back - tarmacs the ground, replaces hedgerows with solid walls or fences, plants no trees and shows no signs of self-sufficiency in the way of vegetable plots, wind generators, rainwater butts, reed bed waste systems and so on,

and moreover, say this building occupies a prominent position without social justification, deliberately contrasts with the context of its siting, and worse still defies and injures nature by cutting parts down and remoulding its surface,

and finally let us say that this building also overshadows its neighbours, fails to offer any sculptural or poetic expression and generally makes no attempt at integration, then this building will at the least cause the viewer some displeasure.

A building displeases because someone sees and feels that it benefits the owner at their or somebody else's expense. Disregard, disrespect, thoughtlessness, ignorance, unfriendliness, call it what you may, are all behavioural symptoms which cause discomfort when vented publicly. These feelings are exacerbated when the behaviour is displayed by a member from outwith the tribe. As in the case of rural Moray I don’t necessarily mean Roger and Mandy from Chipping Sodbury, more likely I mean Gail and Kevin from a nearby town who have made good and want to move only a matter of a few miles out into the country.

It is therefore necessary for us as planners to recognise the causes of displeasure eg. the spoiling of a view or landscape, the wilful destruction of natural habitat, incompatibility of context, flagrant disrespect for neighbours and so on and to root them out of the design process. This rooting out however is a negative approach and human beings possess an inherent defensive reaction when told not to do something.

A more positive approach is to expound the causes of pleasure in building with all its physical, psychological and economic benefits. But before embarking on measures to achieve this aim we, as a planning authority, need to establish and understand several points:

· 1. Design is a thought process, not a product. The art of design is the art of problem solving. PAN 36, The Scottish Office’s design advice document for Housing in the Countryside, talks at length about chimneys, dormers, windows, eaves, verges, porches. This is not design advice, this is stylising. It's like suggesting to the Greeks that they build with a bit of Corinthian column simply because its a traditional image we approve of.

· 2. We must understand the dangers of seeing design merely as a product that pleases. In avoiding what is offensive, do we not instinctively resort to the aedetic images we know are pleasurable, that is those ingrained in our psyche from childhood. All of us will probably recall the symmetrical elevation of the Play School house with its smoking chimney and 4 pane glazing and those of us with young children will be aware that Postman Pat operates in the best preserved Conservation Area in northern Europe. However we should realise that opting for buildings which habitually please, has the potential to lead to stereotypical, prosaic and even inane designs.

· 3. A designer, like a cook, has to establish his ingredients and recipe, that is, in designer terms, to form his brief. Good design is very much a manifestation of an assiduously compiled brief coupled with an appropriate response. Some ingredients eg. climate, geography, environment will remain static and it is these which provide the genius loci. Other ingredients such as technology, affordability, building skills, client's taste are much more dynamic and it is these which provide the sense of time. Good contemporary design is a happy blend of these so joint effort by planners and architects to raise public awareness about this would be a welcome start in order to create a more thinking culture and a client base committed to long-term values and a healthier environment.

· 4. Moray is an incredibly diverse district. In areas it is spectacularly beautiful, in others it is predominantly agricultural, underdeveloped, coastal, undulating, exposed, wooded. A district which is diverse must surely require diverse responses, probably very different from the responses in other districts.

· 5. Buildings in the open countryside should have different design responses from those in cities or suburbias. Isolated buildings in the countryside are manmade statements of human settlement living in a natural environment whereas buildings in clusters, or villages or towns, are manmade statements in manmade environments. The contexts are very different. The symbiosis of a manmade structure with the natural environment is unfortunately much harder to achieve than with a manmade environment and this is why catalogue housing developed for suburbia is so often incongruous in rural situations.

· 6. There is a dichotomy of on the one hand satisfying the requirements of the indigenous people, renowned for their plain living and high thinking and on the other hand dealing with the requirements and desires of a new breed of immigrants escaping from the hustle and bustle of city life in search of a rural idyll, ignorant perhaps to the fact that they could be party to its irrevocable demise by living a city style life in a rural setting.

The significance of the six points just mentioned is that they form the framework for understanding the subject matter. They reveal that in order to preach assuredly about pleasurable appropriate buildings, we should know our locality intimately so that our assessment is historically, visually, ecologically and socially analysed within our planning capacity as only minor players in the overall construction process.

The writer Brunskill describes architectural character as being “easy to see, difficult to explain, hard to recreate and even harder to extend”. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder is it not? As Dutch architect Aldo Van Eyck said at a recent conference “good and bad buildings are like the difference between pornography and erotica”.

Our decision is therefore to analyse the design of new houses not so much in terms of the style and taste, preferring to focus on what we consider to be the major issues for Moray and not to get bogged down in the minute detail of solitary elements. In an attempt to elucidate these issues we have identified six key headings.

The first is location. Due to advances in construction techniques and technology eg. JCB’s, timber framing, double glazing, electricity, etc. houses can be erected faster than ever before and in locations where previous buildings feared to venture eg. hilltops. The pattern of settlement of mass housing is today therefore not seriously restrained in the way it used to be but unrestrained development can have a costly effect on, amongst other things, ecology, productive land, the character of the landscape, services dispersal and road safety.

Designers and applicants are therefore now requested by our policy to select a site (which if it is not recycling a former site), mitigates the planning concerns ie. to elect a site which will have the minimum impact on other humans, the service infrastructure, land use, flora, fauna, the earth’s surface and the earth’s atmosphere whilst at the same time utilises the positive aspects of the natural environment to the best energy and economic advantage. In doing so, designers are also asked to view a location in terms of forming part of a much wider landscape rather than a focus merely on an individual site, which is the next heading,

Siting. Designers are requested to pause and consider siting from the points of shelter, solar gain setting, the environment and social integration rather than simply the current approach of selecting where the best view may be.

If a designer is responsible for selecting a high impact location, or is hand-tied by his client’s choice of such a location, careful siting within the location might alleviate the impact of the building.

Bad decisions on both location and siting should make an application a non-starter and we should not be mollified by an exciting product if these two fundamentals are wrong.

The third heading is Scale. Size and stature equates with dominance and superiority and in many respects these are characteristics, understandably yearned for by a high percentage of today's rural house owners. As in nature, however, the reverse of dominance and superiority is a feeling of fear and awe, surely no longer an acceptable fate for the current inhabitants of the countryside to pay. If we feel the scale of a house in wrong, in terms of overshadowing, context, social integration and so on, is there any point in beginning to consider the next heading:

Form. Unlike nature, human creations and buildings are based on geometric shapes such as rectangles, triangles and circles. They are rarely amorphic, a notable exception being the work of Antonio Gaudi but there are not many like him in Moray. Curvilinear shapes are smoother, gentler causing a sense of repose, could this be why the peaceful inhabitants of the Findhorn Foundation enjoy their round houses?

Most housing however in Britain for centuries now has been based on the rectangle and triangle. This simple combination evolved in northern Scotland as a means of providing shelter from the climate using the materials and knowledge available. The depth of the triangle, until the invention of iron and concrete, was determined by an ability to clearspan timber economically in order to provide one functionable room depth. The length of the rectangle was determined by the accommodation required and the land available, hence rural houses tended to be elongated. The third dimension, the height was established by man’s biological requirements to comfortably access the dwelling through a door opening and for ergonomic reasons, this was best placed in the middle. The angle of the triangle was determined by the requirement to keep out driving rain and the capabilities of walls to absorb outward thrust. Invariably in northern Scotland this was in the order of 45°. A regular shape evolved responding to mans needs, abilities, resources and climatic conditions.

When accommodation needs and resources changed, restricted by the ability to span great distances, buildings were heightened, lengthened or added to in the form of right angled extensions. For several centuries, building throughout Scotland adopted such forms and in the undeveloped countryside, they are still the predominant building form. The technological advances however of this century have transformed man's building abilities, and spans of great distance are easily achieved. The inevitable outcome in housing is the desire to create buildings of two rooms depth, negating the need to utilise roof spaces or form appendages to the main bulk. A monofunctional roof need only satisfy the minimum technical requirements for keeping the bulk watertight - a roof pitch in the order of 25°. The net result is a housing form with a significantly different proportion from all its predecessors. Added to this departure are the inventions of central heating and double glazing which has seen the loss of chimneys as an external feature and increase in the ratio of light to solid.

And what is wrong with this? Would not our forefathers have embraced these new abilities given half the chance? It is likely that they would have, so why do we have a problem accepting this form? Is it the obvious culture shock, the overt display of our Scottishness, what ever that is, being rapidly diluted in our drift towards internationalism? Is it the insensitivity of siting buildings of a form and scale significantly different from the existing palette, leaving us in no doubt about the current level and attitude of migration? Or is it simply the embarrassment to witness an apparently sophisticated animal still living in such a crude box? The search for national characteristics in art and architecture may however have something to do with an uncertainty about the future in the face of a new millennium and a search for security in an age characterised by rapid uncontrolled change.

Nevertheless, the proportions of new mass housing are important if they are to bear a more evident physical relationship with the existing buildings which seem to integrate well with our countryside. Having already identified the reasons for having wider buildings than ever before, it can be witnessed that there exists a potential conflict between the natural advancement of building houses and the contextual relationship of new and old.

Yet it can be seen from the various studies by Fladmark, Evans, Richards and the RIAS that modern needs and desires can easily be accommodated within houses which are contextually appropriate with little or no capital cost implications. Indeed in some cases, John Richards argues it can be cheaper.

One of our responses to this conflict is to try and demonstrate Moray’s problem in evolutionary terms and in an attempt to reconcile this departure in relationship we offer an obvious solution to contextualisation which is easily understood at all levels. This solution is rooted in the production of plan forms as perceived on the gables of houses which directly relate to 18th and 19th century housing and as a result, demonstrable changes are occurring in the submission of self-build designs to our authority during the past 18 months.

Moving on to materials. It can be said that nature commands our consciousness with respect to materials and colour. Sameness is the rule, variety is the exception. Dull tones convey inertia, repose and majesty and are associated with large objects such as the oak, the mountain, the stag. Bright colours convey dynamism, alarm and attention and are associated with the small or the ephemeral such as the wasp, the flower. Charming though colourful cottages may be, as a controlling authority we may have justified reservations about Professor Charles McKean’s bemoaning of the use of “cowpat colours”.

Nevertheless, we will always encourage natural materials selected from the locality since they will inevitably assist the building integrate and relate with its landscape. If the materials are local and natural, they will also cut down transport costs, reduce the embodied energy in a building, reawaken employment in craft skills and raise a building’s quality in numerous ways but for the time being we, as a planning authority, have to admit the current forces of transport and economy and accept the use of manmade materials.

We should however continue to make the market contemplate the viability of reopening the lime, slate and stone quarries and planting trees for construction purposes. We should be much more active in influencing the market than allowing the market to influence us, should we not?

OVERALL APPROACH

And so having identified these six aspects as being the key public issues of design, we now have to translate these into a design policy.

Would you agree that it is commendable to try and retain the strength of our built culture in Moray? We do. Would you actively encourage the building of traditional rural houses? We do, we have it in our policy but what exactly do we mean by “traditional building”?

Well for 14 centuries after the Romans it certainly was not stone and slate. Until the 16th Century, stone was still very much confined to the buildings of the great chiefs. A cast through the history books reveals the extent of rural houses built entirely, or in combinations of turf, earth, clay and thatch. Even the 1951 Statistical Account still refers to the numbers of buildings constructed using timber cruck, clay and bool, timber and crinkly tin. Humble buildings such as these are being lost on a daily basis yet the timber tradition survives in other countries equatable to here such as in Norway and Finland. Stone, by its nature, is one of the most resilient materials available to us, so it is little wonder why stone buildings remain intact long after materials of lesser resilience have broken down. Consequently, the tradition in building we witness today is only one part of a wider tradition. It is therefore put that the importance of traditional buildings as we have come to label them, is not so much the realisation of the buildings, rather 1) the process that established them in the first place and 2) the role they now play today in creating the context.

By demonstrating fitness for site and context, houses which respond regionally to the evergreen sheltered glades found in Speyside, will inevitably have differences to those responding to the dramatic contours of the Highlands or the barren exposed areas of Banffshire. No wonder therefore that current mass produced houses often offend because they are designed and decided upon (and even produced) long before the context is set. How often have you heard “I’ve already bought my kitchen units by Fifesteen and am promised a good deal on Marley Mendip”. This cack-handed approach to design ie. product before site, debases us to stereotypes and market niches - happily married couples with 2.4 children, 2 cars, a dog and a steady job in town. Surely to enrich our lives properly, user and viewer alike, a house must be designed only after the brief is complete, when the person’s requirements, the landscape, the neighbours, the climate, the materials, the colour range etc. is fully known - a truly vernacular approach, not the hackneyed version we have come to associate with 18th and 19th century products. We therefore need a mindshift, a radical change in design practice in the housing construction industry where the priorities are regard, respect and integration, not “decorative bedroom balcony with panoramic views”, or ”arched entranceway with optional bullnosed reconstituted stone panels.” When will a main elevation again openly greet the visitor, with a front door which says “do come in” as opposed to “welcome to my double garage”?

Final years of centuries seem to have encouraged cultural introspection with the promise of a national style. In our nationalistic quest for a rural Scottish House, could an unending stream of repro 18th and 19th century houses not lead us towards a building culture on an admirable parallel with other national icons such as the drunk Glaswegian, Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Alexander Brothers and so on.

Is true Scottishness, not so much a set style as an attitude, buildings being the outcome borne of a determination to maximise resolutions appropriately often in spite of less resource than others. Thus our buildings have always reflected contemporary expedience and aspiration. Is it therefore not so much the product as the spirit which is important in current building. Will a future to be proud of not be designs which readily acknowledge the context, the environment, the tradition and the society yet still achieve an original spatial response to the living needs and desires of the times of a particular area or region?

Anyway, enough effulgent ponsy crap, how has the public reacted to all this? How has the design strategy operated? Unfortunately design is intangible, subjective and perceived from different standpoints so it is difficult to accumulate equivocal statistics. It is however reasonable to cite the following:

· The approval rate for new housing is up, suggesting that the design quality of submissions has improved.

· The involvement of professional designers has increased, suggesting that the procurement of agents has altered.

· For the first time in recent recollection, submissions are being refused solely on design grounds.

· Appeals against refusal on design grounds are being upheld.

· The public appear to endorse the objectives.

· Architects and agents appear to be able to work with the objectives.

· Developers are changing their product range.

· Other Councils, the DOE for Ireland and several schools of Planning and/or Architecture use the document.

· The document has been commended by the Saltire Society and subsequently received a Patrick Geddes award. It recently received an APRS award.

With this document in place our planning authority should be able to act with consistency and not have applicants frustrated by individuals using the system of power to fulfil personal ambitions or preferences of taste, hence the success of our formalised policies and guidelines.

This aside, not all design matters can be elicited by empirical rules. If this were so, planning and architecture would cease to be arts. Within the confines of established principles, consented objectives and analytical criteria, there must always be room in both professions for skilful judgement and the breaking (or rather the unlearning) of rules in order to enable the art of building to advance and to ensure that the monotony and anonymity which pervades as a problem today, is not simply recreated under a different guise.

This is not a talisman of the times, this is simply good design practice.

· Nick Brown is a Senior Planning Assistant with Moray District Council

GREEN PLANNING papers presented in Glasgow on 17 January 1996

michael thornley

GREEN SCHEMES:

PROJECTS AT WHINHILL AND KINLOCHLEVEN

The two main conclusions of our work on the planning of housing at Whinhill in Greenock and for the regeneration of the site on an aluminium works at Kinlochleven are that:

· Green initiatives are unlikely to succeed without the full participation of the user clients in the planning process.

· Emotional and spiritual issues should not be ignored in the drive towards the functional and economical justifications for green planning.

· Both the projects examined are at the initial, concept stages and may or not be implemented.

STRONE FARM, GREENOCK: The Site

Strone Farm is a housing estate that lies high above Greenock overlooking the Firth of Clyde. Built in the 1930s it has been the subject of at least 5 studies in the 1990s. It is a single entry estate, within a Priority Treatment Area. There is a heterogeneous collection of tenement buildings, the majority of which will be demolished. Parts of the site are situated at the end of an extended road system. An electric power line traverses the area. While the potential dangers of this are acknowledged no decision has been take on re-routing the power line at the cost of approximately £650,000.

The housing is on a steep north facing slope, the greatest of which is steeper than 1 in 7. Existing housing has substantial underbuilding. The prevailing wind is funnelled between the blocks that run parallel with the contours and the site is severely exposed. An initial phase of development has taken place on the most favourable part of the site, reducing the possibilities for improving the road layout and casting shadows across the site - a case of short term thinking that has compromised the long term replanning of the area.

Initial Response

Our initial response was to contact EDAS with a view to carrying out a study on solar access, shadowing and improvement of the external environment by way of reconfiguring the buildings and by the introduction of planting as shelter.

The work on solar access indicated that, in winter, the solar door is slammed shut at about midday. In the summer, however, long shadows are cast by the low angle of the setting sun, which could be a problem if buildings or trees are introduced to act as barriers or filters to the wind.

Minor re-orientation of the principal facades towards the east (about 10^oaway from the orientation of existing buildings) creates significant benefits while a movement in the opposite direction condemns many houses to potential darkness. Similarly, a relatively small reduction in height of the ridges, for instance by split level housing, has major benefits in reducing the length of shadows down the slope. More difficult to address, because of the lack of introduction of techniques, are the benefits or otherwise of reconfiguring the housing layout and shelter to reduce air speeds.

"Green" Issues

At first sight the replanning of a semi derelict housing estate did not appear to offer much scope for "green" interventions. With social and economic issues at the top of the agenda, "green" issues might be seen as an intellectual luxury that cannot be afforded. Fionn Stevenson's paper presented at the SEDA event at Battleby in November 1995 gave the lie to this. Agenda 21 from the Rio Summit and the EU 5 Action Programme shows that we need to see environmental impact in terms of social concerns for potentially vulnerable groups such as women, children, the elderly and indigenous populations. All of these groups are represented in housing areas such as Strone Farm where the impact of changing consumption patterns are all too evident.

Clearly, at present, Strone Farm is not a sustainable human settlement. Yet the Communally Based Housing Association has the potential to recognise and tap into the human resources of the local people and their community. There is a clear relationship between technology, ecology and not so much culture but rather the social and economic objectives of area improvement. Thus there are real benefits in looking at, with the residents, the replanning of their area in terms of ecosystems and in a holistic way rather than in terms of a narrow vision of new housing.

The Way into The Process

Given our absence of detailed knowledge on green planning and green architecture, we fell back on a search through literature to identify possible interventions that may be considered as part of the physical planning process. These are set out under the following headings:

Building

· Reuse of existing structures

· Grouping of buildings to increase comfort levels

· Passive solar energy

· Insulation and weather sealing

· "Vernacular" buildings where material issues are considered first

· Space planning to reduce heat loss

· Space planning to utilise heat gain from occupants activities

· Space planning for home based work

· Energy efficient heating and lighting systems

· Eco labelling and use of materials with low embodied energy

· A toxic free environment

· Sourcing materials and labour locally

· Reduction of waste in building process

· Exemplary building systems

· Gardens

· Self Build

Enabling

· Resident participation

· Local employment initiatives

· Access to health care

· Access to school facilities

· Access to shops

· Access to housing management

· Access to day care for young and elderly

· Access to sheltered accommodation (refuges, hostel and grouped homes for special needs groups)

· Access to support structures within the community (lets)

· Breaking down barriers/making connections

· Planning and building solutions that are implemented and tested in small increments

Services

· Water storage

· Reed bed sewerage systems

· Separating soil/waste and rainwater run off

· Solar power

· Wind power

· District heating

· Reuse of existing services (roads, drains cables etc.?)

· Low energy public lighting

· Recycling of waster material (space for 3 bins)

· Proximity to public transport

Site and Landscape

· Recycling of demolition materials

· Preparation of existing topsoil

· Protection of soil from erosion

· Traffic calming

· Encouragement of pedestrian power

· Planting as shelter to increase comfort levels

· Planting as habitat creation

· Planting as forestry enterprise

· Planting for psychological benefits

· Recycling of waste materials (composting)

· Outdoor space for leisure activities and play

· Outdoor space for pets

· Sites for community facilities

It was interesting for the residents and myself to recognise that many of the possible interventions were relevant to the replanning of Strone, some of which could be included as a matter of course. The exercise had helped us highlight the importance of a number of key issues that, if we had not gone through the process, would have remained implicit and unclear.

KINLOCHLEVEN: The Site

Kinlochleven lies at the head of a deep fjord like sea loch. It is dominated to the north by the fine hill walking ridges of the Mamores and to the south by the Aonach Eagoch ridge, an interesting scramble in summer which can turn into a major undertaking in winter. Until 1900 there were only a few houses and a shooting lodge at Kinlochleven which was reached by a track that ran along the north side of the loch. The attraction of the site for the British Aluminium Company was its relative proximity to two rail heads, access from the sea and, most important of all, the water to create hydro electric power.

Construction commenced on the Blackwater Dam, while the pilot project for what would be the first aluminium works in the world was established on a nearby site that, traditionally, had been a smiddy. A graveyard close by to the dam stands testament to the men who died in constructing the dam. Water is delivered down huge pipes to the power house which contains a line of turbines that feed electricity directly to the cells on the factory floors, to which bauxite is brought from the large bunkers on the site.

In the 1930s expansion and upgrading of the factory was thwarted by a dispute between the County of Inverness and Argyll over the access to water and a new plant was built in Fort William. This episode laid the seeds for the closure of the Kinlochleven plant which is likely to take place in the relatively near future.

In order to explore the possibilities of life after British Aluminium a community business was established to look at alternative ventures that might be attracted to the area. The strengths of the area were identified as the abundance of the good clean water, which had originally attracted British Aluminium, and its close proximity to Glencoe and Ben Nevis, both popular climbing areas.

Out of this analysis has developed a strategy aimed at encouraging "green" businesses that would benefit from the environmental qualities of the site. Also a hill walking centre will be promoted to capitalise on Kinlochleven's location on the West Highland Way and to encourage newcomers to safely enjoy the mountain scenery. Interpretive proposals were sought and it is in this context that replanning of the site was developed.

Initial Response

The aluminium works were constructed on a flat site dug out of a hillside. It is about 2/3 of the size of the Glasgow Garden Festival site and lies almost at sea level.

The site is bound on two sides by the River Leven and this strong natural edge is reinforced by the long structure of the Power House and tail race that runs through a deep concrete slot back into the river. The southern half of the site is covered by the aluminium works housed within a 1 storey steel structure. The northern half is dominated by the bauxite bunkers which stand like a fortress overlooking a number of other structures, some of which are currently being removed.

To the north is a slag heap or rather a steep embankment that was created when the site was cut into he hillside. A burn runs in at the south west corner and is channelled through the concrete base that covers the whole site. To the west of the site is a tall flat roofed building used by the army as a base for training activities. An isolated plug of rock which acts as a grandstand lies within the site. The entrance to the site is to the north, at the point where the housing in Kinlochleven and the aluminium works meet at the road by bridge over the River Leven.

Initial ideas suggested the creation of a garden, along the lines of the Bells Garden in Perth, that could provide a setting for both the new companies that it is hoped will be attracted to Kinlochleven and, at the same time will be a draw for visitors as well as an amenity for residents. (There is no major garden on the west coast mainland between Arduaine, south of Oban, and Inverewe in the far north). Out of this grew the idea that the natural regeneration of the flora on the site might become a symbol of the economic regeneration of Kinlochleven itself.

The Way into the Process

An analysis of the slag heap reveals at its base, large stones lying in a matrix of soot. However, further up the slag are signs of regeneration with herbaceous material such as digitalis (foxgloves). Grasses emerge on top of the slope where salix (dwarf willow) spread over the larger boulders. The grassland merges at the south west corner with natural birch and oak woodland that clings on to the steeper ground on both sides of the burn. The cutting of the site into the slope has created two areas of water, or issues, one on the slag heap and another adjacent to the burn at the point where it merges into the site. Above this the woodland gives way to the area of rank grass that terminates abruptly at the edge of the small cliff faces that forms the boundary of the site.

In contrast to the natural shapes of the mountains and woodlands is the strong framework of the manufacturing plant which for design purposes was projected over the whole site to provide a planning grid.

Precedents and Inspiration

While the site analysis was carried out a number of precedents were being considered, including Geoffrey Dutton's "Marginal Garden" (Geoffrey Dutton "Harvesting The Edge" Menard Press). Following the precedent of the Sawyers at Inverewe Geoffrey Dutton has fenced and then forested a craggy hillside at about 400m above sea level in the southern Grampians. By careful intervention and management of the canopy he has created a garden true to the Scottish landscape that has been subtly adjusted to accommodate "foreign" plants that survive in an arctic environment where the snow lies for many months of the year.

Another related precedent is the movement in Italy and Switzerland for mountain gardens where alpine flora is grown at relatively low levels. There, visitors who would not normally reach the highest ridges, can enjoy and study alpine plants. A further connection are the west coast gardens of Scotland where exotic plants such as rhododendrons, magnolias and other introductions from the mountain regions of the world flourish in a relatively mild climate, encouraged by a notably high rainfall. In contrast are the formal gardens in Italy with their water chains and fountains through which the visitor travels from "civilisation" represented by the villa and its terraces to the "wildernesses" of dark woodland and craggy grottoes. The final, and even more formal inspiration comes from Japan, notably the Zen gardens with raked gravel and stones, carefully tended azaleas and pines that create infinite mountain landscapes in the mind.

Proposal

Applying all these thoughts to the project the following solution presented itself. First, the building structure should be maintained for reuse. Certainly the main columns could be left to support a new structure in the future or to be overgrown by the plant life. Water can be brought into and across the site from the existing burn, carried in channels attached to the columns, like alpine "bisses". The existing concrete that covers the entire floor of the aluminium works could be broken up where necessary but rather than be removed from site could be heaped up against the slag heap to form a ridge or moraine capped by the minimum amount of imported stone. The slag heap, now connected to the site by the ridge, will be fenced to allow natural regeneration to take place without interference from sheep and deer. The final outcome of this intervention is not known.

The existing woodland provides the nucleus for expanding the woodland cover with new trees planted across the rank grassland to provide, in time, protection for exotic introductions. The wet areas will provide a habitat for native plants with heather on the ground above. In contrast a much more formal landscape is envisaged for the aluminium works site itself with trees replicating the existing steel columns and hedging following the line of the existing grid to create compartments, within which new commercial initiatives and other activities can take place.

Thus a Mountain Garden of Scotland is created with habitats that represent the stony ground of the high ridges, the mountains, the heather moors woodland and wet land. This merges with the more colourful Mountain Garden of the World which provides an appropriate setting for a hostel or hotel converted from the army training building, close to the entrance to act as a draw for visitors. This area is linked to the site itself by suspension bridges that will be flung across a "gorge" to the plug of rock, or "Belvedere", from which the whole site can be viewed along the formal vistas of the Four Seasons Garden. Finally, the visitor can contemplate the Peace Garden, a small part of the site where nature's efforts to regenerate have been terminated. The Peace Garden sits between the remains of the old factory (where there are proposals to construct a "Helter Skelter" Interpretation to tell the story of aluminium and its products) and the naturally generating landscape.

The Outcome

The project is being developed by the Local Enterprise Company and may be the subject of a Millennium Fund Bid. The existing bank of turbines in the Power House

THE SCOTTISH ECOLOGICAL DESIGN ASSOCIATION

Option 1: Rural Communities