ABSTRACT
By contrast with the prominent debates about brownfield land, strategic options for developing greenfield sites were rarely openly discussed in any detail during the eight regional planning processes (Counsell 2001). This was despite the government’s own national target of 60 per cent brownfield development, which implied that it expected 40 per cent of new development would need to occur on greenfield sites. One of the few places in which this was pointed out was the sustainability appraisal of RPG for the North East:
Thirty five percent of the housing requirement may be met by development beyond the existing boundaries of settlements and/or on greenfield land therefore, and RPG1 is silent on the way this land is to be identified, or on the performance to be sought from this development. The way this development takes place will be an important determinant of the contribution new development makes to more sustainable development.
