ABSTRACT

The Brundtland Report of 1987, the European Green Paper on the Urban Environment of 1990 and the launch of Agenda 21 at the Rio Summit in 1992 had considerable impact on the European political scene. The UK response at national level was in the form of a number of Planning Policy Guidance (PPG) notes and a sustainable development strategy that signalled a major shift, in some areas a U-turn, in policy. The first of the guidance notes is worth summarising:

● PPG3: Housing (DoE, 1992) stresses the need to build a maximum percentage (around 60 per cent) of additionally required housing within existing urban areas to reduce the need to travel, halt urban sprawl, and to preserve open green areas and the countryside. This note is concerned about the government’s estimate that 3.8 million extra households would form between 1996 and 2021 and the impact this would have on the city and the countryside if the currently preferred form of living in low-density suburbia should prevail.