ABSTRACT
Chapters 8 and 9 are closely linked. This chapter examines the traditional ‘land-use’ model of planning applied at the rural-urban fringe, and also the strategy of containment that has been the key component of edge planning for at least the past fifty years. This strategy is rooted in the UK but has been exported, in various forms, to various other parts of the world. A detailed examination of containment and green belts in this chapter is used to expose some of the problems associated with past planning on the edge – at least in those instances where planning has occurred. This leads into a broader discussion – in Chapter 9 – of the emergent spatial planning agenda and what this may mean at the fringe, and indeed, how the agenda might be taken forward. However, this current chapter is not entirely retrospective, and also examines how current containment policies might continue to promote urban regeneration and prevent sprawl and coalescence, while also evolving into a positive tool for encouraging greener forms of development in the rural-urban fringe. A key argument here – and one that was introduced in Chapter 1 – is that planning at the fringe has not necessarily been for the fringe. Containment strategies were designed with objectives in mind that were spatially exogenous to the fringe: protection of the countryside, the prevention of urban coalescence and the promotion of inner urban regeneration. Much of what has happened at the fringe – in areas with or without explicit containment policies – has been organic, and planning has often sought to manage disparate demands for space in an ad hoc way, reacting to development pressure (for example, for the siting of essential services) in a reactive rather than a proactive manner. This is a rather broad statement, and one that is becoming increasingly common in planning literature. Our intention in this chapter is to mould such statements into a more coherent analysis of the failures of planning at the rural-urban fringe. Our broader objective in this part of the book is not to argue for more planning, but to suggest a different approach: perhaps
one that departs from conventional planning but becomes more integrated and inclusive. Such an approach – designed to manage the ‘multiple functions’ of the fringe considered in Part Two – might draw on a softer range of management approaches and avoid emphasis on physical planning; however, it might use existing fringe designations, including green belts, as a framework for future intervention.
