ABSTRACT
Introduction This chapter presents a chronological history of green belts in the United Kingdom (with some discussion of other locations as necessary to tell this “story”). It draws upon a wide range of published material on the topic, including books, newspapers, journals, reports and government policy pronouncements. Some of these publications have attempted more or less comprehensive reviews of the state of green belts at that time (for example, Mandelker, 1962), others have focused on one period or facet of green belt policy (for example, Foley, 1963; Amati and Yokohari, 2007), but all are valuable. Much of this material has concentrated principally on England, for similar reasons to those we identified in Chapter 1 – compared to the other nations of the UK, the green belts of England have the longest history in terms of both policy and implementation, and they have been the most controversial. Similarly, London is the focus of a substantial proportion of our sources, which itself is due to the pre-eminence of London as the largest city in the UK and, consequently, the largest example of the perceived problems of uncontrolled urban growth. Given the relative scarcity of publications relating to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, the history of green belts in those nations is covered in a dedicated section towards the end of the chapter.
