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Greening Newcastle Welcome to issue 15 of the magazine of Newcastle Green Party, January 2012 Protest Core against battle council plans Mass ramble from Heathery Lane (near Gosforth Nature Reserve) along the ‘wildlife corridor’ builds up to the ‘Cluny’ for late lunch Up and down the country, battles are breaking out over greenfield 11.00 a.m. Sunday, February 12th. sites threatened by a tide of new construction. Even the famous ‘Watership Down’ in Berkshire is at risk. This offensive is being Details will be circulated but keep looking at: driven by the attempt by the government to ‘get the economy going’ by means of infrastructural projects such as new roads and http://www.savegosforthwildlife.com/ high-speed train lines as well as speculative housing, retail and office developments. Far from addressing the real needs of ordinary empty shops and vacant office premises that already dot several people and coping with ecological threats such as adverse climate towns and cities. The housing construction at the heart of many change and post-peak oil, these plans are actually a desperate bid to such development will, most likely, create another speculative revive the ‘business-as-usual’. property bubble destined to burst, as has been seen across in Eire. The means by which such plans can be bulldozed through is the government’s National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). Even The few benefit… again pro-Conservative papers like the Daily Telegraph have been calling Even if new-build does not go ahead, given the state of the it a “developers’ charter”. The NPPF is still only a draft yet planning property market, the very threat of large-scale construction work inspectors in places like Rutland and Nuneaton have been citing it will nonetheless blight many communities. But the big building to rule in favour of some very damaging housing developments. contractors such as Persimmons and Bellway will still profit. The fact that the NPPF favours “sustainable development” just Changes in land use designations, removing protection from shows how worthless that term has become. development, will inflate the value of the large amounts of urban Here in Newcastle the council argues that it has no alternative fringe land they own or on which they have acquired options. In but to produce a plan like the One Core Strategy (1CS) since, turn, such inflated assets would improve company balances, even otherwise, the government will impose a free-for-all. That is indeed though there has been no actual growth in real wealth. a possibility but the developments threatened by 1CS are all too At the same time, those now unemployed or whose jobs are at real. Indeed the council has gone and tempted developers with the risk will derive little benefit. Any economic expansion is likely to be thought of big profits on sites like Salters Lane (next to Gosforth comparatively ‘jobless’, with profits used to fund more automation. Nature Reserve). It is going to be hard to get the genie back into the Of course, construction work does create some employment but it bottle as a result of this rash plan. is often temporary and does not necessarily help locals. Some new jobs in supermarkets hardly match those now haemorrhaging from Unsustainable bubble the public sector and from the closure of so many local stores. Given what is now known about adverse climate change, ‘peak oil’ and many other growing ecological constraints, this attempt to Trouble in Toon bring back the ‘old economy’ is doomed in the long run, but, in TheOne Core Strategy of both Newcastle and Gateshead councils is the short-term, it will do immense damage. This will, in turn, make accompanied by an economic programme imaginatively called The it harder to cope with the challenges ahead. One Plan. The latter can be found in glossy brochures picturing Thus global food prices are steadily rising yet what will be ‘high-tech.’ research facilities and ‘creative hubs’. Given the current priceless farmland in future decades is being buried under brick, state of the university sector, it is hard to see that it will provide concrete and tarmac. Many of the development will simply add to strong employment possibilities. Even if the envisaged ‘cutting the already unsustainable levels of CO2 emissions. Generally these edge’ companies do come into sustained existence (and look what developments just cover more of the country under urban sprawl. happened to lots of dot.com companies) they are unlikely to offer Meanwhile such development will worsen traffic congestion. jobs for the average unemployed person. Given the current economic climate, they will just add to the TheOne Core Strategy plan threatens to fatally cripple Gosforth 1 Nature Reserve with nearby housing developments (Persimmons claim their constructions will improve biodiversity!). Other planned developments will smother local neighbourhoods to the north-west and west of Newcastle. Meanwhile, old urban areas like Scotswood and Walker, where locals want regeneration projects and where there is plenty of genuine brownfield land, will be marginalised. Across in Gateshead, large numbers of fit housing will be demolished, instead of being refurbished, in the manner of the now widely discredited ‘Pathfinder Programme’ (see Anna Minton’s excellent book Ground Control) Local councillors and planners of course like to claim that they too do want to use brownfield sites. Yet, if given the choice as Picture: Gemma Marriner under the Strategy, developers will prioritise executive-style housing on greenfield sites. The government’s withdrawal of subsidies for Protest at Civic Centre last December brownfield development will accentuate this bias just as much as against threat to local Green Belt its slashing of support for solar installations will hinder the switch [No badgers were harmed in the making of this demo,] to renewable energy sources. The exclusion of ‘windfall’ brownfield sites (e.g. ones where, say, a factory has suddenly closed) from the threat from human numbers. But the two councils actually call strategic housing land availability assessment will accentuate this for an increased population as a strategic goal, an aim that is quite unsustainable bias to greenfield sites. irresponsible in what ‘steady-state’ economist Herman Daly rightly Many LibDem councillors who oppose the draft Strategy have calls a “full world”. called for a policy of ‘brownfield sites first’. Yet they also support In reality what they really want a return of well-off council the broad plan for economic growth. In the context of on-going tax payers who have moved out of the area to move back within physical expansion, the time would soon come where development the boundaries of Newcastle and Gateshead. But the numbers would use up all such options, leading inexorably to more and more themselves are used to justify a housing construction whose scale destruction of farmland, wildlife habitat and other open spaces. would be far higher than the best rate of the ‘boom years’, clearly a fantasy. Their dodgy projections for more and more house starts are Green alternative based on other unsound premises. Thus rival councils in the area, Only local Greens have posed the sustainable alternative: no more all with basically the same plan, are counting the same people more sprawl but better use of the existing built-up area, all within a than once, exploiting the imprecision relationship between resident vision of not overall growth but a ‘steady-state economy’. Instead and travel-to-work populations. of duplicating the excellent work of bodies such as the CPRE, local They also base their case on the fact of an ageing population, Greens decided to produce a broad critique, questioning the basic though the kind of housing that would be built offers little to assumptions, some unspoken, beneath the Strategy. senior citizens seeking to downsize. They further inflate their There has been widespread and growing public opposition. figures by counting the big influx of students, economic migrants Greens have played an important part. At the 420 strong public and refugees into the city. But such growth is unstable and could meeting at Gosforth Civic Hall last November to protest against be easily reversed. In any case, both local universities are building the threat against the local nature, Gateshead Green Party member more halls of residence. Indeed recovery of terraced house property Dave Byrne, a Durham University professor, was the main now rented to students could provide ideal homes for those at platform speaker and the event was co-chaired by a member from lower ends of the housing market. Recently groups like Poles have the Newcastle branch. begun to leave the area seeking better opportunities closer to home. It is very clear just how important political leadership is in such campaigns. At the last two council meetings, large numbers of Faulty projections protestors attended but it was obvious that many were uncertain Local Greens have also argued that ‘evidence-based policy-making’ what promises made by council leaders actually meant (usually is not all that it is cracked up to be. Extrapolations from past little!). The same has been true of public meetings which the circumstances which seem destined to disappear are far from sound. planners have organised. Some members of the public seemed to Thus many plans assumes that people could and should be able to be taken in by the honeyed phrases being bandied about. Claims, drive their cars more or less as they did before (hence provision for example that “people have to live somewhere” (… so this or of houses with twin garages). Yet it seems evident that the end of that green field has to be built on) can sway the undecided. It is large-scale private motoring could soon be in sight.

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