Why Tackling Urban Sprawl Is More About Proper Planning Than Eco-Towns & Green Buildings
“Townmaking,” one planner assured me, “is a complicated business. Without a guiding authority you’re not going to get the necessary level of sophistication. It’s necessary to have a long-term master plan that over time continues to add value to the development.”
For the new urbanists, building an eco-town is not a matter of building “green” buildings. For some, in fact, green buildings are non-starters, taking 25 to 65 years to recoup the energy used to build them; and once built, they can become quickly obsolete, saddled with already out-of-date technology.
“Everyone gets seduced by the ‘green bling,’” Stephen Platt of Cambridge Architectural Research told me. “Making the houses energy-efficient is the easy bit. The key problem is making this a long-term socially acceptable place where people will want to live and prosper.”
