Green belt planning: is the grass always greener?
Posted on: 15 January, 2025
While the concept of the green belt has been a major political talking point in recent months, it’s actually been the subject of debate since it was introduced into the UK planning system.
Can our natural and built environments truly live in harmony? Amid a global housing shortage, exponential population growth and increased migration, unrelenting demand for infrastructure has led to urban sprawl – the expansion of urbanised areas into undeveloped and natural land – in cities and towns.
While there’s no denying the need to create enough housing (particularly when housebuilding numbers in the UK are at their lowest since the Second World War), increased development puts our natural environments and the sustainability of the planet at risk.
To tackle increased urban sprawl and protect our rural environments, green belt planning policy has ramped up in the UK. However, this approach isn’t without criticism.
Here’s how green belt planning works, and why it’s stirred controversy.
What is green belt planning?
Green belt planning is an urban planning policy of preserving open land around urban areas in order to minimise unrestricted sprawl. How the green belt land is defined is down to the respective local planning authorities (LPAs) in different areas.
Although the concept was incorporated into the UK planning system in the mid-20th century, changes made to the policy in 2023 have thrust it into the limelight.
The history of green belt planning
The idea of green belt land isn’t new or unique to the UK: as early as the 7th century, a green belt was established around Medina, Saudi Arabia, and in the 16th century, Queen Elizabeth I of England implemented a three-mile belt around London.
The term itself originates from 1875, when Octavia Hill, co-founder of the National Trust, coined it in the article ‘A Space for the People’.
What are the 5 functions of green belt planning?
Green belt planning is generally considered to have five core aims, each of which providing different benefits:
1. Reducing urban sprawl
The key driver for green belt policy is to preserve natural, open environments and minimise the impacts of urban sprawl, namely:
- Increased pollution and damage to the environment
- Social issues like inequality and homogeneity
- Increased congestion
- Greater public expenditure on infrastructure
Learn more: How can we deal with urban sprawl?
2. Preserving our natural environment
By holding back urban sprawl and the growth of urban areas, green belt planning can help us maintain our natural environments, which can lead to a wide range of benefits.
With instances of extreme weather events on the rise, these areas can absorb excess water, reducing flood risk and effectively acting like a sponge. They can also address the poor air quality of urban areas and purify our water.
Learn more: What on earth are sponge cities?
Using green belts in this way creates barriers for urbanisation that can also preserve wildlife and agriculture.
3. Maintaining cultural and historical locations
Along with the environment, another victim of increased urbanisation is often the culturally and historically significant locations that have to make way for new development.
Designated green areas can act as a barrier from urban developments that protect historic towns, preserving areas of historical and cultural significance.
4. Preventing neighbourhood towns from merging
It’s not just the history and legacy of historical towns that are at risk of urban sprawl – it’s their identity. Designated belts of land can exist between rural areas as well as a town and an urban area, preventing neighbouring towns from merging.
5. Assisting urban regeneration
This method of planning can also support urban regeneration – the process of recycling and renewing urban land for social regeneration, economic growth and environmental revitalisation.
Learn more: Urban regeneration, defined: here’s why it matters – link once ready
The criticisms of green belt land
The implementation of green belt policies has attracted criticisms from a wide range of perspectives:
1. They’re too weak
Some commentators claim the rules around green belt planning are too weak and that they fail to block inappropriate development. As such, there has long been a debate on whether we should actually be able to build on this land.
2. They’re too strong
On the other hand, some believe this policy is doing more harm than good and holding back housing development unnecessarily. In 2014, the Adam Smith Institute argued that removing half a mile of the London green belt in the United Kingdom could make space for 800,000 new homes – a compelling argument today as the country deals with an ongoing housing crisis.
3. It’s misleading
Another common criticism of green belt land is that the definition of the term is misleading. As Ben Mayfield notes in an article for The Conversation, ‘most green belt land is privately owned, and very little is open to public access’. In fact, only 22% of London’s green belt is actually dedicated to environmental protection and public access. Instead, 76% of it is used for agricultural purposes, golf courses and hospitals.
4. It leads to exclusion
With much of the land in green belt’s like London’s being privately owned, it’s often argued that very little of the natural, rural areas this initiative seeks to protect can actually be enjoyed by residents. Similarly, it’s often argued that this planning policy favours and protects the rich whilst blocking affordable housing for people with lower incomes.
5. It widens commuter belts
The prevention of urban sprawl may be a major argument in favour of this planning strategy, but by expanding the commuter belt and the distance people have to travel to reach urban areas, some argue that it’s contributing to increased commuting and higher levels of pollution.
It’s not easy being green
It’s unlikely that the debate around green belts and their utility in modern urban planning will be resolved any time soon. One of the chief issues stem from how it is defined. It’s often conflated with both greenfield – land that has not knowingly been developed before – and greenspace – land that is covered by vegetation that may or may not have been developed on previously. As a result, there’s significant confusion on what green belt actually means.
This lack of clarity has been a major focus for the recently elected Labour government in the UK, who have attempted to overhaul the planning system by introducing the concept of ‘grey belt’ land.
Grey belts are land in the defined green belt that is considered not to be contributing to any of the five functions of the green belt (listed above in the benefits section). The introduction of these, however, have so far only added further confusion around definitions, and will likely lead to a legal minefield.
As Laird Ryan, Urban Planning Lecturer at UCEM, notes:
“While the grey belt proposal aims to reassure the public that the government isn’t proposing to abandon the green belt as public policy – which would be an unwise step – creating a new definition for such sites has a tendency to set a dangerous precedent. For one thing, the extent of their ‘greyness’ would be something in the eye of the beholder and highly contextual. More to the point, whereas the green belt isn’t always green, it’s certainly a belt; but grey belts, by their very nature, would be neither!”
While mandating the preservation of green land into the planning framework can help us balance urbanisation and sustainable development, clearly there remain several potential shortcomings in this approach that prevent us from fully realising its benefits.
Urban planning is an exciting field that has a pivotal role in the design and function of our cities and communities. If you want to have a part in helping the built environment realise a sustainable future, UCEM’s MSc Urban Planning will give you the knowledge, skills and technical understanding you need.
Find out more: MSc Urban Planning – University College of Estate Management
