What kind of a countryside do we want in the UK?

[totaladdict]

depends what you mean by "rural land"? I imagine I can find you stats on this, but only if I know what you mean....

 

[Poi E]

depends what you mean by "rural land"? I imagine I can find you stats on this, but only if I know what you mean....

Yeah not too sure myself! Farm/crop/fallow land or formerly used of the same, including any national parks. I'm still probably leaving it hopelessly wide open.

 

[chilango]

Same here. Britain used to be essentially one big forest, now it's supposedly the most sparsely wooded country in Europe.

It interesting (and positive) taht in some places large predators are reemerging in aresa that they were pevioulsy extinct.

eg.

jaguars, ocelots are reappearing the SW of America, crossing the Mexican border.

bears are now back in austria having crossed over from slovenia.

germany´s forest are witnessing a comeback of large predators too.

there are hopes (albiet a little remote at the mo to get the grizz back in arizona etc, and the mexican silver grizzlie might just not be extinct as previoulsy thought)

 

[Poi E]

Yeah, saw a documentary last night about the areas around the path of the Iron Curtain and how they have become wonderufl sanctuaries for all manner of wildlife. Apparently Slovakia and Romania have the highest concentration of wild bears in all of Europe. Lots of small cats around now, too.

 

[chilango]

Yeah, saw a documentary last night about the areas around the path of the Iron Curtain and how they have become wonderufl sanctuaries for all manner of wildlife. Apparently Slovakia and Romania have the highest concentration of wild bears in all of Europe. Lots of small cats around now, too.

Romania´s bears survive ironically because of caeucescu. he wouldn´t let anyone except himself hunt.

Brasov, in Transilvania, is full of bears and wolves. what other city can you see magnificent wolves padding through 3ft snow on a main road?

very cool.

 

[totaladdict]

Yeah not too sure myself! Farm/crop/fallow land or formerly used of the same, including any national parks. I'm still probably leaving it hopelessly wide open.

i'll come back to this 'cos i'm sure i must be able to find this stuff at work (in a local authority planning dept.), but here's some maps to play about with:

http://www.defra.gov.uk/esg/work_htm/publications/cs/farmstats_web/misc_maps/Dominant_farm_types.jpg - a weird map that seems to show the entire uk, including london, is used for farming - gives a overview showing where, for example, grows mostly cereals and where is mostly grassland

http://farmstats.defra.gov.uk/cs/farmstats_data/MAPS/agricultural_atlas/map_select.asp? - shows a variety of maps based on crops, or a few other measures (tenant farms, owned land, distribution of labour, etc)

http://farmstats.defra.gov.uk/cs/farmstats_data/MAPS/interactive_maps/aonb_map.asp - areas of outstanding natural beauty

http://farmstats.defra.gov.uk/cs/farmstats_data/MAPS/interactive_maps/natpark_map.asp - national parks

 

[totaladdict]

Yeah not too sure myself! Farm/crop/fallow land or formerly used of the same, including any national parks. I'm still probably leaving it hopelessly wide open.

Ooop, think i might have found something a bit better (pdfs):

http://www.odpm.gov.uk/stellent/gro...tentservertemplate/odpm_index.hcst?n=3331&l=2 - Urban and rural area definitions: a user guide

http://www.odpm.gov.uk/stellent/groups/odpm_planning/documents/page/odpm_plan_022538.pdf - map of rural parishes as selected by the countryside agency for the rural services survey.

i'll come back to this.....

 

[totaladdict]

So yeah, these are the ones (although they're from 1991):

Urban settlements with population of over 1000 people:

http://www.odpm.gov.uk/stellent/groups/odpm_planning/documents/page/odpm_plan_022186.pdf

Urban settlements with pop. over 10,000 people (10,000 is the recommended cut-off between urban and rural) :

http://www.odpm.gov.uk/stellent/groups/odpm_planning/documents/page/odpm_plan_022187.pdf

 

[totaladdict]

sorry to keep coming back, but i think the above might be just about as good a representation as you're gonna get at the moment, unless i can get access to the (existing) National Land Use Database at work:

http://www.nlud.org.uk/draft_one/baseline_pdl/baseline_index.htm

Work will continue with the long term aim of developing a nationally consistent NLUD Baseline data-set based on a revised version of the NLUD classification.

A revised Land Use and Land Cover classification, known as NLUD version 4.4 is nearing completion. The aim of the classification is to create a definitive information framework for the collection and management of land use and land cover information.

 

[totaladdict]

*back again*

by jove i think i've done it!

This topic provides information on changes in land used for agriculture, forestry, urban and residential purposes. Data from the Countryside Survey 2000 (CS2000) on broad habitats and landscape features are also given, as are statistics concerning Protected and Designated areas in the UK:

http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/statistics/land/index.htm

and the answer to the specific question:

http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/statistics/land/kf/ldkf08.htm

 

[Dhimmi]

New laws which focus on food miles; forcing supermarkets to source a % of food locally on a store by store basis (obv this will be diffferent for urban stores but I hadn't got that far);

Is a good idea but it's a bit late to help I think.
What most likely to happen to the countryside is more golf courses, country clubs, luxury housing developments and the like.

edited to add
With the set aside land on that graph bear in mind there are crops which can be officially grown on set aside, most famously Rape. For years this attracted a subsidy for being set aside, plus one for growing Rape.

 

[totaladdict]

Is a good idea but it's a bit late to help I think.
What most likely to happen to the countryside is more golf courses, country clubs, luxury housing developments and the like.

it's not too late. the re-localisation of food could well have significant benefits for the countryside.

there's no reason why more golf courses, luxury developments and the like can't be resisted - both at a local and national level. a much bigger threat strikes me to be the new countryside housing estates, supermarkets and industrialised agriculture and the on-going (and centuries old) marketing campaign to style the countryside as backward and cities as cosmopolitan, happening and the place for young people to be.

 

[Poi E]

Merit badge for totaladdict! Great information there-thanks.

 

[totaladdict]

Anyone read this?

The CPRE report - Your Countryside, Your Choice - opens with a portrait of England in 2035, when the countryside has all but disappeared.

Grim direction

It identifies severe long-term threats to the countryside as house building, road freight and car dependence, airport expansion and a decline in farming.

Tom Oliver, head of rural policy at the CPRE, said the present direction of many official policies was "grim" and environmental initiatives "overwhelmed by the scale of the present threats".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4227996.stm

 

[Dhimmi]

it's not too late. the re-localisation of food could well have significant benefits for the countryside.

Well I'd adore to be proved wrong on this I really would, but don't see how you reclaim some of the foundations to make it happen like the village butcher or greengrocer. I think supermarkets are in part to blame for the demise of independent farms, tying new farms futures into dealing with them could be a bit dodgy.

there's no reason why more golf courses, luxury developments and the like can't be resisted - both at a local and national level. a much bigger threat strikes me to be the new countryside housing estates, supermarkets and industrialised agriculture and the on-going (and centuries old) marketing campaign to style the countryside as backward and cities as cosmopolitan, happening and the place for young people to be.

Agreed, but in the villages with a great number of New Gentry I see there being more support than opposition for "posh" developments.

 

[ska invita]

The problem with the countryside is supermarkets and industrial food production. We have the skills and technology to produce a wide variety of excellent quality food locally. However, other than the rare, but fantastic, farmers markets their are very few outlets.

On this point it is a disgrace that you cannot buy a UK apple in a supermarket (of course other products too) - apples is one thing we can do well in the Britain - its a joke - how come its not profitable for s.markets to buy British apples?

He's got some rather interesting idea about how to tackle the implied problems too. For example, he suggests that we stop building on land that can be used for food or biodiversity, because once lost to concrete, it can take lifetimes to regenerate it, if you ever can at all. So for example, build on hillsides to leave fertile valleys, where they still exist, for agriculture. Or regenerate land already ruined, rather than building on land that hasn't been.

My thoughts to this are that at this time there is no need to build on any "new" land at all. We need a combination of revitalising dead towns (with existing housing infrastructure, or extensive brownfield sites) and personally I think that building high in city centres is okay.

Taking the projected population decline into consideration the housing problem isnt one of availability, but one of price - I guess that the only way to make cities not so expensive is to create alternatives to the Big Citiy draw, again, by rejuvenating other failing towns.

I love London, but there are so many people who live here and hate it - breathing new life into smaller towns (smaller than London that is) would give those London-moaners an alternative.

Also, I imagine a cheaper and more reliable and less crowded train service would add to a sense that regional britain isn't in the middle of nowhere.
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Does anyone know the going rate for say, 10 acres of farmland? (you can pick the area, I dont mind!) - just curious...

 

[totaladdict]

Does anyone know the going rate for say, 10 acres of farmland? (you can pick the area, I dont mind!) - just curious...

it's up to around £10,000 per hectare down here - so that'd be £40,000 ish for your 10 acres.

 

[ska invita]

Im asking because I am curious about those schemes whereby a group comes together and buys land and restores it to its natural state (if its reclaimed wetland they let it get wet, if its ex forest they plant some trees etc.)

In my imagined ideal groups could buy up and reclaim enough land to spare some to create special sections for travellers, giving the travelling community somewhere green and pleasent to pitch up, instead of under a motorway flyover, or what not.

I'm not sure if 40k is cheap or not... Its certainly not a lot to some rich benefactor.

Does anyone know if there would be legal objections to buying farmland (fields) and letting them return to their natural state? - Some kind of planning, change-of-use legilation? I don't think there is...

As I said before, once sheep and cow farming fades out of UK farming there will be even more redundant land than there already is (fields going to waste that is)
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http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/facts/index46.aspx
check table at bottom - on average there are 25% more empty homes in the countryside today than in 1999.

Also:
"In comparison with the fifteen core EU member states, the UK has an above average area of land given over to agriculture (67.8 per cent over 46.4 per cent). Furthermore, it has a higher average yield for wheat (8,000 kg/ha over 6,0000kg/ha) and a greater stocking density for sheep farming (1,479 over 678 (head per 1000ha)) [ii]."

-- Thats because we have land going to waste and too many sheep"!

 

[Bernie Gunther]

If you're doing that kind of stuff, one very effective measure is simply leaving a bit of land alone. Pretty much anywhere in the UK, it'll naturally turn into woods (eventually)

Worth looking out for Oliver Rackham's "History of the Countryside" on this kind of stuff. To get an idea what's worked for the last few thousand years.

 

[Idris2002]

Bernie, do you do anythign other than read stuff? Even by Urban standards you've read ludicously wide and deep...

Aye, Bernie's one of the very few who make me feel thick.

 

[Idris2002]

I had a job last year in a library. . . which was 'Dracula in charge of a bloodbank' territory.

While skiving, I came across a book on Vienna between the wars. It had pictures of city parks that were spontaneously taken over as allotments after 1918, when crisis struck.

It just occurs to me, maybe changes in land usage may come more swiftly than we think.

 

[J77]

I grew up in Norfolk.

Lovely coastline.

Interior, polka-dotted with small villages - most with a country pub and church.

One very historical (but small) city.

No motorways.

This is the kind of countryside I want, but then do all the idiots who move up there after making their fortune in London.

I feel priviledged to have grown up the countryside which I would want.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I'm getting embarassed here chaps. Here's some more stuff I think is interesting.

You may have noticed I keep mentioning the architect and mathematician Christopher Alexander who I rate very high.

Here's some interesting stuff based on his work, with some relevant ideas. It isn't quite as diamond-brilliant as his own book "A Pattern Language" but it's a wiki-style collaborative effort aimed at creating a better environment.

Collaborative Architecture Pattern Language Project

edited to add: I just found a site online with the basic headlines of the 250 patterns from "A Pattern Language" - http://www.jacana.org.uk/pattern/P0.htm - so you can potentially get an idea what it's all about.

 

[Crispy]

I remember reading Timeless Way of Building when I was at uni doing architecture, and I can't forget how right it sounded. Start *here* (points to self) and then expand outwards, building around yoursefl, then around you and your neighbours and so on. I thought the beginning was good - talking about where to put a doorhandle or a window seat, but the book just keeps going until he's designing a whole world order, but logically constructed from those first principles. Wonderful stuff. Of course, I carried on designing great big modernist concrete and steel things - There's not a lot of scope for personal country cottages in architectural education.

EDIT : hmmm, that list of patterns you linked to goes in the other direction, from big to small. Maybe my memory is not what it should be...

 

[Idris2002]

OK, I'm going to do a sort of devil's advocate thing here.

Most posters on this thread are UK people of one kind or another. I come from the other island, the one where the flight from the land only began very recently. And as a result I don't share what I perceive as the utopian view of the rural pre-industrial environment (I don't mean 'utopian' in a pejorative way).

And my family still live in Co. Mayo, one of the most barren and harsh counties in the barren and harsh province of Connacht.

You could - and people did, in the old days - scratch a living from the soil. But it was brutal backbreaking work, for a very very meagre return. And those who could get out, did get out, and didn't look back either (in 1945 the Dublin government seriously considered prohibiting the emigration of women, that's how bad the emigration was).

The oil peak is going to come, sooner or later, and that will kick away the props of contemporary industrial agriculture. But the alternatives to industrial agriculture may not be that appealing either.

Kyser - further up the thread you were talking about CPO of land. You mean 'Common Public Ownership' or something like that? That would have to be handled carefully. Very carefully indeed.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Here's another interesting link on Cuban organic agriculture.

http://auto_sol.tao.ca/node/view/1371

It's particularly good on the way in which a unique scientific mobilisation was involved, a mobilisation more or less impossible where agricultural research is primarily sponsored by agribusiness.

 

[kyser_soze]

Compulsory Purchase Order, as used to buy vast swathes of E.London during the 80s, evict the locals and build nice shiny new flats for the 'yuppies' of the time...

My idea would involve a joint process of nationalising farming in a sense insofar as they wouldn't be in private hands, but neither would they be owned by the state. THey would be aquired via CPO legislation. The main aim would be to break the dominaiton of the super farmers who own most of the land and most of the subsidy; this would then be followed by a volountary scheme to get people back to the countryside to work in an at least partially de-industrialised farming industry. The final 'phase' would be to use the current subsidy system to pay a kind of 'citizen wage' for those moving to the countryside to work on the farms, and as far as was practicably possible to be able to offer basic foods free of charge or at a nominal cost.

I'd also aim to change the direction of UK agriculture and focus on diversifying production back to natural varieties of fruits, veggies, remove mono-cropping full stop.

I'm not envisaging some kind of 'return to olde Yngland' view - it would be damn hard work, exceptionally risky on a collossal scale but coupled with the law changes about retailing and, no doubt other ideas...I mean hell, there are probably infinity+shipping holes in these ideas. But there is a dangerous social schism and lack of understanding between urban and rural communities, the UK is loosing natural fruit varieties and other plant and animal species as a result of subsidy distorted markets and the power of the retail giants and something needs to be done. That coupled with the fact I find it obscene that basic foods are paid for up to three times - at the till, in subsidy to UKG and in subisidyt to the EU.

 

[Crispy]

Well, we're not talking about a pre-industrial revolution subsistance farming model here. Oil or not, there's plenty of science and technology that can help us farm sustainably with much less effort than your average C15 peasant.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

OK, I'm going to do a sort of devil's advocate thing here.
<snip> The oil peak is going to come, sooner or later, and that will kick away the props of contemporary industrial agriculture. But the alternatives to industrial agriculture may not be that appealing either.<snip>

I think this is a key point. What we certainly don't want is a return to the shittiest forms of pre-industrial society. Some other models are available though. For example Kropotkin's Fields Factories and Workshops

The question I think you're posing is one I think we've been trying to get to grips with over on this thread

I think an important pattern is the integration of labour intensive agriculture with directly democratic communities and other supporting stuff like light industry.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I remember reading Timeless Way of Building when I was at uni doing architecture, and I can't forget how right it sounded. Start *here* (points to self) and then expand outwards, building around yoursefl, then around you and your neighbours and so on. I thought the beginning was good - talking about where to put a doorhandle or a window seat, but the book just keeps going until he's designing a whole world order, but logically constructed from those first principles. Wonderful stuff. Of course, I carried on designing great big modernist concrete and steel things - There's not a lot of scope for personal country cottages in architectural education.

EDIT : hmmm, that list of patterns you linked to goes in the other direction, from big to small. Maybe my memory is not what it should be...

I think the two books are meant to be complementary. So "Timeless Way" is meant to explain the process from the micro to the macro, then "Pattern Language" is meant to show you how to do it, from the macro to the micro.