Is Planning Really Necessary?

: Discussion
Author(s): W. G. V. Balchin, F. H. W. Green, J. W. Burrows, H. F. Robert Perrin, J.
Bridgeman, Dr. Hansford-Miller, Neil Munro, R. N. E. Blake and Alice Coleman
Source: The Geographical Journal, Vol. 142, No. 3 (Nov., 1976), pp. 430-437
Published by: geographicalj
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1795295
Accessed: 26-06-2016 08:31 UTC

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430 IS PLANNING REALLY NECESSARY?

systematized planning can save the public purse the cost of crime and also, probably,
the cost of social workers.
I believe that we now know enough about environment and about planning to
bring a large part of good planning under the rule of law instead of leaving it to the
individual decisions of planners. At present planning law is preoccupied with means;
it needs to be concerned with ends. The public is entitled to a framework of specific
knowledge on what is or is not acceptable in the planning context, and also why, and
I think the scape and fringe framework can contribute to this. At present the public
does not know in advance whether applications will be approved. Worse, the
planners often do not know either and may take months, or even a year or two,
deliberating. Quite apart from the frustration and costs of such delays, they give
the impression that the decision could have gone either way, and that ultimate
refusals are arbitrary or subjective. This builds up a groundswell of hostility towards
planning. If, however, planning law gave more explicit guidance the public would
benefit by gaining more freedom of initiative within the law, and the planners' work
would be streamlined, because people would soon learn to submit only realistic
applications, and the number of appeals would diminish. It would also be possible
to lighten the burden of statutory obligations which at present absorb the planners'
time unproductively. Planners could then, it is hoped, exercise the wisdom and fore-
sight that is supposed to be the hallmark ofthe profession. They could stop the mech-
anistic extrapolation of current trends beyond the point where they cease to be useful
and become actively destructive. They could stop uprooting people out of an already
eviscerated London which shows signs of following New York into financial
bankruptcy. They could avoid further rurbanization of beautiful countryside in
Berkshire, or sterilization of more good farmland at Stevenage to house these un-
necessarily uprooted people. They could reject the proposal to devote ?20 million,
and sacrifice several hundred houses, to the greater glory ofthe South Circular
Road. They could stop moving in a short-term direction that is often diametrically
opposed to the ultimate direction of long-term environmental planning.
Environmental planning seeks to conserve the self-sustaining stability of the
planetary environment. It incorporates a strong element of cautious insurance over
and above providing for contingencies that can already be foreseen from the limited
viewpoint of today. It emphasizes that 'Prevention is better than cure', even when it
cannot see in advance what problems are to be prevented, and it works towards this
apparently impossible goal by regarding all environments as part of a single inte?
grated system in which unnecessary artificial interference is to be minimized.
Necessary types of artificial interference are already of enormous magnitude. Is
planning really necessary? The answer would seem to be 'Yes', provided that it is
more streamlined planning, with a more lucid rationale and a stronger sense of
environmental responsibility.

Reference
Newman, Oscar. 1974 Defensible Space. Architectural Press. London.

DISCUSSION

Afternoon Meeting 3 May ig?6

The Chairman (Professor W. G. V. Balchin): The First Land Utilisation Survey
of Britain, directed by the late Sir Dudley Stamp, drew attention to the widespread
misuses of the land, and was one of the major influences that led to the introduction of

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 is planning really necessary? 431

planning machinery. The Town and Country Planning Act of 1947 hinged upon the
control of land use. It enacted that in future, no land use was to be changed without
planning permission, that no permission would be granted unless it conformed to an
official plan, and that no plan would be designated as official until it had been approved
by the Minister, who was empowered to amend it as he saw fit. Acceptable types of
change were not defined in the Act but the explanatory document which accompanied
it referred back to the 'three great state papers': the Barlow, Scott and Uthwatt
reports. Sir Dudley Stamp was the Vice-Chairman of the Scott Committee, and in
fact was the main writer of the Scott report. The findings of his Land Utilisation
Survey also influenced the Barlow Commission. Stamp's advocacy for land-use
control was a logical outcome of the data which emerged from the First Land Utilisa?
tion Survey. We have now had three decades of land-use planning and we are entitled
to ask the question whether the investment in planning has paid dividends in the form
of better land use. Have the misuses which Stamp revealed been eradicated ? Has his
vision of the future come to pass ? These are questions that can only be answered by
what Stamp himself always called 'the facts on the map* and it is precisely these facts
that have been studied by Miss Alice Coleman in the Second Land Utilisation Survey
of Britain.
The Second Survey was initiated by Miss Coleman in 1960 with little more in the
way of resources than intensive enthusiasm and Professor Stamp's backing and that
of the RGS. Miss Coleman subsequently recruited and trained approximately 3000
volunteer surveyors, and during the sixties the whole of England and Wales was
surveyed in detail on a 1 :io 000 scale thus providing a data bank of information of
incalculable value to planners, local authorities and government agencies. In the
1970s additional sample resurveys have been undertaken.
It is perhaps not surprising that Miss Coleman's dedication to the Second Land
Utilisation Survey earned her the TimesjVeuve Clicquot accolade as the most 'out?
standing woman in a man's world' for 1974. Miss Coleman has also this weekend just
returned from the University of Western Ontario where she has been the first holder
of a visiting professorship for distinguished women social scientists?a double dis-
tinction which merits our congratulations. Concurrently with the publication pro?
gramme of the Second Land Utilisation Survey, Miss Coleman has also been engaged
in analytical work on the Survey. It is on this aspect that she will address the Society
this afternoon. Using computer techniques and new concepts in graphicacy she has
developed new insights into land-use changes that have an important message for the
future of Britain.

Mr. F. H. W. Green (Department of Agricultural Science, University of Oxford):

I took quite an active part in helping my former tutor, Sir Dudley Stamp, in the First
Land Utilisation Survey, and I played a part, in the post-war Ministry of Town and
Country Planning, in some of the work with which the Ministry was concerned,
which involved making considerable use of the results and implications of the Survey.
I must admit to becoming somewhat disillusioned with planning at that time, partly
because of the still unresolved conflict between town and country planning, and
partly because it was trying to do too much on too little factual data.
Although I have indeed taken an interest in the Second Land Utilisation Survey, I
regret to say that I have not followed its work as closely as I might have done?as I
felt much aware when invited to join in the discussion today. I ask myself why this is,
and I think it may be of interest for me to attempt to answer this question. Some
relevant points seem to me to be: (i) there has been, since the time of the First Survey, a
considerable amount of data collected and mapped by other agencies including the
agricultural departments and planning authorities; and (ii) the Second Survey has not,
so far as I am aware, produced material which makes it easy to compare its findings
with the findings of the First Survey. This is partly due, I think, to the lack of county
reports like those of the First Survey. In many respects, these county reports have
been the products of the First Survey which have had the most lasting value. It has

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432 IS PLANNING REALLY NECESSARY ?

certainly been my own experience that one refers to them (and to Sir Dudley's 'Land
of Britain', which summarizes them) much more than to the i :63 ooo maps of the
Survey, and 1/ for one, would have very much liked to see somewhat similar reports
produced by the Second Survey.
Miss Coleman has presented us today with some very interesting maps and
figures. While I am not entirely happy that her six-fold classification of land-use
patterns is satisfactory, her maps of Surrey, for instance, based on them, vividly show
the 'suburbanization' of that county, leaving only the south-east corner as a 'farm?
scape'. Her national figures for arable land do not seem quite to tally with those from
other sources (Green, 1976). But if one accepts for instance the loss of arable and other
agricultural land in Essex, as shown on her Thames Estuary maps, one should note
the intensity of effort, e.g., field drainage, liming, and fertilizers, put into Essex
agricultural land. How much of this was put in on land in 'farmscapes', and how much
in 'rurban fringe' and 'marginal fringe' areas ? It does indeed look as though there has
been an alarming increase in 'wasteland', and much of this seems to be in a state of
suspended animation between an old use and a new one. This is doubtless partly due
to the administrative chaos into which planning has been thrust by the new local
government legislation. But while many of us share Miss Coleman's doubts as to the
efficacy of town and country planning, I think that the first question to be answered
is: Would things have been better, or worse, without planning ?
Land capability maps have been referred to. The trouble with most of those pro?
duced so far is that they have been concerned only with capability for one use?e.g.,
the recent land capability maps produced by Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and
Food. What I think is needed is the concept of flexibility of land use. This ought to be
approached in two stages: (i) what degree of flexibility of use is permitted by its
physical characteristics, and then (ii) what degree of flexibility is permitted by social
and economic factors. Too often one stage is considered without any consideration
of the other.

Reference
Green, F. H. W., 1976 Recent changes in land use and treatment. Geogrl J. 142, 1: 12-26.

Mr. J. W. Burrows (School of Environmental Studies, University College,

London): Miss Coleman's work on the Second Land Utilisation Survey of Great
Britain is widely recognized as an important contribution to the monitoring of land-use
changes; and this paper raises some very interesting ideas concerning land-use
planning. While I agree wholeheartedly with several of her arguments. I must take
issue with Miss Coleman's main conclusion concerning the need for planning. Two
areas mentioned in this paper which certainly require more planning attention are
those of the problem of urban vacant land and 'planning for walking'. Urban vacant
land is part of a phenomenon I would call 'the temporary environment'. It constitutes
a potential resource not yet fully realized but one which could be used to help revita-
lize the inner city and reduce demands on the urban fringe. In a time of 'non-growth'
it would also seem sensible for planners to give more thought to the arrangements of
land uses in relation to walking and cycling. The present distribution of land uses has
been allowed by, and in turn requires, increased vehicular movement, but economic
arguments concerning the availability of fuel resources and the cost of infrastructure,
and social arguments concerning the availability of mobility for everyone (47 per cent
of all households in this country do not have regular access to a car) have been ad?
vanced to question the advisability of continuing such a trend away from the human
scale.
It is, however, to the issue of the necessity of planning that I wish to address myself.
The contention that planning in its present form has failed because comparisons
between the First and Second Land Utilisation Surveys reveal that urban expansion
has continued at a substantial rate even after the inception of land-use controls in
1947, is I think unfair. Firstly, Miss Coleman deals only with planning in its land-use
allocation role. Whilst it is true that much of the impetus for establishing the post-war

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 IS PLANNING REALLY NECESSARY? 433

planning machinery came from the concern over urban sprawl in the 1920s and
1930s, the aim of planning once established in its land-use role was to 'secure a proper
balance between the competing demands for land so that all the land of the country is
used in the best interests of the whole people'. This aim is not synonymous with 'no
further urban area expansion'. Planning was particularly concerned with reducing the
very high densities at which people were living in the inner urban areas. Such re-
development schemes and rehousing naturally involved an increase in urban land area,
as did the provision of adequate space to meet the demands of the motor vehicle. If
planning was to succeed according to the aim of using land in the best interests of the
people, effectively it had to bring land to the people, which meant continued urban
area expansion but, in theory at least, it would be well planned expansion and not
'sprawl'. This was well recognized in the post-1947 Development Plans. Most of the
urban area extensions shown up by the Second Land Utilisation Survey were in fact
scheduled in the 'Town Maps' of the early 1950s and could have been criticized 20
years ago. It is also true that a substantial amount of the urban expansion between the
two land-use surveys was experienced before planning legislation came into force in
1947. Most of the First Land Utilisation Survey's field surveys were completed by 1933
and according to Best's figures, of the 385 500 hectares of agricultural land used for
building between the two land surveys, 195 000 hectares were built on before the
1947 Act (Best, 1965 and 1968).
For a fairer view of the success or failure of land-use planning since 1947, it would
be interesting to see how much of the land not originally scheduled for development
such as 'white land' on the town maps or green belt land has been built on, and
whether land has been used in a more rational way. We must speculate as to what the
land-use pattern would have been without planning and consider not so much how
much land has been used but whether, as a result of planning, land has been used in
the best interests of the whole people.

References
Best, Robin H., 1965 Recent changes and future prospects in land use in England and Wales.
GeogrlJ. 131, 1 :i-i2
Best, Robin H., 1968 Urban Studies 5, 1:1-23, Table 1:4

Mr. H. F. Robert Perrin (Stanford Research Institute): May I first congratulate

Miss Coleman for the very clear way in which she put across her message. However,
as an ex-geographer who now specializes in the theory of resource allocation in the
public sector, may I sound a warning note. There is a great danger that geographers
seek solutions which look tidy on maps. They make broad generalizations that agri?
culture and forestry are good and land used by industry is bad, or at very least an
unfortunate necessity to be restricted as far as possible. Such over-simplifications are
dangerous and can lead to the misapplication of resources. Before coming to con?
clusions about any one individual parcel of land, one must establish alternative uses.
This must lead to establishing which use will optimize the net benefit to society. It is
easy to bemoan the fact that a minute percentage of agricultural land after many
decades is now taken over by industry. I accept that it is less aesthetically attractive.
But we in Britain cannot support a prosperous and socially progressive society unless
our industry is successful. The cost-benefit ratio, or the added value generated by a
factory site, is usually much greater than that from a field of corn. The jobs created,
the wages, rates and taxes paid are much higher. Anxious to see more money in the
Health Service, I can look with delight at miles of prosperous factories!
It is most understandable to decry the amount of derelict land in and around our
cities. But wholesale condemnation of local authorities without examining specific
cases can lead geographers into disrepute. Some of the derelict sites shown on maps
tonight are on land difficult to drain, difficult to level, and having poor access. In the
practical world of decision-making, an authority must be aware of the total funds
available to it. It may well prove more cost-effective to rebuild a swimming pool than
pour resources into cleaning up a derelict site. How many people will get how much

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434 IS PLANNING REALLY NECESSARY ?

benefit must be measured. Decisions on the priorities and allocation of funds must be
made on dispassionate evaluation, rather than dogma and slogan.
It is confusing to see one map in great detail showing land use 30 years ago, and then
another showing how it is used today. I would have preferred to see one map which
illustrated only those parcels of land whose use had changed. This concentrates the
mind on the issue of identifying which land-use changes have been for the net benefit
to society and which to its net loss. I believe geographers must not get carried away
by their maps. Within multi-disclipline teams they must bring in the accountant,
economist and sociologist. They must present their case in terms the management and
political process in central and local government understands and appreciates. The
work of geographers is insufficiently appreciated. But in the real world one must look
at how, by whom, and on what data decisions are made. Geographers must work in
this context if the value of their skills is to have maximum influence.

Mrs. J. BridgemAN (Department of the Environment): The question does not

seem to be so much one of whether planning is needed, but rather whether such
elaborate planning as we have is producing the right results. It has been argued that
the Community Land Act might exacerbate the problem of encroachment on to green
fields and the creation of more 'wasteland', but this ignores the fact that the working
of the land scheme was set within the framework that authorities had for planning.
It is arguable that the tools the scheme provides might help authorities to get better,
not worse, planning results. It is conceivable that they might use their powers of
ownership under the Community Land Act to offer the right sort of land for develop?
ment rather than respond to the constant pressure of interests which seek, through
individual development applications, not plans, to secure fresh planning development
out into the countryside.

Dr. Hansford-Miller having congratulated Miss Coleman on her inspiring

address referred to figures she had produced, as the result of considerable research,
which showed that despite the huge expenditure on planning the results were in many
cases highly damaging to the environment. Dr. Hansford-Miller estimated the cost of
planning as at least of the order of ?5000 million. To this must be added the frustra-
tion and delays due to the planning process. Many good, sincere people like the late
Sir Dudley Stamp and his colleagues had proposed planning expecting that it would
be the answer to the pre-war problems of the environment. But evidently that was
not the case. Dr. Hansford-Miller described planning as the substitution of the collect-
ivist anonymous bureaucrat working to a preconceived set of rules for the individual
personal conscience. As Miss Coleman had very wisely suggested, educating the
public within a framework of general rules might well be a better solution than
present procedures.

Mr. Neil Munro: I am very impressed with the amount of data which Miss
Coleman has been able to gather and the overall detail which is presented for the
country as a whole. Being both a planner and a geographer, however, I have some
concern relative to the overall application of the information and a considerable con?
cern that we have some appreciation of the capability of land, as well as the land-use
situation as it is today or as it was 10 years ago. For planners to be effective, they need
additional guidance in relation to the overall capabilities of land to enable them to
assess which alternatives, strategies and policies they may wish to develop in the con?
text of both urban and rural environments. I think the other thing that was notable
was the lack of any reference to the development of a national land-use policy. The
significance of agriculture, the relevance of forestry, and the magnitude of the amount
of wild land for future recreational use must be considered within an integrated frame?
work. These issues should be discussed, not only by professionals but also by the
public and politicians, if they are to become meaningful and if we are to produce
action towards establishing priorities of land use from the beginning.

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 IS PLANNING REALLY NECESSARY? 435

Mr. R. N. E. Blake (Senior lecturer in town and country planning, Trent Poly-
technic, Nottingham): I should first of all like to congratulate Miss Coleman on reach?
ing this important stage in her work and on presenting to the Society such instructive
findings. I was fortunate to be a student of hers around 1960 when the Second Land
Utilisation Survey was being started and I have followed its progress with interest
over the last 15 years or so. During the early years of my career in planning practice,
I spent some time mapping the land use of Suffolk (hence my interest in airfield re?
clamation) and in more recent years I have been teaching courses in land-use plann?
ing which I think qualifies me to comment with some conviction on the value and
limitations of land-use information as it exists in Britain today.
The Land Utilisation Survey has frequently been criticized for being out of date
almost as soon as it was done and is therefore considered to be of limited practical
value. There is of course a grain of truth in this, though exactly the same thing could
be said about the official Census of Population where, for instance, a village with 600
inhabitants on the night of enumeration may have risen to 620 or fallen to 580 a
matter of weeks later. The crucial difference here is that the Census is protected by the
mystique of statistics (which are very difficult to disprove) while the Land Utilisation
Survey is open to scrutiny by anyone who cares to check a particular field and expose
the fact that it has changed in use from, say, pasture to residential use since the area
was surveyed. Even though Miss Coleman's Survey is now over 10 years old, we still
have to face the fact that the only comparable source of data published for the whole
country is the First Land Utilisation Survey.
A moment ago Mr. Green hinted that the Second Land Utilisation Survey had
been overtaken by alternative sources of land-use information which could explain
its failure to attract wider interest and support. Let me look briefly at some of these
alternatives to put the matter in perspective. At the broad end of the scale we have the
work of Dr. Robin Best and his colleagues at Wye College who have done a great deal
over the years to monitor national and regional trends in the major land uses, particu?
larly transfers of farmland to building and forestry. This approach is admirable for its
frequent up-dating but unfortunately it does not say very much about the spatial
interaction of land uses or the way that certain categories have proliferated or con-
tracted over given planning areas. Detailed sample surveys are another valuable
technique used at Wye to estimate the national picture but, again, this is not of much
use to planners who happen to be dealing with areas not included in the sampling. At
the intermediate scale we now have at our disposal the extremely useful Land Classifi?
cation Maps prepared by the Ministry of Agriculture for the whole of England and
Wales, with an equivalent survey nearing completion in Scotland. These maps give a
good general indication of the extent of our urban areas, farmlands and wildernesses,
though it is worth pointing out that Miss Coleman's field sheets were, I believe, con-
sulted in the preparation of the series?a fact not generally acknowledged. Turning
now to the fine end of the scale, the local planning departments are supposed to review
their land use every five years but from my experience of visiting many offices to
gather material for my own students' projects, it is extremely rare to find one which
can produce a recent land-use map. Those maps which are available are often of
limited use because they either stop at administrative boundaries (usually in the crucial
rurban fringe) or they depict land ownerships rather than true land use (e.g., British
Rail and statutory allotments, both of which typically contain much vacant land). In
short, the potential alternatives to the Second Land Utilisation Survey tend to eva-
porate when specific information about the character and problems of an actual area
is required.
Two things, then, stand out about Miss Coleman's work. First, it has yielded a host
of unique facts about minor land-use categories (especially those in the rurban fringe),
urban intrusions into open countryside and, not least, vegetation communities which
are not recorded in any other set of maps which I have been able to locate. Second, and
probably more important, the methodology which she has developed for reducing
complex patterns into a relatively simple yet relevant typology is truly original and

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436 is planning really necessary?

clearly the beginning of much valuable analysis. This new technique is, incidentally,
the thing which distinguishes the Second Land Utilisation Survey from its pre-war
counterpart and whilst I would agree with Mr. Green that the county memoirs of the
First Survey have been of the most enduring value, they are virtually devoid of any
treatment of the interaction between the countryside and urban growth. The county
memoirs are almost wholly agricultural in their bias and scarcely mention some of the
obvious rurbanizations of the pre-war period such as ribbon developments, coastal
sprawl and industrial dereliction.
To conclude, may I just disagree with a couple of things which Miss Coleman has
suggested, though I should also like to say that I agree with 90 per cent of what she
has said this evening. If I recall Dr. Best's calculations correctly, no more than 40-50
per cent of urban land is actually under residential development and it is only within
this sector that control over density and urban form can be easily and effectively
exercised. More than half of the urban area consists of other kinds of land use such as
power stations, mineral workings, reservoirs, motorways, out-of-town shopping
centres, and so on, which are very much more difficult for local planners to control
because they tend to be generated by powerful national bodies who are rather in-
flexible in their siting requirements. A great deal of modern rurbanization is therefore
beyond the normal powers of local authorities, and in the short term many of these
scattered developments may actually be in the public interest. So, what we often think
of as ancillary urban categories turn out, when aggregated, to be more extensive and
more highly dispersed than the traditional urban villain, the sprawling residential
suburb. Finally, I think Miss Coleman has overlooked the fact that much of the
planner's work takes place at a detailed level within single land-use categories and is
concerned more with the three-dimensional environment of buildings. A great deal of
manpower has been directed towards such matters as the rehabilitation of slums, the
control of businesses and traffic and the conservation of attractive townscapes which
have, as Miss Coleman rightly points out, deflected resources away from strategic
land-use planning at the sub-regional level. Sadly, most of the planners at the new
county level seem more interested in criticizing the local plans being prepared by the
districts than with preparing proper land-use strategies.

Miss Alice Coleman: In response to Mr. Green's appeal for county reports,
may I say how much I too would like to see them. One reason why they have not
been produced as quickly as those of the First Survey is the use of many more
categories for mapping. The whole task of analysis is considerably more difficult and
it has been essential to produce facts and figures before asking potential authors
to report on them. If Mr. Green, or anyone else, would now like to undertake a
county report, I should be delighted. I hope to produce a guide or model in the form
of a national report, and if this could be finished next year, it will have taken exactly
the same time, 17 years, as Stamp took. I hope that the scape and fringe concept will
provide some of the flexibility Mr. Green would like to see by dealing with patterns
of land uses in their mutual context, and relating them to the possible constraining
influences of physical or socio-economic factors.
Would things have been better, or worse, without planning? Some of each, I
believe. I do not think, for example, that we would have had the continued housing
shortage if the market had been free to adjust to demand. But over and above this
question, there is another. Given the existence of planning, could some of the
existing problems have been avoided ?
I cannot agree with Mr. Green that the 92 per cent increase in waste land in the
Thames Estuary is due to local government reorganization, since the study decade
ended two years before that reorganization took place. I feel also that it has come
into existence too rapidly and on too large a scale to be glossed over as 'temporary
environment'.
I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Burrows about the need to provide walking and
cycling options in townscape, but I believe some of his criticisms are based on. a

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 IS PLANNING REALLY NECESSARY? 437

misunderstanding of what I have said. When he has the opportunity to see my

paper in print, he will see my concern for the restricted amount of new residential
land in the Thames Estuary area. I do not think this can be interpreted as
advocating 'no further urban expansion', and I certainly did not say that planning
has failed because urban expansion has continued. I tried to make a distinction
between 'urban' (or townscape) and 'rurban' (or fringe). The promotion of urban
expansion without further rurbanization was one of the original aims of planning,
and it is because there has been a great expansion of the wasteful, conflict-ridden
rurban fringe that I feel planning has not fully lived up to its ideals. Mr. Burrows
says that 'continued urban area expansion, in theory at least, would be well planned
expansion and not sprawl'. Unfortunately, the facts on the map show that it very
often has been sprawl.
I have often uttered the same warning as Mr. Perrin, that there is a tendency to
oversimplify plans for the appearance of tidiness on the map rather than concern
with real functional interactions. It may seem very convenient to have an industrial
estate in one concentrated area?it is easy to handle in planning terms. But the
actual distribution of industries in London includes, in addition to the big concen?
trations, a little spatter of hundreds of small, individual factories that are often not
noticed, yet which contribute to the solving of a lot of problems in London's daily life.
Their employees can walk to work and do not join in the great rush-hour transport
pressures. I feel that the Survey can contribute much by elucidating the real facts,
and the more complex real patterns.
I would not agree, however, that crude financial return should be the only
criterion for making land-use decisions. For example, it might be more profitable to
build a bingo hall than to grow wheat; but if food became scarce and more profitable
than bingo, it would not be possible to revert to wheat because the soil would have
been destroyed. Planning was introduced to control exactly this kind of economic
argument. Private enterprise was already taking care of the economies, and planning
was to produce expertise and funds to promote consideration of aspects beyond those
based purely on economic criteria. But planning has escalated, and cannot now
afford to cover the whole of its enlarged role on this idealistic basis. The result is
that it is working on an economic basis indistinguishable from that which it was
originally commissioned to improve.
Mr. Perrin is repeating what others have said about derelict land, namely that it
is cheaper to build on farmland, because if we subsequently need more farmland, it
will cost only so much per hectare to reclaim some marginal land elsewhere. We
get rid of Grade I land and think we can replace it with marginal land, but we
cannot. Marginal land requires a larger energy input to produce less food, and the
energy may not necessarily be available in the future.
I warmly welcome Mr. Munro's call for a national land-use policy, involving not
only the planning profession but also politicians and the public. It may not have
come across in the limited time available tonight, but I do regard it as an important
priority.
I believe that the Community Land Act could be a constructive instrument for
better planning. If it were to be employed to take land in the rurban fringe and
upgrade it to townscape, I would be happy about it. I hope that Mrs. Bridgeman's
optimism will prove justified. What I have been trying to say is that if we could
produce scape and fringe maps showing exactly where each of these territories exists,
and if Community Land Act funds could be devoted to areas inside the rurban fringe
and prohibited from disturbing areas of farmscape, this would be a great advance.
I must thank Mr. Hansford-Miller and Mr. Blake for their support. It seems
clear that the total cost of planning, looking back to the New Towns Act of 1946,
must be measured in large numbers of billions. Had we been able to foresee this
total sum in 1947, and had we been able to foresee the planning problems outstanding
even now, would we still have opted for planning with the enthusiasm that we then
felt?

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