A slightly silly name (how can a gateway be 40 miles long ?) for a blameless and still largely unknown part of the south east where the standard of living is shockingly below the rest of the region for a surprisingly large proportion of the 1.5m population, and which, with thoughtful long term planning and investment could become a much better and more attractive place to live and relieve the development pressure on other more congested locations elsewhere; but which had the misfortune to become a focus of Government action, and a battleground between ill informed brownfield romantics, development fetishists, regeneration fantasists and disaster junkies.
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Kick start (vb)
January 13, 2011a generally vain attempt to get something immovable to move, with a large amount of hubris and publicity, and few obvious or measurable results. The kick, applied without due care, can have the opposite effect to that intended and bring it to a final and permanent halt.
Read moreBrownfield Land
February 12, 2012Land which remains undeveloped for very good, rational reasons,usually to do with contamination, lousy environment, unliveability, remoteness or inaccessibility, but whose development priority, at all costs, remains the core article of faith among planning theologists. The inevitable consequence of this has been that very little development now takes place and where it does it is usually bad. Good development of brownfield land is certainly possible, but is contingent on a combination of time, imagination, expertise, an unbankruptable developer, and generous public subsidy - all of which are in very short supply (..outside the Olympic Park...) . In the absence of any wiser approach to the issue, we can therefore expect very little development, let alone good development, to take pla...
Read more'Outline' planning consent
February 12, 2012A term, now used ironically, to apply to the process whereby a quick decision on the simple principle of development has been turned into a mammoth existentialist drama which is only resolved, if ever, long after the conditions which spawned the original development proposal have long since departed. Often closely associated with s106
Read moreGreen chains
January 20, 2011(n) A ubiquitous concept based on the odd assumption that people, on visiting one park, will want to move directly on to several more in sequence, provided they are linked by tree lined streets. Believed to be derived from observation of mating voles, but not of any obvious known human behaviour. Nevertheless they provide enjoyment, and employment, for green minded planners, and create attractive images on maps. No green chain has been known to have been identified in the real world
Read moreMarket failure
January 20, 2011(n) a useful term generally deployed in a fairly indiscriminate way when attempting to attract or justify public funds. In fact, as classical economists will tell us, markets neither fail or succeed, they simply operate, with varying levels of efficiency, in the interests of those with the greatest market power - i.e. those with the resources, or 'the rich'. Paradoxically therefore, poor areas are not the consequence of market failure, because other areas are doing very well out of the same market process. The regeneration solution to this is not environmental improvements, but social revolution, but this has yet to be introduced into the Treasury Green book process.
Read moreA revised planning application
February 12, 2012A proposal by developers to remove from a consented scheme all the bits of a scheme they always knew would be too difficult, or expensive to do, leaving them with the bits that make the most money, and the community with a half baked result.
Read moreWin (vb)
January 13, 2011As in to 'win' a planning consent: to receive permission in the normal way, usually for a particularly meretricious proposal from a particularly desperate planning authority. Rumours that the new National Planning Framework, trailed in the Localism Bill, will introduce a 'Strictly' style talent show format into the process are as yet unfounded.
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