Metropolitan Green Belt
[3] For some years after 1580 Elizabeth I of England banned new building in a three-mile wide belt around the City of London, in an attempt to stop the spread of plague.
The LS, alongside the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), first lobbied for a belt (initially of up to two miles wide) to prevent urban sprawl, beyond which new development could occur; this was not realised.
6. c. 68) and issuing Circulars and Planning Policies for local government councils to implement including accelerating the designation of the Metropolitan Green Belt.
The ongoing policy decisions made were approved and entrenched in an advisory Greater London Plan prepared by Patrick Abercrombie in 1944 (which sought a belt of up to six miles, 9.7 km wide).
The codification of Green Belt policy and its extension to areas other than London came with Sandys' annexed Circular 42/55 urging the Clerk of the Council of all local planning authorities (impliedly who had not done so already) to establish Green Belts "wherever it is desirable....(a) to check further growth of a large built-up area; (b) to prevent neighbouring towns from merging into one another; or (c) preserve the special character of a town.
Contrasting to these new towns such a degree of social housing was still as strongly resisted as possible in upmarket suburbs and most of the existing exurbs well-connected to London in the new Green Belt which almost unwaveringly elected majority-Conservative councils.
As the outward growth of London was seen to be firmly repressed, residents owning properties further from the built-up area also campaigned for this policy of urban restraint, partly to safeguard their own investments but often invoking the paradigm English thinking running from John Ruskin to at least John Betjeman, a scenic/rustic argument which lays the blame for most social ills upon urban influences and which leads few retired people to live in London.
In general agriculture and open-air leisure uses, including golf courses, and fresh water reservoirs (often used for sailing), can be designated green belt land.
[14][15][16][17][18] Other organisations, including the Planning Officers Society,[19] echoed with specific calls for a UK Governmental review and proposals to balance land release for with concepts to compensate habitat loss and mitigate pollution, restitutionally (as if never converted).
[20][21][22] The Adam Smith Institute wrote a paper under its core ethos of economic liberalism challenging the goals of nature and environmental protection groups who advocate greater urban density.
The paper highlighted the Metropolitan Green Belt had land to build a million typical closer London fringe (low-to-medium) density homes within ten minutes walk (800m) of existing train stations, specifically circa 20,000 hectares (77 sq mi).
Thus the proposal put forward in the Adam Smith report could result in 3.96 to 7.45 million additional car journeys per week on already congested roads around London.
