The rate of urban growth at the expense of agricultural land should not be exaggerated. Between 1960 and 1965 it amounted to about 44,000 acres a year in Great Britain. This scale of loss is a third less than the peak attained in pre-war years and, although there have been considerable annual fluctuations in the post-war period, no sustained increase in the rate of transfer has been evident.
Notable contrasts in urban growth exist between and within different regions of the country, the highest land demands being concentrated along a belt running from Lancashire to London. From 1960 and 2000 it is estimated that the total urban area of England and Wales will extend by a further 1,600,000-1,700,000 acres, but it will then still only cover 15-16 per cent. of the whole land surface. A comparison is made with the United States where about 1,000,000 acres annually are being transferred into urban use.
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References
1.
See, for example, Ministry of Housing and Local Government, The South East Study, 1961-1981, H.M.S.O., 1964 , and Department of Economic Affairs, The West Midlands-A Regional Study, H.M.S.O., 1965.
2.
R.H. Best and J.T. Coppock, The Changing Use of Land in Britain, Faber, 1962.
3.
R.H. Best, The Major Land Uses of Great Britain, Wye College , 1959, pp. 54-55.
4.
Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Warwickshire-A Study of the Loss of Agricultural Land for Urban Development, A.L.S. Technical Report No. 4, 1958.
5.
Somewhat higher losses of farmland estimated in a recent government report (Department of Education and Science, Report of the Land Use Study Group, H.M.S.O., 1966) have not been substantiated as yet. See also, W. Ellison, 'Agriculture and Changes in Land Use', The Advancement of Science, 23, October 1966, pp. 287-96.
6.
The author is indebted to the Census Branches of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Department of Agriculture for Scotland for supplying the statistics from which the table is compiled. See also, Hansard, House of Commons, 5th July 1966, col. 67.
7.
F.J. Osborn , 'Housing Density in England', Town and Country Planning, XXIII, December 1954, pp. 634-45.
8.
R.H. Best and J.T. Ward, The Garden Controversy, Wye College, 1956.
9.
M.W. Bruce, An Analysis of Changes in Urban Land Use in England and Wales since 1950 from Development Plan Statistics for Town Map Areas, Unpublished M. Phil. thesis submitted to the University of London in 1966 (1967), Appendix VI. See also: Report of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government 1958, Cmnd. 737, H.M.S.O., 1959, Appendix XXII. Figures for housing completions are available in the Annual Abstract of Statistics , H.M.S.O.
10.
Central Statistical Office, Annual Abstract of Statistics, H.M.S.O., 1960-5.
11.
This problem is fully discussed in R. H. Best and J. T. Coppock, op. cit.
12.
The full details of this research, together with a map, are reported in R.H. Best, "Recent Changes and Future Prospects of Land Use in England and Wales ', Geographical Journal, 131, March 1965, pp. 1-12.
13.
A research group of Political and Economic Planning, in association with Resources for the Future (Washington D.C.), is carrying out a study of urban growth in this area. It is hoped to compare results with a parallel study of the north-eastern seaboard of the United States—an area termed 'Megalopolis' by Jean Gottmann in his book of the same name.
14.
R.H. Best and R.M. Gasson, The Changing Location of Intensive Crops, Wye College , 1966, Chapter 7.
15.
M.W. Bruce, op. cit
16.
R.H. Best, 'Against High Density', New Society, 24th November 1966, pp. 787-9. But note that a reversal of the official policy since 1952 in support of higher densities is now apparent from a recent circular of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, Housing Standards, Costs and Subsidies (Circular No. 36/67).
17.
General Register Office, Registrar General's Quarterly Return for England and Wales, 4th Quarter 1965, H.M.S.O., 1966, Appendix B.
18.
D.V. Donnison , The Government of Housing, Penguin Books, 1967, pp. 316-17.
19.
National Institute of Economic and Social Research , Twenty-Fourth Annual Report 1966, 1967, p. 13.
20.
P.A. Stone , 'Urban Development and National Resources', Urban Studies, 1, November 1964 , pp. 113-28.
21.
R.H. Best, Land for New Towns, Town and Country Planning Association , 1964, Appendix 2. The average residential provision proposed for the new towns is 27 acres per thousand population compared with Stone's allocation of only about 20 acres per thousand population for all future residential development.
22.
R.H. Best, 'The Future Urban Acreage', Town and Country Planning , XXXII, August-September 1964 , pp. 350-5.
23.
M. Clawson, R.B. Held and C.H. Stoddard, Land for the Future, for Resources for the Future by the Johns Hopkins Press , Baltimore, 1960.
24.
ibid., Chapter 2 and Table 51.
25.
Economic Research Service, Major Uses of Land and Water in the United States — Summary for 1959, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1962, pp. 9-11.
26.
H.H. Landsberg, Natural Resources for U.S. Growth, for Resources for the Future by the Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1964, Table 10.
27.
R. Barlowe 'Our Future Needs for Nonfarm Lands', Land-the 1958Yearbook of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, pp. 474-9.
28.
Economic Research Service, U.S.D.A., op. cit
29.
H. Bartholomew, Land Uses in American Cities, Harvard University Press , 1955.
30.
R.H. Best and J.T. Coppock, op. cit
31.
G.P. Wibberley , Pressures on Britain's Land Resources, Tenth Heath Memorial Lecture, University of Nottingham School of Agriculture, 1965. See also R.M. Gasson, 'The Challenge to British Farming, i960 to 1970', Westminster Bank Review , May 1966, pp. 32-41.
