A better world is possible - Global Commons Institute

Copyright Bruce Nixon 2010. All rights reserved. This electronic copy is provided free for personal, non-commercial use only.
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and Spoleto in parts of which cars are excluded. They are holistic and exemplify Herbert Girardet’s and
Richard Rogers’ models.
What we do not know intuitively. The places we live in must now have low ecological and carbon footprints.
That is the huge challenge facing us. There is a limit to what individual citizens and citizen’s organisations like
a Transition Town can do. Only government and councils can provide the infrastructure and services
necessary to help our towns and communities adapt to climate change and peak oil: - better transport, more
room for cyclists and pedestrians, ways of reducing congestion, better waste disposal for small businesses,
better town planning, better design and building of sustainable developments including up to date heat and
power and space for vegetable growing and wild life. Woking, Sutton, Bristol and Nottingham are shining
examples.
The destruction of our towns, cities and communities
“Clone town Britain” has already been described. Beautiful, historic, homely small-scale areas in our towns
and cities, with small shops, where people feel a sense of community and roots, are destroyed without our
agreement. It is an outrage when, in order to meet imposed regional targets, the wishes of citizens are
ignored and unsustainable, out-of-scale, poor quality developments are created, lacking proper
infrastructure, or adequate consideration of the limits of the eco-system and the needs of people facing peak
oil and climate change.
Something similar to the Haussmannisation of Paris in the nineteenth century happened in UK after World
War Two. But the results were not good. Post war redevelopment went too far and was a huge
disappointment. “Slum clearance” and redevelopment destroyed more of Georgian and Victorian London
than Hitler’s bombs. Swathes of potentially sustainable communities were levelled. “Clone Towns” were
inflicted on almost every town and city by multinational chains, superstores, supermarkets- ugly roads too.
New Labour planned to demolish 250,000 houses in the North of England, and build a million new homes in
the North and South of England. Is this the right way to go? We have had an increasingly strong conservation
movement since the Sixties, e.g. the Victorian Society and other pressure groups like the Homes Under
Threat (HUT).
The Sustainable Communities Act, if adopted by councils, and the coalition’s Big Society vision, giving more
power to citizens, can help communities halt this damage and become more sustainable. Pressure works.
What kind of world do we want to build?
In Chapter 11, I argued that vast new developments, regeneration schemes, privately managed and policed,
are a threat to democracy and civil liberties. I drew attention to the growing trend towards the gated
communities in Britain with “hot spots” of affluence and “cold spots” of exclusion. These reflect a post
industrial economy in which there are on the one hand increasingly wealthy, high earning, knowledge
workers in globalised financial services industries and, on the other, rising numbers of “excluded” people on
very low pay, of whom 2.7m are on sickness benefit or have dropped out of the system into the “black
economy”.
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