LONDON METROPOLITAN GREENBELT

London Metropolitan Greenbelt



London Metropolitan Greenbelt

I. Introduction

London Metropolitan Green Belt

Greater London has embraced a huge tact of open green space designated as London Metropolitan Green Belt (LMGB) and Londoners has enjoyed benefits from LMGB for the past several decades. A Green Belt is a land use designation to protect undeveloped, natural or agricultural land from disorderly development and to prevent the surrounding urban areas from merging together. Once a land is designated as a Green Belt by a local authority, it should be strictly prohibited to build new development within the land. The policy was first proposed by the Greater London Regional Planning Committee in 1935, followed by the policy guidance set out in 1955 by Ministry of Housing and Local Government, which has recommended local planning authorities to consider establishing Green Belt in order to prevent urban sprawl (Thomas, 1963).

LMGB having an area of 4,842 km2 has been one of the largest scale Green Belts in the world and has the longest history of being effective in achieving its purposes (Amati & Yokohari, 2006). However, there has always been considerable development pressure due to housing shortage derived from population growth of Greater London (CPRE, 2007). Thus, developers have called for reformation of the Green Belt policy in the purpose of alleviating its strictness, whereas conservationists have insisted that its aim has to be shifted from prevention of urban sprawl to conserving natural environment in order to maintain Green Belt land for the next generation (Amati, 2008; Natural England & CPRE, 2010). It has been regarded that the Green Belt policy has made a real contribution to averting urban sprawl, at the same time, it has been controversial policy because policy makers have failed to show how much social benefits LMGB has conveyed to urban residents.

Although an attempt to evaluate LMGB is not a new research area, existing studies focused on the economic value of agricultural products and amenity derived from the Green Belt (Wills & Whitby, 1985; Hanley & Knight, 1992). There are no quantitative data capturing comprehensively a social value of LMGB.

Ecosystem Assessment: A Promising Tool for Policy-making

In 2005, the United Nations publicised Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), which is an epoch-making project in revealing the relationship between human well-being and ecosystems for the first time (MA, 2005a). Thanks to MA's success, the concept of ecosystem assessment has been recognised worldwide as a methodology to assess economic values of ecosystems in the context of an environmental policy. In 2007, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) set out Ecosystem Approach Action Plan and Guideline of Ecosystem Assessment to embed ecosystem assessment into a policy-making process in England (DEFRA, 2007a; DEFRA, 2007b). Currently, there are only few case studies undertaken in England, however, ecosystem assessment would seem a promising tool for policy makers in that it could show quantitatively and comprehensively economic values derived from a land that policy makers are considering.

Aims and Objectives

The aims of this study are to capture economic value of LMGB ...