Sustainable transport v biodiversity and community food production: case study of a landscape dilemma

An interesting case currently bubbling up on my doorstep in East Bristol that highlights the difficulties created when competing demands, each with their own merits, are placed on the landscape.

For a city that prides itself on being progressively 'green', Bristol has been slow off the mark in addressing car dependency and the city council is seeking to address this with its Bus Rapid Transit Scheme, a major infrastructure project in partnership with adjoining local authorities to connect employment and transport hubs with residential districts via upgraded or new dedicated bus routes. The scheme includes a proposed new 'bus-only' junction at Stapleton giving access to the M32 motorway into the city centre. The council has put the plans out to consultation with a formal planning application later in the year.

This is a worthy and progressive scheme to try and put Bristol's transport infrastructure on a more sustainable footing. The problem is that the site adjacent to the motorway earmarked for the development is part of a 'green finger' of open land that extends well into the urban suburbs of the city. Under threat is a belt of overgrown but well-loved fields and old market-garden allotments, mostly held by local tenants; grade 1 agricultural land under-utilised in recent times but of high value in terms of potential productivity, biodiversity, habitat and the aesthetics of urban open space. Furthermore, the lands premature early retirement into ragged nature has been partially halted by a Lottery-funded Avon Wildlife Trust initiative called Feed Bristol, which has recently seen 7 acres at the heart of the area in question given over to a community food growing project. Many people, myself included, are now advocating that such traditionally overlooked and neglected edgelands should be utilised much more for crop and livestock production through community schemes like this with the multiple social and environmental advantages that accrue, rather than facing incremental loss at the hands of commercial development with often dubious local benefit.

And there is the rub. If this was a rapacious multi-national predator threatening green space then how much more straight-forward the case for opposition would be to construct, albeit not necessarily more likely to succeed. However, if you are concerned with environmental impact both locally and more widely (and there are many who do not see this as a concern, whether due to apathy or the perceived automatic primacy of 'the economy'), where does your support lie in a case like this? In defence of the local green space or the, perhaps, wider social good of the rapid transport scheme?

Westcoasting - A guest post from Eve MacFarlane

Westcoasting in Knoydart, Lochaber

A year ago almost to the day, I left my urban ways behind and moved to the west coast of Scotland. After years of living in England and abroad, I decided it was time to return to the place that felt like home. My family headed south when I was eleven, but the west coast remained my touchstone. Wherever I was in the world, I could close my eyes, unzip the tent and step out onto the summer-dry machair – just me, the silence, the view and a sheep or two. It reminded me of where I came from. It also reminded me of what life could be about. 

One day I overheard my dad’s old climbing pal say something like: ‘Ach, I’ve no seen Rab for a few weeks. He’s been aff westcoasting.’ Meaning that Rab had emptied his pockets of money and, with just a sleeping bag, a knife, a stove, a fishing rod and a few tins of sardines, headed west to walk, sleep out, catch trout, scramble up hills and wash in burns. Westcoasting. I love this term, this idea. It speaks to me of simplicity and adventure, of moonlit foraging, beach fires and starry nights. It’s inspired by the landscape of the west coast – the sheer space, the opportunity to get lost, the bountiful sea, the mountain springs – as well as the people who carved out a life here. Look at any hillside in the evening, when the twilight picks out the detail, and you’ll see the signs – the ridges and furrows of run rig farming, an old sheep enclosure, the remains of a stone cottage. The land tells the story not of a pristine wilderness, but of people drawing life from this harsh environment. 

A year on and I’ve carved a life out here too, guided by my own take on westcoasting. I’ve pared my life back. I’ve lived closer to the seasons. I’ve explored the wild places. I’ve forced myself to endure a bit of discomfort and been rewarded for it. A night spent on the beach wasn’t the cosiest, but it gave me shooting stars and otters swimming in the pink-tinged sea at sunrise. There have, of course, been challenges. The winter was long, dark and shaped by the weather. You can see why people might turn to the drink. But I’ve never regretted the move. Every morning I look through the little square window in my kitchen across the loch to the hills beyond and I’m filled with something I can’t put into words. This raw, rugged, beautiful landscape moves me like no other.  

Find out more about Eve's westcoasting life by visiting her blog.

Manifesto for a working landscape

This article draws on and expands upon a number of posts recently written for the Landscapism blog and appears on the Save Our Woods website.

My rationale for starting up this blog was straightforward: as someone who is constantly immersed in the landscape, both physically (as we all in fact are) and conceptually (a more specialised pursuit) I am just as fascinated by theoretical concepts of cultural and physical landscapes as spending a day walking in a National Park or observing the natural history of an ancient woodland; or indeed looking at a collection of landscape paintings or photographs, experiencing an urban adventure in a new city or working to landscape my own modest garden. I could go on with further diverse examples of landscapism. To my mind these are all naturally linked activities and areas of interest, and I do not consider myself unusual in this regard.

The frustration that I, and many other like-minded souls, have felt is observing these landscape themes, which should be organically but messily inter-twined, grow further and further apart from each other as the individual professional, academic and organisational structures develop into their 21^st century maturity; this is the curse of specialisation, an evolving feature of Western society since the heyday of the Enlightenment and Victorian polymaths.

Yes, there are many examples of relatively modest inter-disciplinary exchange and collaboration in academic research or conservation projects, and some more enlightened local authorities have taken steps towards a more holistic approach to landscape planning. Maybe if a cultural geographer, a landscape art historian, a farmer, a landscape architect, a mountain-biker, an ecologist and a landscape archaeologist were put together in a room you would hope for a degree of common ground and certainly some lively discussion; but each would soon return to the familiarity of their divergent agendas and objectives back in the workplace.  Moreover, in responding professionally to a government policy proposal, a threat to a particular landscape or some other specific challenge (a hose-pipe ban for instance) they would narrow their focus to one of self-interest, because this is the received wisdom of how a pluralistic society operates.

Why does this matter? Well, I would argue that this segregation has contributed to the marginalisation of landscape in terms of both government policy and public opinion. Given the importance that many people attach to their local, regional and national environments and landscapes as an essential part of the bedrock of who they are and where they come from, should this not be a central motif of public policy, given the same weight as key elements of education, health and economic development? Instead landscape has been channeled into the comparative back-waters of the environment, planning, heritage and tourism, from where it modestly shouts to be heard but is often pushed back by more assertive beasts: ‘global warming!’, ‘jobs and growth!’, ‘housing targets!’.

Hope in the age of collapse debate

Interesting and provocative debate on sustainability and the future of the environmental movement between Paul Kingsnorth, founder of the Dark Mountain Project and Wen Stephenson on his Thoreau Farm blog.  

Wen is advocating the need to continue, and ramp up, the current environmental orthodoxy of campaigning on climate change, sustainability etc. Paul is suggesting that this approach has failed and will only tinker with, and ultimately prop-up, the status quo; he is looking to the possibilities after the collapse of our current phase of 'civilisation'. They are keen for people to join in the discussion.

Landscape management for our times?

The list of government bodies, NGO's and charities that have a remit to conserve and enhance our natural, historic and cultural landscape and environment is impressively long:

English Heritage, Natural England, the Environment Agency, Countryside Council for Wales, CADW, Scottish Natural Heritage, Historic Scotland, the Forestry Commission, National Park Authorities, the National Trust, Wildlife Trusts, RSPB...

This well-established infrastructure of landscape management is, in many ways, very reassuring; and, due to devolution and the inertness of the Coalition Government's risible 'quango-busting' exercise largely intact in these times of 'austerity', give or take the odd wobble over selling off forests.

There is also an enormous well-spring of expertise and experience wrapped up in these bureaucratic structures and a clear record of achievement and progressiveness over the last sixty years or so: our landscape is in a better place than it would be if this safety net had not been active during a period which will be remembered in history as one, founded on hope and idealism, but dominated by rapacious capitalism and consumerism.

And yet...

Landscape in particular 2: Bolton Abbey estate

Field barns in Wharfedale, Yorkshire Dales

Bolton Abbey in Wharfedale is one of the most visited places in the Yorkshire Dales; on a summer weekend it can seem as if half the population of Leeds and Bradford have taken possession. 

I had visited many times during my childhood, with two sets of grand-parents living down the road, and have a family connection as my grandfather was born on a nearby farm (Deerstones - did our practically-minded forebears have any understanding of the poetry of their place naming?).

Through serendipity I took part in a field survey of historic barns on the Bolton Abbey estate as part of an English Heritage placement during my Masters in Landscape Archaeology.  

This included a blissful week or so spent travelling around the sprawling estate, which takes in most of the tenanted farms in the surrounding area, photographing the many and varied barns and generally observing and interpreting the historic landscape. A day spent poring over the maps and plans in the Estate's archive appealed to another side of my love of landscape.

The work provided a thought-provoking insight into the challenges and opportunities involved in managing historic buildings and landscapes. And made me question some of my assumptions and prejudices about the the roles of landowners, National Park authorities and others in this area.

It also provided another reminder that it doesn't take much to get off the beaten track in even the most popular 'honey pots'; an inquisitive nature, desire to wander and some understanding of the features that make up a landscape, are all that are really needed.