15 possible sites for eco-towns
April 22, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Gordon Brown is keen to make an impact on the hearts and minds of the British public and one of his personal passion-projects is called the eco-town. It has been announced this month which of the 15 proposed sites would be home to these 10 new carbon-neutral towns. The plans are to build towns from scratch and make them the very best example of a modern thinking and environmentally friendly habitable area. Everything in the town will be made from recycled materials, the transport designs will all use green renewable energy, and it will house totally sufficient recycling and waste water systems.
It’s a breakthrough for Europe, in as much as there have been eco-developments proposed and put into motion in the world, but this will actually house people and create an entire community. A similar project is now in full swing in Abu Dhabi called Masdar City and the plans for that project look like taken from a science fiction film. The entire city is built from renewable carbon-neutral resources and will more or less run on nothing but solar power.
In the UK though, the eco-towns are still a hugely significant proposal. Between 5 and 20 thousand homes are planned in the towns and all of these will be zero carbon – in theory at least. There has obviously been the usual rejection of the idea by conservationists and the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England are worried about what this will mean to the green areas. However, ‘green’ seems to be the whole agenda here so it might end up pleasing everyone. The final 10 sites will be revealed in the next 6 months.
They may be ‘Eco’ towns, but why do they have to be built on greenfield sites? Our town, Maidstone, has been growing at am alarming pace in the past 10 years, despite the many brown field sites that have been used, but conversely, plenty of buildings could have been renovated into ‘eco’ homes due to the solid nature of the walls. When discussing ‘recycling’ it is a shame that it doesn”t appear to include recycling buildings, as a rule.