Urban Green Belts in the Twenty-first Century

About this book

Green belts are among the oldest and most widely used policies for controlling sprawl. During the twentieth century they have been employed to contain the explosive growth of cities as varied as Tokyo, Seoul and Melbourne with a variety of results. Increasingly, policy-makers, researchers and even environmentalists have pointed to the failings of a green belt approach, favouring more pragmatic or more linear green space concepts such as eco-belts and greenways. As yet, no research has attempted to gather these experiences together, to guide future reforms and consider whether a green belt is a useful policy for the twenty-first century.

By bringing together and comparing the experiences of green belt reform across Europe, North America, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, this book adds to the understanding of how a green belt can be effected in theory and how practitioners have adapted or reformed the green belt in practice. A team of leading researchers and practitioners examine how contemporary debates, on sustainability, ecology and political reform intersect with the implementation of green belts globally and the discipline of planning. The book provides a series of case studies to enable researchers and policy-makers alike to reach conclusions on the usefulness of green belts, the challenges that exist in implementing them and the impact of their alternatives.

Contents

Preface; Green belts: a 20th-century planning experiment, Marco Amati; Part I The Coalition of the Un-willing: Landowners and the Green Belt; The abandonment of Tokyo's green belt and the search for a new discourse of preservation in Tokyo's suburbs, Takashi Watanabe, Marco Amati, Kenya Edo and Makoto Yokohari; Issues with green belt reform in the Seoul metropolitan area, Jekook Kim and Tae-Kyung Kim.; Part II Falling Out of Favour: Deregulation and Green Belts: Protecting Melbourne's green wedges - fate of a public policy, Michael Buxton and Robin Goodman; The green belt that wasn't: the case of New Zealand from 1910 to the 1990s, Caroline Miller and Marco Amati.; Part III Re-Forming Greenery: From Green Belts to Green Nets: The Adelaide parklands and the endurance of the green belt idea in South Australia, Christine Garnaut; Ottawa's greenbelt evolves from urban separator to key ecological planning component, David Gordon and Richard Scott; Instruments to preserve open space and resource lands in the Seattle, Washington Metropolitan Region - a US alternative to green belts, Alon Bassok.; Part IV Works in Progress: Patching Together an Exible Green: The Vienna green belt: from localised protection to a regional concept, Meinhard Breiling and Gisa Ruland; From green belts to regional parks: history and challenges of suburban landscape planning in Berlin, Manfred Kuhn and Ludger Gailing; Controlling urban expansion in Italy with green belts, Guilio Senes, Alessandro Toccolini, Paolo Ferrario, Raaele Lafortezza, and Pasquale Dal Sasso; The Paris-Ile-de-France ceinture verte, Nicolas Laruelle and Corinne Legenne; Index.

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Biography

Dr Marco Amati is based at the Graduate School of the Environment, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.