Skyrocketing rents are creating a new war between urban sprawl and the green belt
Rents in London are at their highest, and this is pushing people further out from the centre. But striking a balance between bad urban sprawl and the cult of the green belt is not easy, writes Elena Siniscalco
In 1925, the English writer Aldous Huxley described Los Angeles as “nineteen suburbs in search of a metropolis”. What would he say if he could see it today? Los Angeles is often quoted as the worst example of urban sprawl, the scattered outwards development of cities.
The term was coined by The Times in the fifties to describe London’s outskirts. Fast forward more than seventy years, and Londoners still live in fear that the city will become Los Angeles 2.0.
Urban sprawl is considered a negative model of development because it is fundamentally unsustainable. It involves low density areas with high commuting times, and it’s bad for the environment because it forces people into cars. Los Angeles, as a city, works on the premise that everyone has a car, making it very hard to move around in any other way.
Solutions like the green belt were invented to prevent urban sprawl. But according to the OECD, urban growth boundaries and greenbelts can backfire “by causing fragmented, leapfrog development”. People are then forced to leapfrog – via car – between where they live and the city they need to reach, with a big green gap between the two. That’s not sustainable either.
With the housing crisis plaguing London, the risk of its outskirts becoming just a series of commuter cities is more acute. People young and old have already moved out of the city after the pandemic. Many more, who are not willing to give up on London, are being forced on its periphery by unaffordable rents.
A Centre for London report out today provides some useful – but disheartening – context. The average rent in London has skyrocketed to over £2,500 in April, according to Rightmove. But the numbers are even starker when comparing central areas to outer London ones. According to the report, a two-bedroom home in Westminster goes on average for £2,925 per month. In Barking and Dagenham, the average is £1,250. When comparing different types of properties, it gets worse. The median rent for a one-bedroom room in Westminster is £2,102; for a home with over four bedrooms in Bexley, it’s £1,600.
Living in the centre of a city has always been more expensive, but inflated rents have made it untenable. This pushes people further out and changes the character of a city. Restaurants and bars lose customers, the skyline changes, neighbourhoods lose their personality and London becomes less diverse and dynamic.
Jon Tabbush, senior researcher at Centre for London, said London is saved from Los Angeles status thanks to the green belt. There are 14 London boroughs with more land designated for the green belt than for housing – keeping urban sprawl at bay. The catch of course, is that this fuels the housing crisis: it is a blanket rule even when bits of it are petrol stations and car parks.
The best counter strategy for urban sprawl is building high density inside the city. But in many areas of London there’s simply not enough space. The other option is building more in the suburbs, making space through things like land swaps – where you take a bit of the greenbelt out for building but you give back some actual green land.
The most important thing, says Tabbush, is avoiding the car dependency plaguing Los Angeles. “You need to plan public transport and housing together to densify the suburbs in a green way”, he says.
With Labour comfortably admitting it would build on the green belt, the tide might be turning. London could be safe from Huxley’s nightmare for just a little while longer.