Stiff penalties will enforce eco-town viability

A comment comes in about the transport aspects of eco-towns covered in my post of last night Weston-Otmoor Flintgrad will be Commuterville. It suggests that the fine for driving out of Flintgrad at peak times could be as high as £200.

That seems consistent with the general approach likely to be taken by a government which thinks that heavy-handed authoritarianism is the way to go. My theme yesterday was that we are in fact unlikely to see the transport benefits – the incentives – which the developer is offering. They are out of the developer’s hands anyway, and any scheme which depends on a Labour government honouring its commitments, on the competence of Network Rail, and on the the abilities of the transport officers of Oxfordshire County Council, is doomed to failure.

Weston-Otmoor Flintgrad will be Commuterville

The eco-towns, or Flintgrads as they are known after the not-very-bright single-issue fanatic Caroline Flint who is promoting them, are flawed in concept and far from eco. Weston Otmoor, near Oxford, has more flaws than most. We have seen New Labour’s bad faith in this region before and take no comfort either from Flint’s promise to adhere to the planning process or from our estimate of her ability to hold the developers to their promises.

A report commissioned by the Government to challenge the developers of the so-called “eco-towns” has applauded the “developed transport strategy” on which the plans are based, but foresees that Weston Otmoor, the development close to Oxford, will simply become a dormitory town. Their report says

The transport strategy is potentially transformational and uses tram-train, free travel and demand management for car-use. As residents may simply take the tram to the park-and-ride and drive to either London or Birmingham, how will the town be stopped from becoming Commuterville?

All sorts of questions arise here, not least how a group including a fashion designer and a couple of television presenters can purport to have anything useful to say on the subject, particularly as they do not appear to have spoken to anyone opposed to the Weston-Otmoor scheme.

Yet another try for a skate board area

A third attempt to build a skate board park in North Oxford has apparently been all but beaten off. Two have already been repelled from Aristotle Lane Recreation Ground, between Kingston Road and Waterside. This one was actually planned for Waterside itself, at the end of Walton Well Road on a patch of rough ground known, with revolting tweeness, as The Spinney.

It was apparently promoted by Councillor Clark Brundin and Councillor Alan Armitage fuelled respectively (I would guess) by naivety and ambition. This time around, the council officers are not backing the idea – a whipped cur shuns the fire or whatever the expression is. Even council officers can get a message if you kick them hard enough – but not, apparently, some of the councillors.The first skate area was plotted between Councillor Jim Campbell and an official in the Parks department known locally as Dim Cow. It killed Jim Campbell’s reputation – someone told me, I hope correctly, that he was a “broken man” when the diggers destroyed his creation in March 2004 with £50,000 wasted.

Westgate War to continue

The Battle of Bonn Square has given way to the War of Westgate, as protesters promise to keep fighting the development to the end. As one who has long predicted a civil uprising in Oxford, I am on their side.

I am not, I have to say, a natural ally of fluffy-headed Greens or unwashed tree-campers, nor would I dream of arguing that the present Westgate and its hinterland are worth preserving. But they are as ghastly as they are because an earlier generation of city planners and city councillors made exactly the same mistakes as this lot are about to make, and with the same uncaring ignorance of aesthetics, unthinking servility towards big business, and unwarranted contempt for democracy.

No grass in Oxford except in the gutters

It is curious, is it not, that whilst Oxford’s planners seem intent on wiping out every last patch of grass within the city, those in charge of the streets seem more than happy to let grass and weeds grow in the gutters?

One can see why planners do not like grass. Planners like regularity and consistency. The ideal is that everywhere looks the same, neat and squared-off like it is on the developer’s plans. Grass is offensive because it grows unpredictably. You cannot impose a directive on it nor make it fit to a pattern. To a timid little pen-pusher in the Planning Department, grass is slightly threatening, implying that there are forces of nature beyond human power.

Oxford floods keep rising

I have been watching various markers on Port Meadow, by the River Thames at Oxford. One is the wooden walkway which runs between the boats and the trees in the photographs below of Medley.

On Sunday the top of the walkway was just clear of the water. On Tuesday the surface was flush with the water. This morning it had disappeared below the water.

More alarming still is the concrete road which runs along the back of Port Meadow, away from the Thames. The water has lapped at the edge of this, as it does most winters. When we set off for a walk at 9:30 today, the concrete was clear of water.

When we came back 20 minutes later, the water had started to cross the concrete.

I don’t myself blame the Environment Agency for being unable to predict accurately the highest point of this flood. There is no recent precedent for this and the sources are wide and far away.

Those, on the other hand, who have permitted uncontrolled building on land at risk, from Two Planks Prescott to the dimmest little drone in Oxford City Council’s planning department, should be tied to a post below the water line.

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Oxford’s Planners strike again

The First Oxford Airborne Planning Control Squadron (“The Developers’ Friends”) return from a successful raid on Oxford’s green belt. Their commander, Chief Planning Officer Michael Crofton-Briggs, said his men had been very brave taking flak from members of the public who lived near the area of the attack.

“These misguided people stand in the way of progress. By flattening their primitive grass and trees we have demonstrated that we cannot let these Nimbies stand in the way of progress”.

Oxford plans its ruin

The Westgate Shopping Centre is only one of the vast building projects planned for Oxford. Oxford University will redevelop the Radcliffe Infirmary Site and is building a vast book store in the flood-plain of Osney Mead. The Poly is redeveloping Headington. The so-called West End, nearly a quarter of the city centre, is going to be redeveloped into a cross between Vegas and a Midlands industrial estate. The railway station is to be redeveloped. Oxford University plans to build 200 homes at Wolvercote. A housing estate of up to 8,000 homes will probably be built at Grenoble Road. Smaller schemes include a housing estate at Castle Mill Boatyard.

The university’s RI plans are the only ones which have any real potential to better the place, to build something which people will travel to see and which will be admired in the next century. The book depository looks like a factory. The Brookes plans look like those of a former Poly anxious that we should forget its origins. The civic proposals look like reheated plans from the 1970s, lots of cheaply-built girder-and-glass office blocks leavened with token gestures towards a dimly-understood cultural heritage with a cod-European flavour.

The Oxford skyline RIP

One can deduce from Lib Dem councillor Stephen Tall’s blog and occasional letters to the local papers that he is a little brighter and more rounded than some of the other elected members.

He has a new post on one of his blogs called The Oxford Skyline with a super panoramic photograph of the Radcliffe Camera taken from the University Church. Clearly someone who cares about the Oxford skyline. If only some of his colleagues cared as much.

Come with me, Stephen, to Port Meadow, and look back at the towers and spires as they appear from outside – or rather, as they now do not appear.

The Oxford Canal – a metaphor for Oxford’s neglect

My post Oxford Canal – an alternative view – ends thus:

“This stretch of the Oxford Canal remains a peaceful and beautiful place to walk. Its slow ruin – a combination of deliberate decisions by ignorant people and gradual neglect – is a metaphor for Oxford as a whole.”

But, you might say (if you knew me) you love this city; you photograph it daily and are creating a web site extolling its virtues. Furthermore, the two councils have plans to develop the Westgate and the whole “West End”, to rebuild Bonn Square and endless other schemes to remake Oxford for the 21st Century. How can you talk of “gradual neglect”?

Oxford Canal – the alternative view

I am doing elsewhere an illustrated essay on the southern end of the Oxford Canal. I love it dearly, and the purpose of the main work will be to encourage visitors to walk it. This is the alternative view.

It looks very sad at the moment. Some of that is beyond mending – the visual illiterates in the Oxford Planning Department have seen to that, abetted by supine councillors too weak to argue with them. Some things involve established rights or other things beyond the power of anyone to fix, at least in the short term. It would not take much, however, to restore some of its charm.

Be clear that I am not urging major works here. The last thing we want is the dead hand of local bureaucracy making a major project out of this, with twee “features”, daffodils in straight lines and a boastful entry on someone’s CV. It just needs a little tidying up.