Letter: Need, not greed, makes best town plans

I would suggest that Malcolm Fraser (your report, 31 August) hits the nail right on the head. The truly excellent masterplans are driven by need, not greed.

We do need to walk to the shops, we do need to be able to live near to our relations and friends, we do need spaces for scout huts, football and ad hoc games.

We do not need exploitation of sites for maximum short-term profit. Ebenezer Howard in Letchworth, possibly the first planned garden city, built communities of mixed income around a core of shared facilities - so like the New Town. Do we never learn?

Yet we continue to build ghettos on the periphery of the city, unlike most of our European colleagues.

The evidence is there; look at Amsterdam (nearer than London) to see growth and development that works - as well as trams that work too, but that's another story.

David Gerrard

Spylaw Park

Edinburgh

Malcolm Fraser is right to argue that much better living conditions can and should be created in "regeneration" by improved urban design.

However, it is unrealistic to assume that Edinburgh's housing needs can be met just by this. There is insufficient land and many households want houses with gardens rather than flats, with easy access to local parks/play areas. Most new housing such as this can only be provided on "greenfield" land.

Opposition to it is often based on obsolete and simplistic ideas and policies, such as "green belts". Mr Fraser repeats the common and erroneous mantra about "concreting over the countryside". In truth, only a small proportion of surfaces in housing projects on "greenfield" sites are concrete. Parks, gardens, playfields etc, occupy about 50 per cent of the land in bigger developments, such as the "new towns".

Development can and should be designed to increase tree cover and biodiversity, which may become much greater than in nearby farmland. Just as the pejorative word "cramming" ignores the possibilities of urban design to create high quality living areas (some of the highest density housing in UK is also the most popular and expensive, such as in London's Kensington and Chelsea) so the meaningless term "urban sprawl" belies its ability to do such in countryside.

Indeed, much land in the latter, including in "greenbelts", is ecologically degraded and does not, as often assumed, have much conservation value at all.

If the aim of "sustainable development", including the economic and social aspects thereof, is to be pursued vigorously, radical shifts in approaches to urban planning/ design, infrastructure provision and architecture are necessary.

John Munro

Buccleuch Street

Glasgow