Old Posts

4 July 2006 - W. Haslam

Like many of you I am against the Centros-Miller plans for the development of the Stonewell area of Lancaster, basically because it is for profit and not for the benefit of the people that live in and around Lancaster. Also because it is part of something much bigger that will see Lancaster become another clone city of roads and supermarkets and petrol stations, with the loss of everything you recognise as Lancaster.

I am a relative new-comer to the area but I am angry about these plans because I've seen this creeping, mindless development and expansion in many places I've lived, including my childhood home in the countryside of Essex; this is now a sprawling suburbia with many miles in between amenities. Too much new building all at once leaves swathes of cold, brick and cement deserts that are empty of memory and history.  Whereas communities that grow organically over time have many different aged buildings and fill many more diverse needs.

The reasons we fight to protect the countryside hardly needs explaining as it is a fact that people deprived of connections to the natural world have many more instances of mental and physical illness and of course we need green plants to breath. The reason we fight to protect old  buildings, walls around parks, ancient paving etc is because they hold our heritage; they are the past that we need to see in some way manifest in our lives.  We need to see and touch the places we have come from for the very same reasons that we hunt down our family trees and our ancestors i.e. we need continuity in our landscape as much as we need to know who our parents are. Human being are not robots to fit in with a two dimensional plan on a drawing board or a scale model with plastic trees and people; we have basic needs that are being ignored because of lazy, backward thinking on the part of some who are supposed to speak for us.

This particular development is not cementing over virgin countryside and it does include building more housing (apartments) but the rest of the development, most of it, is shops, adding another 60% of retail area for which they will have to destroy historic buildings. There will also be new roads that go alongside any new development which will, as all analysis has shown, soon fill with more traffic making Lancaster's congestion even worse.

Is this what we need, not we the town, but we human beings? Are we expected to get most of our emotional needs met by shopping? Are we just commercial fodder to keep the wheels of capitalism turning or can we change this profit-fuelled argument into one for people's real needs?  If so, we need to start thinking what we do really need and whether this is space for small business or green space for walking  we do not need it dominated by traffic noise and traffic fumes; any new development should prioritise walking and cycling space over car space - what about bringing back clean trams?

But will the councillors go over the people's heads and do whatever is easiest; whatever makes them or the town short-term profits? Will they try to fob us off with telling us development means jobs; that Lancaster needs to 'move forward'? If so there are enough 'developed' ghost towns around England to show us that this is not the way to go, that we need to find alternatives to cementing ourselves and the environment into a corner and there are alternatives; if you want to find out what sustainable, human-scale development is look at the web-site of the group 'Local Works' who are running a campaign for sustainable communities.  Their website www.localworks.org will show you the details of what we are trying to avoid and what they are working towards; planning around the needs of humans and the environment.

This brings us to the question of the long-term plans for Lancaster; if this development and many others that have started or are planned, go ahead, Lancaster will be completely rebuilt and very quickly and not only will it be rebuilt but you as citizens, as people who live here, will have no say in it.

The only way that this council will stop developing for profit and take its people's needs into consideration is if all the people shout very loudly and force them to make a long-term plan for this city that prioritises human beings and the environment.