Please find a brief abstract of an article in The Sunday Times below about the for and against’s about ecotowns. Comments are welcome below!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4115568.ece

From The Sunday Times
June 15, 2008
Ecotowns: for and against
Ten new clean, green ‘eco-towns’ will be built by 2020. And pigs might fly, say critics. They argue that the government is bulldozing through a programme that will create the slum estates of the future
Richard Girling

This is how it will be. Across the fair face of Albion, to the ringing of bells and the soft murmur of doves, appears a leafy flush of eco-towns. They are sun-dappled utopias, urban dreamworlds in which no human need is unfulfilled. Wildlife romps through bird-loud glades. People work at home or in business parks to which they can stroll or cycle. Public transport is swift, efficient and free, so cars are not needed. Community sports hubs, leisure and cultural facilities are so abundant that nobody wants to leave the town anyway. Children walk safely to schools in which the most popular subject is environmentalism. There are superstores for convenience, and farmers’ markets for friends of the planet. Allotments, too, for those who want to grow their own. Energy is renewable, insulation total and the carbon footprint zero.

Nothing is wasted. Grey water goes onto the gardens. Rainwater is dispersed via permeable pavements, swales and ponds into wetland habitats, which channel it safely back into the aquifers and rivers where it belongs. The town never floods. There are no dustcarts. Residents put their rubbish into cylinders that discharge straight into underground vacuum tubes, which whisk it to the local recycling centre, where at least 50% of it finds new economic use. The rest of it is converted into heat or energy. Ill health and unfitness are rare aberrations.