The Greening of the Cities

First Published in 2004. The majority of our large manufacturing cities are in decline―thousands of acres of their former industrial greatness have become gigantic scrapheaps. New industries with new technologies no longer make it necessary to locate industry in cities, and social and fiscal pressures are drawing people out into the countryside. Thus a conflict is growing with cities dying for lack of industry and new housing― whilst conservationists resist the spread of development into the green belts or further into the rural landscape. This book is an important contribution to a contemporary debate which is of significance to everyone living in Britain: the need for a land-use policy which looks simultaneously at the towns and country and strikes a balance between urban and rural renewal

David Nicholson-Lord is a journalist with The Times who has written extensively on environmental issues. A former Westminster lobby correspondent and current affairs lecturer, he was a British Petroleum Press Fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge in 1983.