England’s overcrowded cities should adopt the Scandinavian approach of green fingers – whereby areas or fingers of the green belt are preserved but the gaps between them are built on, according to Paul Cheshire, a professor emeritus at the LSE and researcher at the Spatial Economics Research Centre.
Cheshire said the green-belt areas offered little in the way of benefit to most city inhabitants, but that developers were prevented from building there. He cited the example of Copenhagen, which has embraced the green fingers philosophy – new homes there are both larger and cheaper than those in the UK, he noted.
Paul Miner, of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, countered Cheshire’s argument, however, saying that green fingers fail to prevent urban sprawl.
