The British-European terra psyche derives from a rustic tech-
nological precedent which settled commons and pathways
slowly from medieval field systems, abetted by an ancient (pre-
orthoganal) landowning class system. Both the field system and
the class system are imprinted upon the British (particularly the
English) and much of the Western European landscape. A further
point is that within Europe the rural landscape, although enclosed
with many an injustice, was occupied in a manner which left
remnant commons and public access ways, patterns which the
contemporary population respects. No such social or historical
legacy impeded the trowelling of suburban expansion over the
peri-urban outliers to towns and cities in the New World. Hilltop
and ridge top dominance (for the view), technicolour houses for
the occupants to flaunt (for self-aggrandisement), and the treat-
ment of soils and landed resources as playthings (for the kids),
are the outcomes of a hedonistic and exuberantly unshackled
mobility and wealth, pushed along by urban fears on the part of
incomers, and windfall attractions for landowners. The land-
scapes of the New World involved the swift orthoganal ‘enclo-
sure’ of aboriginal-peopled land from whom the settlers sought
consciously to exclude the setting aside of common lands and
pedestrian accessways. The dispossession of native ownership
was sectioned off with such thoroughness that in most of North
America and Australasia only ‘badland’ reservations were left in
native people ownership, leaving some indigens landless in their
own landscape.
It is a matter of operational interest for planners from the Anglo
settler societies to understand more fully how communities of the
Anglo culture-cousin kind maintain, in Britain, their urban inclu-
sionaryintensiveness alongside a rural exclusionaryextensiveness.
The European tradition for maintaining an urban-rural compart-
mentation is largely a consequence of having the ‘correct’ indi-
vidual and community ‘attitude’, augmented by a procedural
rigour. Yet within the British context it would be an error to
assume that the battle for the countryside was a push-over. A
conscious feature of modern libertarian Britain is that the custody
of countryside values is notleft to the vagaries of market forces.
Central government interposes policy guidelines assertively
into the planning system via Department of the Environment
Planning Practice Guidancebulletins.^23 These recognize that the
countryside is rich with historical and ecological associations as
well as being of productive utility. There are guidelines to safe-
guard all manner of environmentally sensitive tracts: Areas of
Outstanding Natural Beauty, Green Belts, Sites of Special
Scientific Interest, Historical and Archaeological Sites, and the
already extensively humanized National Parks. The bulletins set
Growth Pattern Management 159Observing the
Australasian scene:
‘Balkan solutions
produce Balkan
outcomes of fragmented
authority, rampant
sectional interests and
disregard of minority
rights.’
Phil Heywood, ‘The
Future Metropolis’, 1994Rural landowners in
settler societies are
loath to grant public
access or designate
public footpaths in the
open landscape. A
paradoxical
consequence, observed
by Elizabeth Aitken-Rose
at Auckland University, is
that comparing city with
country, a much higher
proportion of
townscapes (up to 60
per cent) is available to
citizens on a ‘right to
roam’ basis than in the
countryside.An irony for the New
Zealand context arose
with the withdrawal of
farm subsidies. This has
led, over the last 25
years, to the
abandonment of farming
on low-return tracts.
This in turn lent impetus
to a peri-urban or quasi-
rural crossover,and
ironicallygave rise to a
massive regrowth of
indigenous bush on the
remaindered farmscapes.
To a minor extent the
unwarranted broadacre
construction is offset by
an also unexpected
return of indigenous
bush greenery.