Taming the jellyfish
, London lies on the map lik.a.huge jellyfish, threatening as-it grows to engulf. its surround- ings for many miles in al} directions. The planning strategy proposed this week by the South East Economic Planning Council is to remould this invertebrate monster into the more defined pattern of a starAsh. New de- velopment is to reach out in disciplined cor- ridors to new. 'city regions' at the extremities of the South East Region and beyond, and there will be strongly defended 'country zones' filling the intervening spaces.
This, on the face of it, seems an intelligent and hopeful strategy. Clearly some such con- trol is essential: development, involving the loss of rural amenities and the expansion of many towns, is going to happen rapidly whatever - the planners decree. Another 2,140,000 inhabitants by 1981, without any immigration; another six million by 2000; such is one corner of England's portion of multiplying humanity.
A strategy, however, is nothing without the will to carry it through. All that this particu- lar strategy amounts to, in reality, is a set of - recommendations awaiting -government ap- proval, and it all turns, therefore, upon the present Government's ,willingness to make clear and farsighted decisions. The omens, it might be thought, are not good.
And even if the strategy is accepted, the need for determination in sticking to it in fliture years will be incessant. The new kind of 'country' one envisaged will come under progressively greater pressures even than the present rural areas, and the limiting of future urban development to the approved corridors will require firmness not merely with private interests but also with the great public undertakings which all too often play the part of reckless vandals. It is a great challenge and a worthwhile struggle. One of our national vices has come to seem a futile preoccupation with issues and problems over which we have, and can have, no control. The protection, and indeed improvement, of our own environment is a matter which is wholly and properly a subject for our own endeavours; and according to bow we go about it, posterity will bless or curse us.
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