This coming weekend I will be once again ensconced with fifty or so other citizens of my beloved Oxford as part of the city council's "Citizens' Assembly" on the climate emergency. Three weekends ago we heard from a range of experts and practitioners in five policy or technology domains that contribute to either increasing or…
Oxford City Council has a planning policy that its two universities must ensure that fewer than a certain number (3,000 I think in both cases) of their students should be living in "family housing" in the city. The upshot of this for someone like Oxford Brookes in particular, with a lot less land and university…
The weekend saw a desultory rally of assorted anti-neighbour groups in Woodstock, following their "parish poll" to decide whether they should continue to oppose new housing near the town. This was reported on by the Oxford Mail, and has generated an assortment of comments. I thought it would be good to post one of my…
Last night I attended a debate on Green Belt policy here at Brookes, organised by the Royal Town Planning Institute and mainly, it appears, based on last autumn’s Adam Smith Institute’s research paper “The Green Noose” by Tom Papworth, who was there to defend his work in front of what at times was a hostile…
From the point of view of hypertension prevention I ought not to have, but for some crazy reason that currently eludes me, I found myself last evening at an event, a “panel discussion”, about the case for a “Green Belt Review” for Oxford. The panel was one councillor from beleaguered, hemmed in city council, one…
A veritable army of worthy groups, made up of regiments from the likes of the Council for the Protection of Rural England, the National Trust, Friends of the Earth, the Theatres Trust (why?) and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and their well-heeled and erudite patrons and luminaries, is leading an attack on…
