Planning reforms: Oxford’s Grenoble Road is a perfect example of community divide | Business News

Grenoble Road is the southern boundary of the city of Oxford.

On one side are the Blackbird Ley estate, a sprawling science park and Oxford United’s Kassam Stadium, which will host the football championship next month.

On the other, the wheat fields and wooded hills of the Oxfordshire Green Belt, a bucolic view interrupted only by a line of pylons that march west from Didcot power station and on which, in theory, not a brick can stand. be placed.

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It is a perfect example of the principles underlying the Green Belt concept, introduced into widespread British planning practice in the 1950s.

The goal was and continues to be to prevent urban sprawl, ensuring that cities maintain a practical and pleasant density, while also offering the convenience of the outdoors to those who live there.

Michael Tice wants to keep it that way.

A member of the Oxfordshire branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, he has campaigned on reform since 1993, but even he had to admit defeat at Grenoble Road.

A 3,000-home development linked to the science park housing the new Ellison Institute of Technology, funded by billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellisson, has received planning permission on Green Belt land.

Michael told me that this proves that current planning law is already too permissive when it comes to protecting the countryside, and labor reforms will only make this more difficult.

“The green belt is popular. We interviewed people in Oxfordshire and 80% support it, even those who live outside of it,” he says.

“If you held a vote you would get twice as many votes as the Labor Party. The current decision-making means that sites as beautiful as this one can be publicized, and the argument is that the rules certainly don’t need to be relaxed, they need to be tightened.”

Grenoble Road is one of three steps removed from the Green Belt for housing in recent years as the city struggles to meet the housing demand of its booming economy.

Booming technology, life sciences and advanced manufacturing industries have joined academia, hospitals and the BMW Mini factory as reasons to work in a city where home prices are already among the highest in the country.

For those on the wrong side of the property divide, affordability is more pressing than vision.

Chris Smowton jointly founded the Oxford Yimby (Yes In My Back Yard) group to give them a voice, rallying support for developments like Grenoble Road.

Currently a Liberal Democrat councillor, he is in favor of bigger and smarter development, in the city center and, when necessary, on its limits.

The worst option, he says, is to “skip the green belt,” where homes are only affordable in distant cities, leaving workers to commute through the countryside to a city already overburdened with traffic.

“The best type of development we would love to see is the densification of the inner areas of cities like Oxford.

“We have inner suburbs that are two stories high. If we could evolve them to three or four stories, that would be fantastic, because they create walkable neighborhoods.

“But when it comes to Oxford, we have a lot of property debt, so there’s no way around it that you have to grow as much as you do, and you want to manage that carefully and do it as close to the city as possible. he can.”