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Outskirts: Living Life on the Edge of the Green Belt
Coined by National Trust co-founder Octavia Hill at the end of the nineteenth century, the phrase 'Green Belt' originally formed part of an impassioned plea to protect the countryside. By the late 1950s, those idealistic Victorian notions had developed into something more complex and divisive. Green Belts became part of the landscape and psyche of post-war Britain, but would lead to conflicts at every level of society - between conservationists and developers, town and country, politicians and people, nimbys and the forces of progress.Growing up on 'the last road in London' on an estate at the edge of the woods, John Grindrod had a childhood that mirrored these tensions. His family, too, seemed caught between two worlds: a wheelchair-bound mother who glowed in the dark; a father who was traumatised by chicken and was eventually done in by an episode of Only Fools and Horses; two brothers - one sporty, one agoraphobic - and an unremarkable boy on the edge of it all discovering something magical.The first book to tell the story of Britain's Green Belts, Outskirts is at once a fascinating social history, a stirring evocation of the natural world, and a poignant tale of growing up in a place, and within a family, like no other --
368 pages, Hardcover
Published November 1, 2018
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September 27, 2017
Over 1.5 million hectares of green belt land exist in the UK. It was conceived way back in Victorian times as a way of ensuring that the people living in towns still had some contact with the countryside. The Green Belt around London was first proposed in 1935 and by 1947 local authorities were including green belt proposals in their development plans. There are lots of benefits of having these green areas surrounding towns, it prevents towns from merging together, discourages urban sprawl and encourages people to reuse land more efficiently. When I think of the green belt, you have this impression of a wide band of fields and woods surrounding a town or city. However, the reality is much messier than that and it is a resource that is under threat from housing pressures and developers so much so that we have lost over 30,000 hectares since the millennium.
Grindrod grew up in New Addington, at the point where urban Croydon fizzles out and the fields and coppices begin. The youngest of three boys, his parents John and Marj had moved out from a flat in Battersea to this new development in Surrey at the very end of the Sixties. For reasons that become apparent later on, John was a little bit of a loner and suffered from endless teasing; the woodlands opposite his house became a bolthole where he could indulge his imagination when the real world became too much for him. But it became more that, it was a place that came to define him as a person and set the path for his life and career as he became a modern-day Janus man who looked towards the urban and rural landscapes for inspiration.
As well as Grindrod’s insightful personal stories of his own life growing up in 1970’s suburbia and a fitting eulogy to his mother and father, this is a warts and all history of the green belt and its place in the social history of the UK. It bought back my own memories of growing up; we lived in an estate right next to a woodland that was planted by Thomas Waterer and where I spent many happy hours as a child. He champions the good points behind the green belt and the benefits it can provide to society and he hits the nail on the head when it comes to the disjointed housing policy we have had in the UK since the 1980’s. Grindrod is not afraid to challenge the current thinking too arguing that we need a big rethink on national policy with the current housing crisis, especially when you consider the area of land designated green belt (and golf courses are included) in the UK, especially when compared to actual land that is built on. It won’t be an easy debate, but it is one we need to have. Really enjoyable book, and as I haven’t read Concretopia yet, but it is being moved up the list.
Grindrod grew up in New Addington, at the point where urban Croydon fizzles out and the fields and coppices begin. The youngest of three boys, his parents John and Marj had moved out from a flat in Battersea to this new development in Surrey at the very end of the Sixties. For reasons that become apparent later on, John was a little bit of a loner and suffered from endless teasing; the woodlands opposite his house became a bolthole where he could indulge his imagination when the real world became too much for him. But it became more that, it was a place that came to define him as a person and set the path for his life and career as he became a modern-day Janus man who looked towards the urban and rural landscapes for inspiration.
As well as Grindrod’s insightful personal stories of his own life growing up in 1970’s suburbia and a fitting eulogy to his mother and father, this is a warts and all history of the green belt and its place in the social history of the UK. It bought back my own memories of growing up; we lived in an estate right next to a woodland that was planted by Thomas Waterer and where I spent many happy hours as a child. He champions the good points behind the green belt and the benefits it can provide to society and he hits the nail on the head when it comes to the disjointed housing policy we have had in the UK since the 1980’s. Grindrod is not afraid to challenge the current thinking too arguing that we need a big rethink on national policy with the current housing crisis, especially when you consider the area of land designated green belt (and golf courses are included) in the UK, especially when compared to actual land that is built on. It won’t be an easy debate, but it is one we need to have. Really enjoyable book, and as I haven’t read Concretopia yet, but it is being moved up the list.
September 1, 2019
The second half of the twentieth century was a rather remarkable time in Britain. All of the assumptions about town and country, the way of life which went on in each, and the kind of people who inhabited them were somewhat up-for-grabs for the first time since the Industrial Revolution. It was also a surprisingly exciting time for planners and architects, professions who rarely enter the general public discourse except when they do something very wrong indeed. The massive destruction of city centres in the second world war, coupled with a municipal spirit which genuinely sought to improve conditions for the vast populations still effectively living in Victorian slums meant new responses to how people were housed and how their needs were met. In fact, for perhaps the first time since the pioneering efforts of industrialists like Titus Salt or Lord Leverhulme, the concept of placemaking - creating spaces deliberately to be inhabited - became a preoccupation for local and national government alike. In his second book broadly focusing on this period, John Grindrod has used one of the 'big ideas' of the era as a lens through which to view this period. Was this a golden age realised, or good intentions squandered? Through the course of Grindrod's own connection with the green belt around London he tries to determine the outcome.
John Grindrod did most of his growing up on the very edge of New Addington, where urban Croydon finally stops trying, and Surrey begins. He describes this edgeland world in fond but honest detail throughout Outskirts as he traces the thread of the idea of a green belt - initially around the ominously expanding fringe of post-war London. On his journey, Grindrod examines the origins of the idea in the Garden City movement who proposed the rigorous management of space and density within their tightly zoned new communities, and attempts to untangle the politics of planning for the swathes of unused and unusable land around our cities. One of his early discoveries, and a persistent theme throughout the book, is the lack of greenery in the green belt - while his own upbringing on the edge of the downs was relatively bucolic, the green belt elsewhere contains the kind of edgeland industries, waste management facilities and abandoned land which is probably depressingly familiar to drivers everywhere. It soon appears that in fact, virtually anything can be built in the green belt once the requisite hoops have been jumped through - except housing. But of all the pervasive, permitted development which Grindrod finds, it is the golf course which is most prevalent. These cartoonishly green swathes of primped grass and fluttering flags litter the edges of our cities, destroying the very ancient countryside which the zones would seem to be designed to protect. Of all the promises of Class War which the late 1970s seemed pregnant with, it seems it's the war of the golfing versus non-golfing middle classes which is playing out even now on the edgelands!
And this leads to another revelation for Grindrod - that the green belt has very little to do with protecting the countryside, and everything to do with protecting life in the city. The designated swathes of space, by the 1960s enveloping many English towns and cities, aimed to check the growth of the towns and to preserve the distinct identities of places which otherwise threatened to merge. The green belt was also where the overspill towns would be placed - those new towns which would house the displaced from the rezoned and yet-to-be revitalised city centres. These towns were rarely entirely new - often co-opting existing communities like Old Harlow or the villages around what is now Milton Keynes - but their position squarely within the belt allowed total control over their growth, their zoning and their density. I grew up amidst one of the later phases of the New Towns programme - in Redditch, Worcestershire - which suffered greatly when the programme was finally cancelled in the 1970s before much of the work was complete. Among the gravel-covered empty lots redesignated as pay-and-display carparks, one redeeming feature of the plan was the swathe of greenery which one needed to cross to get to Birmingham. From my earliest interest in maps and roads, I understood that the town and the city were never to meet.
This could all be another dry examination of the successes and mishits of planning policy but for two things: firstly, John Grindrod writes with a wit and clarity which turns a wander through the wooded edges of Croydon into a minor epic, and a trek through the history of planning into a historical romance. His tackling of the social and political themes from which the green belt arises are sensitive and give appropriate credence to the tenor of the times. We'd never accept such paternalistic interference nowadays of course, in this post-expert era of history - but Grindrod manages to put us back in the shoes of those principled and ambitious post-war planners who really wanted to create a new Britain from the ashes. Secondly, the story is riven by an autobiographical strand which describes a family life that many of us who grew up at that time will recognise - the social engagements, the attitudes and expectations, and the pressures of being young and different were certainly not lost on me. The relationship of family, place and policy somehow came to a head in those years during the 60s and 70s when anything seemed possible despite only having four TV channels and living miles from anywhere.
Outskirts manages to be a funny, affectingly personal history of life in a particular setting at a particular time, whilst successfully unravelling the decisions and policies which created that way of living. Once again, John Grindrod has chosen a topic which for many would seem unsympathetic and without interest, and turned it into a rather joyous book.
John Grindrod did most of his growing up on the very edge of New Addington, where urban Croydon finally stops trying, and Surrey begins. He describes this edgeland world in fond but honest detail throughout Outskirts as he traces the thread of the idea of a green belt - initially around the ominously expanding fringe of post-war London. On his journey, Grindrod examines the origins of the idea in the Garden City movement who proposed the rigorous management of space and density within their tightly zoned new communities, and attempts to untangle the politics of planning for the swathes of unused and unusable land around our cities. One of his early discoveries, and a persistent theme throughout the book, is the lack of greenery in the green belt - while his own upbringing on the edge of the downs was relatively bucolic, the green belt elsewhere contains the kind of edgeland industries, waste management facilities and abandoned land which is probably depressingly familiar to drivers everywhere. It soon appears that in fact, virtually anything can be built in the green belt once the requisite hoops have been jumped through - except housing. But of all the pervasive, permitted development which Grindrod finds, it is the golf course which is most prevalent. These cartoonishly green swathes of primped grass and fluttering flags litter the edges of our cities, destroying the very ancient countryside which the zones would seem to be designed to protect. Of all the promises of Class War which the late 1970s seemed pregnant with, it seems it's the war of the golfing versus non-golfing middle classes which is playing out even now on the edgelands!
And this leads to another revelation for Grindrod - that the green belt has very little to do with protecting the countryside, and everything to do with protecting life in the city. The designated swathes of space, by the 1960s enveloping many English towns and cities, aimed to check the growth of the towns and to preserve the distinct identities of places which otherwise threatened to merge. The green belt was also where the overspill towns would be placed - those new towns which would house the displaced from the rezoned and yet-to-be revitalised city centres. These towns were rarely entirely new - often co-opting existing communities like Old Harlow or the villages around what is now Milton Keynes - but their position squarely within the belt allowed total control over their growth, their zoning and their density. I grew up amidst one of the later phases of the New Towns programme - in Redditch, Worcestershire - which suffered greatly when the programme was finally cancelled in the 1970s before much of the work was complete. Among the gravel-covered empty lots redesignated as pay-and-display carparks, one redeeming feature of the plan was the swathe of greenery which one needed to cross to get to Birmingham. From my earliest interest in maps and roads, I understood that the town and the city were never to meet.
This could all be another dry examination of the successes and mishits of planning policy but for two things: firstly, John Grindrod writes with a wit and clarity which turns a wander through the wooded edges of Croydon into a minor epic, and a trek through the history of planning into a historical romance. His tackling of the social and political themes from which the green belt arises are sensitive and give appropriate credence to the tenor of the times. We'd never accept such paternalistic interference nowadays of course, in this post-expert era of history - but Grindrod manages to put us back in the shoes of those principled and ambitious post-war planners who really wanted to create a new Britain from the ashes. Secondly, the story is riven by an autobiographical strand which describes a family life that many of us who grew up at that time will recognise - the social engagements, the attitudes and expectations, and the pressures of being young and different were certainly not lost on me. The relationship of family, place and policy somehow came to a head in those years during the 60s and 70s when anything seemed possible despite only having four TV channels and living miles from anywhere.
Outskirts manages to be a funny, affectingly personal history of life in a particular setting at a particular time, whilst successfully unravelling the decisions and policies which created that way of living. Once again, John Grindrod has chosen a topic which for many would seem unsympathetic and without interest, and turned it into a rather joyous book.
April 17, 2024
I think this book suffered a little from the contextualization of family and upbringing within the wider setting of the "Green Belt" discussion. I think I would have enjoyed this more had Grindrod just stuck to his childhood and upbringing within the area he was born and raised. That story had enough to keep me interested with the discussion of his family's moves from certain council estates to greener pastures and his mum's disability and how that affected their relationship with environment. I think when the focus pulled back to discuss the wider ranging aspects of green belts, with all the associated facts, figures and statistics, a little of the writing magic was lost, and if I'm honest, I skim and speed read a lot of those sections. There's only so many times you can read about Michael Heseltine!
Though I enjoyed the read, I think a bit of a narrower focus would have made this an even greater book.
Though I enjoyed the read, I think a bit of a narrower focus would have made this an even greater book.
March 17, 2021
There is so much in this book and for all that it sometimes seemed to have an inadequate structure, there was something valuable about the intertwining of an account of UK planning history, particularly as it relates to the concept and actuality of The Green Belt, and of Grindrod's upbringing in council housing with fields opposite.
For all that he paints himself as quietly self-obsessed, there is a very strong sense of empathy here, to all sorts of people. I wasn't expecting so much about growing up as the child of disabled and unwell parents - a useful read for many on these grounds alone. I also thought his description of the differences between himself and his siblings was interesting, their perspectives both on family life and the location in which it took place, invaluable to the narrative.
It's not, and I think inevitably so, a particularly uplifting book, although there are nuggets. We see the push and pull of the political process - one of his final reflections on the holly which survives, rather overgrown and out of place, in the garden of his childhood home is a particularly good analogy.
For all that he paints himself as quietly self-obsessed, there is a very strong sense of empathy here, to all sorts of people. I wasn't expecting so much about growing up as the child of disabled and unwell parents - a useful read for many on these grounds alone. I also thought his description of the differences between himself and his siblings was interesting, their perspectives both on family life and the location in which it took place, invaluable to the narrative.
It's not, and I think inevitably so, a particularly uplifting book, although there are nuggets. We see the push and pull of the political process - one of his final reflections on the holly which survives, rather overgrown and out of place, in the garden of his childhood home is a particularly good analogy.
August 27, 2017
I really enjoyed this and was sort of surprised that reading about the green belt could be so interesting. Just when you feel yourself about to start skimming over some of the denser pieces of history then the other Grindrod swoops in with stories from his own life, most of which are beautifully written as well as insightful. In fact, it's all excellently written, with lots of lovely phrases, and never veers into being over-written, which it could have. You feel in very good company.
November 1, 2017
Review to follow.
July 11, 2019
“Do you know how many golf courses there are in a fifty-mile radius from here? Six hundred and twenty-seven!”
So claims activist Kristina Kenworthy who is based in Surrey. Apparently Surrey lies third behind Merseyside and the West Midlands in terms of golf clubs.
Dogging, quarries, coastal erosion, landfill sites and nuclear bunkers are just some of the intriguing things that you can stumble upon within the green belts of Great Britain. In town planner Patrick Abercrombie’s words the purpose they served was to “separate the threatened countryside from the threatening town.” Interestingly enough Dundee is the only city in the UK which has chosen to abandon its green belts altogether.
From the opening pages I felt a connection with this book as like the author I too grew up in a similar(ish) environment, being on the edge of a town at the fringes of the green belt, and so I could readily identify with many of the reference points and sensations he talks about.
Grindrod weighs up the pros and cons of the green belt in the 21st Century. In one sense it is nice to have and enjoy such wide, green open spaces, but then what about the growing homeless problem?...It is not so great for them. The facts remain that these spaces are largely but by no means exclusively, owned and enjoyed by white, wealthy Tory voting people who are used to getting their way. We no longer have the luxury of maintaining these spaces for the sake of it when we have so many people without homes. He also makes a point about how all is not as it seems with them, like the amount of pollution created by people having to commute to and from them into the cities. They also have the knock on effect on escalating house prices within the city as land becomes scarce.
He is really good on many of the historical aspects which shaped our thinking of these spaces. He goes back to Oliver Cromwell, who suggested that there should be no building within ten miles of the edges of London. But this was done more to keep the poor away from the city than for the purpose of protecting the environment. It was just another harsh way of dealing with immigration.
The Inclosure Act of 1773 which saw the privatisation of public land on a grand scale and did much to disempower the majority who lived within it. This took away shared fields from peasant farmers and signed them over to powerful landowners instead. Over the next century 4 million acres of common fields were affected.
In light of the terrifying findings made by Rachel Carson’s landmark “Silent Spring” the PR departments of petrochemical giants went into overdrive and so the likes of ICI, Shell and BP made sinister and deliberately misleading promotional/propaganda videos. One of the more notable cases is in “The Shadow of Progress” by BP, which ends with the chilling lines, “All of this progress is not our fault: it’s yours. You wanted it, we were only your handmaiden. The real monsters are you.”
He also explains the importance of social reformers like Octavia Hill and her research which resulted in a plea for a recognised green belt she also co-founded the National Trust in 1895. We also learn about Jean Mann a Scottish Labour politician, in Glasgow who also did some crucial work north of the border.
This is an unorthodox journey, a peculiar trip with Grindrod, his wheelchair bound mother, his eccentric father and two older brothers. It’s a coming of age (not quite misery memoir), with a bit of psychogeogrpahy, social history and town planning thrown into the mix and overall it is hard not to warm to its offbeat quirks and charms. This is a strange but thoroughly enjoyable read.
April 19, 2022
It is surprising just how good a book about green belts can be. It’s a topic most might find boring or weird to dig into, but the green belt is a fascinating concept that deserves this well-researched love letter of a book.
Grindrod weaves social history, urbanism, nature writing and memoir together to give the reader a properly well-drawn overview of the green belt and its importance. His arguments also had me shift some of my previously settled views on green belt development, and he offers some excellent food for thought on their future and the future of sustainable development and urbanism generally.
Grindrod weaves social history, urbanism, nature writing and memoir together to give the reader a properly well-drawn overview of the green belt and its importance. His arguments also had me shift some of my previously settled views on green belt development, and he offers some excellent food for thought on their future and the future of sustainable development and urbanism generally.
July 8, 2019
Very interesting explanation of how the Green Belt(s) came into being and how important it is for especially disadvantaged families like the author's family.
Bit too long for me, but very interesting read.
Bit too long for me, but very interesting read.
February 14, 2018
The memoir bits are really good; no real problem with the bits about the green belt, but it's a tricky topic to make interesting, unless you're Jonathan Meades.
October 27, 2018
I ordered this book, chiefly, because it's related to my PhD - John Grindrod grew up in New Addington, on the outskirts (geddit!) of Croydon and also London. His other book, Concretopia, similarly begins with a discussion of his home estate, in that case in order to discuss the modernist architecture of the post-war period. Outskirts forms a useful contrast by focusing instead upon another post-war development: the Green Belt. The books, then, form an interesting couplet which goes some way to depicting the liminal suburban condition: built-up and bound-up with the urban, but on the very edge of the rural and 'green'. Importantly, Grindrod stresses throughout that the suburb is as much a feature of modernity as the city - not a sort of relic, 'pickled in aspic'.
That's not to say that the books are mirror images of one another. If Concretopia used New Addington as a framing device for an extended tour of Britain's architecture (and its architects), Outskirts is much more saturated by Grindrod's experiences on the estate - like the previous book, it is a travelogue and a history brimming with interviews and tidbits (if, regrettably, few maps!), but it is also a memoir, deeply moving in places, of his life and the lives of his family. Although I bought this book for my PhD , it has to be said that it affected me rather more than that implies - to the extent that I found it a little difficult to read in public, which I had not expected.
I agree with most of the conclusions which Grindrod reaches, about the need to rethink the place o the Green Belt without wholly discarding some of the ambitions behind it, although I think he has a fairly unsurprising but nevertheless disagreeable technocratic streak - a real admiration for the planners and architects and some of the politicians who devised it, although to be fair he doesn't shy away from pointing out when they were drawing inspiration from Hitler. Apart from Grindrod's family and some of his neighbours, I'm not sure quite enough space is left for people who were relatively powerless in these processes - who may not have lived physically on the 'outskirts' but may, indeed, have lived on the 'frontline'. Farmers and residents and activists are interviewed, but something about the significance (or lack thereof) of the Green Belt is lost in neglecting the experience of those in the inner city (or, in New Addington's case perhaps, the inner estate) who, too, have a relationship with the 'outskirts'. These problems feed into Grindrod's conclusions, which focus too much on the loss of 'adults' able to rise above 'infighting' to have serious conversations about the Green Belt - I understand the frustration, but I'm not sure we should be looking to a new generation of Abercrombies and Sandys and Hills to solve problems which we are more than capable of solving ourselves.
That's not to say that the books are mirror images of one another. If Concretopia used New Addington as a framing device for an extended tour of Britain's architecture (and its architects), Outskirts is much more saturated by Grindrod's experiences on the estate - like the previous book, it is a travelogue and a history brimming with interviews and tidbits (if, regrettably, few maps!), but it is also a memoir, deeply moving in places, of his life and the lives of his family. Although I bought this book for my PhD , it has to be said that it affected me rather more than that implies - to the extent that I found it a little difficult to read in public, which I had not expected.
I agree with most of the conclusions which Grindrod reaches, about the need to rethink the place o the Green Belt without wholly discarding some of the ambitions behind it, although I think he has a fairly unsurprising but nevertheless disagreeable technocratic streak - a real admiration for the planners and architects and some of the politicians who devised it, although to be fair he doesn't shy away from pointing out when they were drawing inspiration from Hitler. Apart from Grindrod's family and some of his neighbours, I'm not sure quite enough space is left for people who were relatively powerless in these processes - who may not have lived physically on the 'outskirts' but may, indeed, have lived on the 'frontline'. Farmers and residents and activists are interviewed, but something about the significance (or lack thereof) of the Green Belt is lost in neglecting the experience of those in the inner city (or, in New Addington's case perhaps, the inner estate) who, too, have a relationship with the 'outskirts'. These problems feed into Grindrod's conclusions, which focus too much on the loss of 'adults' able to rise above 'infighting' to have serious conversations about the Green Belt - I understand the frustration, but I'm not sure we should be looking to a new generation of Abercrombies and Sandys and Hills to solve problems which we are more than capable of solving ourselves.
November 24, 2017
The author’s memoirs are the highlights of the book. The personal impact of the greenbelt strategy is told with heartfelt irony and the present debate on housing makes it a very relevant read. I was expecting to find this topic either hard work or a bit boring but in the event I found I enjoyed the book.
July 9, 2018
Interesting read although I think that without the autobiographical accounts this book would have been a much tougher read. I enjoyed it as it focussed on an area I knew so my interest was personal. I am not sure of how much interest it would have been if not.
January 19, 2024
If someone suggested that you read a 350-page history of the Green Belt, you might think it would be a dull study. But the way that this book is written, with the author's slowly-revealed family memories intertwined with the story, it has a firm narrative pull. John spent his childhood literally on the edge of the green belt, with an estate behind him and fields and trees across the road, and obviously has an enquiring mind, open to the beauties of nature and the practical requirements of human existence. The book goes right back to the earliest ideas for model towns and doesn't skimp on controversy and protest as it proceeds to follow the town planning debate through the 20th century and up to the present day. Grindrod has done very thorough research both by reading many publications and by carrying out fieldwork and speaking to people with stories to tell. And there are some crackers! A satisfying, idiosyncratic and balanced book, bound to make you see things from all the points of view involved - which is the purpose of literature. A potent blend of story with history.
October 13, 2017
I was given this book by Goodreads Giveaways and wasn't overly certain what kind of book it was going to be. I was intrigued by the environmental aspect in the blurb and thought it might be an interesting read.
Now that I have finished it, I can safely say that is was totally engaging and very satisfying to read. A creative mix of memoir, recent history and political comment, the author blends the different aspects of his topic with subtle humour and not a little irony. His writing style is relaxed, drawing you along with him as he reflects upon the development of greenbelt strategy, the political landscapes that surrounded that and the personal impact of all of this on himself and his family.
Totally recommend this book.
Now that I have finished it, I can safely say that is was totally engaging and very satisfying to read. A creative mix of memoir, recent history and political comment, the author blends the different aspects of his topic with subtle humour and not a little irony. His writing style is relaxed, drawing you along with him as he reflects upon the development of greenbelt strategy, the political landscapes that surrounded that and the personal impact of all of this on himself and his family.
Totally recommend this book.
July 14, 2019
I'm afraid I didn't get quite as much from this as I did from concretopia, the memoir sections sat a little bit awkwardly with the history for me and I didn't feel Grindrod's passion for the subject in the same way, but still there's a lot to admire here.
There's an odd ambivalence at times down to Grindrod's commitment to seeing both sides of a story, but the takeway message seems to be that the green belt policy was of as piece with the postwar town planning covered in his earlier book. As before the central theme seems to be the decline of inspiring dreams of a better future in favour of short termist instant gratification and cost-cutting. A bleak read at times and, as with a lot of nature writing, it's hard not to come away with a slight sense of despair.
There's an odd ambivalence at times down to Grindrod's commitment to seeing both sides of a story, but the takeway message seems to be that the green belt policy was of as piece with the postwar town planning covered in his earlier book. As before the central theme seems to be the decline of inspiring dreams of a better future in favour of short termist instant gratification and cost-cutting. A bleak read at times and, as with a lot of nature writing, it's hard not to come away with a slight sense of despair.
April 21, 2023
This is a really interesting history of the Green Belts that emerged around British cities after the Second World and it is mixed in with a personal family memoir of the impact of the Green Belt on his own family life growing up on the edige of the Surrey green belt. The memoir and planning history work really together and complement each other.
I don't feel, however, that he really comes up a way forward for the Green Belts either in terms of the Climate Crisis and the challenge of encouraging sustainable adaption of cities or in potential solutions to the broken land market in the UK which is interwoven with the whole history. But as social planning and environmental history it is very good.
I don't feel, however, that he really comes up a way forward for the Green Belts either in terms of the Climate Crisis and the challenge of encouraging sustainable adaption of cities or in potential solutions to the broken land market in the UK which is interwoven with the whole history. But as social planning and environmental history it is very good.
January 31, 2018
I enjoyed this. Part memoir, part history and part nature. Made me realize how much of an impact the smallest green spaces can have on life, and the pressures that can be placed on the natural environment. Well worth a read.
November 1, 2017
Loved this review to follow
July 29, 2018
A thoughtful and entertaining exploration, joining history and his own personal experience. Moving, informative and often very funny.
September 9, 2018
From this book - i Learnt NOTHING
October 1, 2018
The author explores the rise and fall of the ideas that produced the green belt, with occasional digressions into autobiography.
June 1, 2019
A fantastic tour of green belts and their various friends, interwoven with a brilliantly told personal journey. Everything I love in a book in one place! Perfect!
December 27, 2019
A a book about living on the urban edge with countryside in your doorstep. An intriguing mix of touching family story of moving to the Outskirks and the history and intrigue of the Green Belt, town vs country and urban containment. An enjoyable and informative read explaining where we are now with planning pressures and the urgent need for more and better housing.
June 1, 2021
This was good. I would strongly recommend Out of the Woods by Luke Turner to anyone who was interested in this book.
July 2, 2022
Combines a history of UK town planning with memoir. Touching, heartfelt and not at all dry. Highly recommend.
June 1, 2025
DNF. good enough
June 14, 2020
Fascinating look at the Green Belt, in theory and practice. Combines his family background and experience living in the green belt with its history. One of those little gems bought on a whim which actually turned out to be an insightful and interesting read.
September 24, 2023
An interesting blend of deeply personal family memoir and a study of the green belt: its origins, mythical status, many weirdnesses and the intractable political problem that it has become.
Only 6% of land in the UK is covered by buildings but there is constant pressure for more. The green belt is now a totem and has attained a status far beyond the intentions of those who created it. Nevertheless we seem to have lost the idealism and social vision of its original creators.
On completing a second listening to this audiobook, I was convinced that the UK’s growing population, climate change impacts and tightly controlled land supply make it essential that we have a robust national system of economic planning. Without it, the south east will continue to be spoiled by over-development. It makes much more sense to distribute economic growth across the country with suitable incentives for employers. This would allow the growing population to live nearer their places of work and for more towns to share the advantages and disadvantages attendant on growth.
Only 6% of land in the UK is covered by buildings but there is constant pressure for more. The green belt is now a totem and has attained a status far beyond the intentions of those who created it. Nevertheless we seem to have lost the idealism and social vision of its original creators.
On completing a second listening to this audiobook, I was convinced that the UK’s growing population, climate change impacts and tightly controlled land supply make it essential that we have a robust national system of economic planning. Without it, the south east will continue to be spoiled by over-development. It makes much more sense to distribute economic growth across the country with suitable incentives for employers. This would allow the growing population to live nearer their places of work and for more towns to share the advantages and disadvantages attendant on growth.
April 22, 2022
Part history of the green belt, part memoir, part travel around the sorts of places a lot of us grew up in. I finished it really quickly and then spent some time skimming back through it. I was born in London and we moved out to live in a new town very soon after. The author lights up some odd corners of that experience that I had always assumed were individual, but are obviously much more about the situations than the individual. Very interesting.
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