Commons in the Rural Urban Fringe
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Presentation given by John Powell at the ESRC 'Realising New Commons' workshop 18th November 2015.
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Commons in the Rural Urban Fringe
- 1. NEW COMMONS IN THE RURAL-URBAN FRINGE John Powell CCRI @CCRI_UK Presentation at the ESRC ‘Realising New Commons’ Workshop 18 November 2015
- 2. Rural-urban fringe – current forms of land-use • Residential • Retail centres • Industrial • Agricultural • Recreation • Infrastructure: – Transport corridors – Water – Energy – Waste
- 3. The rural-urban fringe “a zone of intermingling land uses” “a place of change and adjustment” “a complex landscape” “heightened competition...and inflated cost of land”
- 10. Yateley Common
- 11. The nature of commons • Nature of the resource • Nature of the governance system • Property rights
- 12. ‘Commons’ currently existing • Common land & TVGs • ‘Artificial bits’ of common space and left-overs • Community woodlands (Cydcoed; Red Rose, Mersey, Great Western Community Forest) • The landscape and greenbelts • Biodiversity – protected areas • Access – Formal (RoW; HLS Permissive access; waterways;) – Informal (footpaths; ‘abandoned’ land)
- 14. Reasons for providing permissive access in HLS agreements (n=221)
- 15. Prevalence of user types at access agreement locations (n=221)
- 17. New commons: for what and for whom...? Recreation Landscape Cultural Heritage Food production Carbon sequestration Waste assimilation
- 18. Potential obstacles to new commons • Development potential • Liability fears • Designations • Access • Vandalism/deterioration • Governance – Limitations of the 2006 Commons Act – Collective action
- 19. Where to focus attention... • Different forms and scales of commons – Rural-urban fringe as a commons – City-region as a commons – Scope for ‘time limited’ commons • Institutional arrangements – Communities of users – Powers to craft rules – Guarantees for landowners – Compensation (a transfer of resources?) • Developing foundation for collective action • A role for local authorities?
- 20. Crookham Common
Editor's Notes
- Rural-urban fringe – current forms of land-use Residential Retail centres Shopping malls Garden centres landscape/nurseries Industrial Small scale industrial estates large/small business parks aggregates Building/timber/car rental storage Agricultural Small scale horses/stables/paddocks Allotments Large scale nurseries market gardening (PYO) food processing Recreation Indoor (tennis/squash; martial arts; gym; swimming Outdoor (football pitches; footpaths; cycle; horse riding; BMX/skateboard; archery; clay pigeon shooting) Infrastructure: Transport corridors (road/rail/airport/electricity/gas/water) Water (rivers/canals/sewage treatment) Energy (sub-stations; grid; generation (solar/biomass/wind/AD) Waste (landfill; recycling; sewage treatment)
- “...the interface as a place of change and adjustment” (Masuda and Garvin 2008) “a complex landscape impacted by a variety of social and economic processes”(Inwood and Sharp, 2012) “An influx of new populations with varying levels of local awareness and connectedness” (Mahon et al. 2012)
- Characteristics of the urban fringe ‘Buffer zones’; greenbelt; designations Transition zone Speculation and holding land ‘in limbo’ Where time can ‘stand still’ Role of planning Under-utilised spaces How large is the rural-urban fringe? Depends on planning policies and land designations Can be anything from a few yards to 2 or 3 km (Netherlands) Under-utilised spaces Power lines River corridors/canals Disused railway lines Derelict land farmland
- Yateley Common
- Nature of the resource common pool resource – subtractable and difficult to exclude Requires management to ensure long-term sustainable use And management means exclusion of ‘non-members’ or those not entitled to use the resource. Need to be careful not to confuse common pool resources with public goods (public realm where everyone has access) Nature of the governance system comprises social arrangements that regulate consumption and maintenance; control and manage rights undertaken by an identifiable community of users that can craft their own institutions users manage resources collectively through rules in use, self-imposed norms, and social mechanisms (Colding and Barthel, 2013) Property rights allocation of rights agreed by community of users Commons may exist under wide range of property rights regimes Colding 2013) defines ‘urban green commons’ as ‘physical green spaces in urban settings of diverse land ownership that depend on collective organisation and management and to which individuals and interest groups participating in management hold a rich set of bundles of rights, including rights to craft their own institutions, and to decide whom they want to include in such management schemes’ Hess (2008) in a paper on new commons defines the term: “A commons is a resource shared by a group where the resource is vulnerable to enclosure, overuse and social dilemmas. Unlike a public good, it requires management and protection in order to sustain it.”
- Community forest governance Red rose – Partnership Group made up of representatives of local authorities, FC and NE (no local community members) Management Group – similar range of member groups – steers strategic direction, monitors implementation of business plan Funding from local authorities (also in past from NW RDA, United Utilities, NE and others ) Large investment required in building community support These are public goods, not commons Mersey Forest – partnership of 7 local authorities, FC, NE Funding from local authorities and from other sources. Cheshire West and Chester council provide employment, finance, and accounting services. Community forest – open to all Not clear how local communities influence the Mersey Forest Plan 2014 consultation exercise resulted in 771 people having involvement in at least one step of the consultation
- Figure 5.3: Bar chart showing reasons for providing permissive access in HLS agreements (n=221) (multiple responses permitted. Source: CCRI, HLS report 2011 The Future without access payments Agreement holders were fairly evenly spread in their views of the future of access without payments. Just under half would continue to provide full or partial provision of access, while just under one third would not. Reasons for providing access varied: where it does not seem to be causing any problem or difficulty agreement holders seem content to let it continue, in particular there are some suggestions that the costs of trying to stop people using the access might outweigh the benefits. Those suggesting they might stop the access indicate concerns over damage, especially where crops are concerned, and that the damage costs might outweigh any benefits from voluntary provision. Other reasons include views of the landlord and differences in attitude between the current agreement holder and the next generation. A significant proportion (just under one third) cannot predict the future with any certainty. Some indicated they would be retiring and others would be taking over, others suggested that crop prices played a role in their decision making, and if prices were to increase then access would disappear.
- Number of users is very difficult to measure with any accuracy as most respondents only had a general feel for the level of use, and in one or two cases it was clear from site visits that agreement holders were confounding use levels of permissive access with use levels of national trails or public rights of way. In the case of walkers and ramblers responses regarding use levels varied from 5 per week to 20 – 30 per day, even in winter. Other responses indicated hundreds per week to thousands per year. What is clear is that 143 out of the 221 agreement holders that provided some estimate of use the majority indicate daily or weekly use.
- The fringe as a barrier to commons or the fringe as an opportunity? Potentially large area – out to 2 or 3 km from edge of urban area