the quarry

Tue 19 Aug 2008, 00:59

Google maps shows the area at quite a high resolution: tinyurl.com/6z8z9r

It is relatively clear from the topography that there is a rather limited potential area of moderately level ground unless there is an intent to use landfill once more to build up the low ground and then to oversite the entire development zone with impermeable clay etc.which I assume would be a requirement for an area that had been subject to landfill.

Also the constriction of the road just south of the Banbury/Enstone/9 Acres/Slade roads with its blind bend is easily seen. Increased traffic trying to exit the Ditchley Rd will increase the risk for both motor car collisions (as often miscreant motorists are hitting 40 when they come around the blind bend jack-rabbiting out of the cross roads - I've nearly been T-boned twice finding some boy racer bearing down on me from the right or when turning across the road for entrance from the south, so some CPO of the grounds of the flats in the old house and wall demolition would be required to make this safer. As well as traffic lights on the X roads - Which would be A Good Thing anyway).

And that doesn't alter the situation for the Green and allied roads, which are undergoing demographic "generational shift" as older kids leave home, and younger families with preschool and early primary school age kids are rapidly increasing in the area after a period where this age group were not so common as the previous clump of kids grew up. A busier Ditchley Rd junction poses an obvious heightened risk to children making their way to school and from after school activities. Also evident is the sheer blind approach to the existing quarry entrance: right on a corner. Major work would have to be done to develop a suitable access from that end requiring land acquisition. The only other option is to fill level and create an access through Ticknell Piece, an area with a definitely high level of young children at its "generational peak" for this demographic "cycle", and probably like The Green and roads off that, prime candidates both for "Home Zone" traffic management measures as is now pretty well standard practice in Europe. Allow children to "reclaim the streets", activities so important in their growing up as rounded adults and which is being denied to the generations over the last couple of decades - mostly due to parents' fear of the motor car (which is my greatest source of anxiety, and statistically well founded too).

In short, this end of Charlbury is now essentially "full" and further development will simply blight the "living environment" of existing residents and those coming in to the new dwellings. While further growth for the town is probably inevitable, and in the longer term of a decade or two, probably desirable for a host of economic and social reasons if transition policies work out adequately in the wider economy, the area around or beyond the railway station with its non-motor car transport hub potential of value in a post peak oil era, can be realised for both residential housing and commercial activities.

We need strategic planning with those sorts of timelines and building in assumptions of fundamental changes in transport modes and employment concentrations as well as retail revival at the local level. The existing mix of economic and social activities simply cannot continue for more than a decade or perhaps two - and I'd predict major dislocations in the shorter term than the longer when it comes down to it. I've been accurate in my socio-economic forecasting as a political policy "wonk" since the early/mid 70s operating at relatively high political levels in my pre- disabling illness incarnation - and derided at times for predictions which were seen as ideologically heretical and impermissable to discuss in polite (radical) society! But pretty well all of them panned out largely as outlined debunking the orthodoxy. We can be pretty confident of the necessity to do longer term strategic planning policy work outlining the town's future in the light of probable changes, as this is a situation where the market simply cannot read signals of future change at that range and will therefore simply lead to market failure to provide the necessary. Strategic Planning is of course now deeply unfasionable with the governing establishment, but its time must come again as that establishment clearly cannot be trusted to produce a suitable outcome sidestepping disaster, and only political pressure can force this change of ideology of convenience for maximising short term monetary gain. Political pressure means starting on your doorstep with trivially parochial local concerns, but summed together many pressures adds up to an unavoidable flood. If we continue to follow the simplistic market religion then market failure is inevitable, but it won't be an easy task to reverse 30 yrs of orthodoxy and ideological dominance (and also avoid falling into the traps that led to planned economic policies becoming so deeply discredited in the past). Nowadays there are few avenues for a community to work "within the planning system" to influence policy outcomes. So if people are serious in their intent to try and force influence upon "the system" the only answer is organisation and the building of a community consensus that will have sufficient impact to influence political decisions and also, potentially, the costs and viability of a development project to the developers through associated stipulations of planning gain etc. It ain't gonna be easy - the rules have changed so much over the last 30 years that the lessons of older previous community organisation to bring about desired change and head off undesirable proposals are possibly not applicable. But I have seen and been involved in community struggles that did, despite the rule changes shifting the goal posts for planning decisions, force major revisions. It isn't easy, but it is still possible. Back to Jon's suggestion: time for some sort of RA instituted as a campaigning body.

"Changes" mentioned above in the context of Charlbury plus 20 years are of course looking on the bright side of things: that economic activity will be able to make a reasonably stable transition to a lower energy, lower transport, more locally sourced, condition. This may not of course occur, and our concerns then may be more in drawing lessons of survival from the history of communities suffering severe dislocation in a period of market failure and failed state conditions.

Dark visions - like trying to grow enough to eat, on infertile land, that only produces a crop now via subsidy farming and pouring on quantities of petroleum oils. Land squatted from the Marlborough etc. estates, for example, say with running battles with hired armed thugs or starving Londoners fanning out from a dying metropolis make for a real dystopian vision! I was in Russia in 1991 looking into a joint venture - it was terrifying to witness how rapidly a social and economic system could unravel towards barbarism (though fortunately didn't quite slip over the edge there - just). But a dark vision with plenty of historical antecedents in Britain, the land of systematic land theft and concentration. Land reform being one of the Great Unmentionables in the current discussions of sustainability, but imperative in an economy based on higher levels of local self sufficiency! But I digress too far into my fear of the world yet to come (and which I probably won't be around long enough to see, so my fear is transmuted into fear for my young children). But in my opinion - If you ain't scared you're in denial. Future? Tense.