OXFORDSHIRE UNDONE: PONZI PLANNING
The powers-that-be continue to forge ahead with the undoing of our beautiful County with the Oxfordshire Infrastructure Strategy (OXIS), a bid for a massive road-building programme, dressed up as infrastructure planning. It is written by AECOM, a company that works with developers. This is what I take from their plan.
Current Deficits in Infrastructure
OXIS reveals deficiencies in our current infrastructure, which has been severely depleted through a lack of investment over the past 7 years of austerity. Infrastructure improvements have stalled.
We have no plan to deliver basic broadband to over 20,000 people, no plan to improve the creaking electricity grid, no plan for local green electricity generation, no plan to improve sewage systems which are at breaking point, no coherent plan to improve green infrastructure and protect our landscape, no plan to address serious air pollution, no costed strategy to refurbish older homes for energy efficiency.
We face challenges that seem almost insurmountable, in reducing carbon emissions, preserving and enhancing biodiversity and improving public health. The county cannot afford to run its current waste-recycling centres and there will be limitations on fresh water in the future. Strains on health and social care and education services are universal.
This is something of a wake-up call. How can we ensure we keep pace with our current needs — for full refurbishment and provision of these essential, civilisation-defining services? Unfortunately, OXIS provides only a piecemeal approach to fixing some existing problems, with few proposals looking beyond five years.
Will Growth Save Us?
Oxfordshire strives for economic growth. This should not be confused with growth in the built environment (short-term gain) nor with growth in the population (potential for liabilities long-term). We risk damaging Oxfordshire’s future prosperity, by not disentangling these types of growth.
AECOM are working to a 40% population growth and a doubling in the rate of house-building by 2040. There is no risk-analysis of alternative scenarios that might call for slowing, stopping, or indeed accelerating infrastructure provision.
As it stands, these growth figures look highly unlikely with the Office for National Statistics predicting a third of that growth, even before any Brexit exodus.
Growth will be predominantly elderly retirees coming into Oxfordshire (according to OXIS).
Even if we could achieve this anticipated population growth, should we encourage it? What is the optimal size of our built environment in Oxfordshire? What is our optimal population? Where and how much can we build whilst enhancing and protecting our natural and farming environments?
Getting population-growth estimates wrong, and not carefully examining the age-profiles of the new people we invite in, could have devastating consequences on our prosperity and wellbeing.
Ponzi Planning
We are entering an era of PONZI PLANNING, similar to the notorious scheme whereby new investment is used to pay off earlier investors. To get our current infrastructure up-to-scratch we rely on gains from an influx of new people. They themselves then create demand for further infrastructure.
Although, to be fair, OXIS offers no solution to our current deficits. It prioritises new infrastructure for its “deliverability, scale of growth enabled and potential to leverage funding”.
We also risk ending up with ghost towns and estates, if homes continue to be bought for investment purposes (look at London). Who then pays for, say, a new reservoir for non-existent people — the residents of Oxfordshire?
21st Century
We should be gearing up to a 21st Century approach to transit, reducing the need for travel with tele and home working; providing excellent public transport, preparing for autonomous on-demand shuttles to mass transit units; deploying home-grown (Oxford high-tech) future-proofed systems.
In contrast, there is a theme running through OXIS, that provision should be centralised to cut costs, with the knock-on effects of far more travel for individuals: halving the number of further and higher education colleges, reducing local GP provision, closing local hospitals, closing police stations, and bringing the elderly into centralised facilities. And building 20th Century motorways.
Where here is the serious investment in getting people on their feet, on their bikes, and into the natural world, significantly benefitting their wellbeing and prosperity, and reducing strains on the health and social care budgets?
OXIS focusses on car-parking and road-expansion, which always leads to increased traffic, and necessarily creates new pinch-points at other places. Air pollution is mentioned four times, but no priority strategy is presented to address this important health issue, which kills 100 residents per year, in Oxford alone.
We seem to be moving backwards: electrification of the railways has been cancelled by the Government, and all subsidised buses in Oxfordshire cancelled by the County. Are AECOM even aware of this? No mention is made of how to address the funding of public transport.
Protecting That Which Is Good
The economic benefits of Oxfordshire’s natural world cannot be overstated. Our beautiful, uplifting surroundings have measurable health benefits for residents, and are considered by tourists to be the epitome of Englishness. Natural processes also serve to provide water, food, pollination, and carbon-storage, and protect from flood and pollution.
If we go ahead with untrammelled road-building, without addressing our already vulnerable situation with regard to flooding, a quickly depleting natural world where we are losing biodiversity at a frightening rate, and without putting nature first, we risk a degraded future for ourselves and our children.