Abstract
When “The Threat to the Peak” was published by the Counell for the Preservation of Rural England in 1937 it was the disfigurement of the landscape by incongruous and ribbon building, by highway development and to a lesser extent by electricity, water, or industrial undertakings that the Council was chiefly concerned to avert. There can be no doubt as to the value of the work of the Council in educating public opinion in this matter in the Peak district and elsewhere. While it may be true, as Dr. C. M. Trevelyan has observed, that outrages cheerfully perpetrated twenty years ago would be impossible at the present time, the threat to the natural beauty of Britain is at present much more widespread and serious to-day. Observations on landscape preservation in the Dower Report indicate the wide range of threats to some of our areas of great natural beauty, and the urgent need for legislation. Although ribbon building is officially frowned upon, dilatoriness in dealing with the planning of land use and the problem of compensation and betterment are encouraging the further extension of suburban sprawl. Even the London County Council had to be restrained by the Minister of Town and Country Planning from violating the Aber-crombie plan by breaking into the green belt at Chessington with a large housing estate, and the House of Lords rejected the Leicester Corporations proposals for a reservoir in the Manifold valley.
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Land Utilization and Service Training in Great Britain. Nature 158, 849–852 (1946). https://doi.org/10.1038/158849a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/158849a0